How to Change the Margins in Excel? 2 Useful Ways
(Note: This guide on how to change the margins in Excel is suitable for all Excel versions including Office 365)
Microsoft Excel is a very efficient tool for data analysis and handling with various functional features. You can perform a variety of operations on the data in the Excel worksheet stored on your PC or cloud. And oftentimes, there will be a need to print the data stored in the Excel files onto paper.
When you print the sheets on paper, setting the margins plays a pivotal role in determining the aesthetic of the page and data. When the margins are too wide, the data will be broken and moved to the next page. When the margins are too small, the data will be crammed and will not be pleasing to look at. Hence, it is important to check, adjust, and change the margins depending on the data when you print.
In this article, I will tell you how to change the margins in Excel in 2 different ways.
You’ll Learn:
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Default Margins in Excel
Before we see how to change the margins in Excel, let us now see the different margin types available in Excel.
Excel has four margin options. Among them, three of the margin options appear with default settings and are listed with the specified distance from the page outline defined in centimeters. And, the other is the Custom Margin.
Normal: This is the default margin of every Excel workbook. It uses the standard spacing from the top, bottom, left, and right corners of the page including the headers and footers.
Wide: The Wide margin occupies a bit more space from the page outline. That is, the margins are far away from the borders of the page towards the center, leaving comparatively little space for the content. This type of margin is predominantly used when the data is small and you want to showcase them more effectively.
Narrow: As its name suggests, the narrow margin occupies a little space from the page border. This type of margin is predominantly used when the content of a page is large and you want to accommodate them into a single page.
Custom Margin: Though it is easy to select the default margin with specified spaces, there might be some instances where you will need to customize the margins independently based on the content and your preferences. In such cases, you can use the Custom Margin option.
Last Custom Setting: You can sometimes see an additional margin setting from the Page Layout setup called Last Custom Setting, which shows you the previously saved settings you have made to the sheet.
How to Change the Margins in Excel?
There are a few methods that you can use to change the margin of sheets in Excel. Let us now see how to choose the given default margin layout.
From the Page Layout Tab
This is one of the well-known ways to change the layout of the page in Excel. Here are the steps to do it:
- To change the page layout, navigate to the Page Layout tab in the main menu ribbon.
- Under the Page Setup section, click on the dropdown from Margins.
- You can see the current page margin (Normal) is highlighted.
- Now, you can click on the desired margin you want to apply to the sheet.
- Once the particular margin is applied, you can see the page break which appears with a dotted line.
Note: When you navigate to the Page Layout tab and change the margin, that setting only applies to the current sheet. If you want to change the layout for multiple sheets, hold the Ctrl or Shift key to select non-adjacent or adjacent sheets respectively.
From the File Main Menu
This is another way to change the layout of the sheets in Excel. One advantage of using this method is that you can see the preview of the margin changes. Another advantage of this option is that the selected margins only apply to the printed sheet and do not apply to the Excel sheet.
- To change the layout, first, open Excel and choose any particular sheet.
- Navigate to the File main menu ribbon. Click on the Print option.
- On the Print page, click on the dropdown from Margins and select the desired margin.
- Once you select the margin, you can see the preview of the content with the margin applied in the preview pane.
- Click on Print to print the sheet with the selected margin of your choice.
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How to Use Custom Margins in Excel
From the Page Layout tab or the Print option in the File menu, you can select either the Normal, Wide, or Narrow margin. If you are not satisfied with the default margin and want to customize based on your preference, you can use the Custom Margins option.
There are two ways you can use the Custom Margins option in Excel.
From the Page Layout Tab
From the Page Layout tab, you can use the Custom Margins option in two ways.
- You can navigate to the Page Layout tab, click on the dropdown from Margins and select Custom Margins.
- You can also click on the Page Setup option which can be seen as an extend arrow in the Page Setup section.
- This opens the Page Setup dialog box. In the dialog box, click on the Margins section to customize the page margins based on your preference.
- Under the Margins section, you can change the margin distance from the top, bottom, left, and right of the page border either by increasing or decreasing the values in the text box. You can also change the header and footer margins in the same way.
- Additionally, you can choose to center the content either horizontally or vertically by using the checkbox under Center on page.
- Finally, you can see the preview, print the pages with the current margins by clicking on Print, or apply the changes to the sheet by clicking OK.
From the File Main Menu
- Another way to set up custom margins is by navigating to the File main menu and clicking on Print.
- From the Print pane, click on the Show Margins button in the bottom right corner.
- In turn, this shows you the margin markers, which can be seen as fine lines running across the page. Using this, you can move and set the margins independently.
- In addition to changing the top, bottom, right, and left margins for headers and footers, you can also change the column width of the individual columns.
After specifying the margins, you can click on Print to print the pages.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How to change the margins for all the sheets in Excel?
To change the margins of all the sheets in the workbook, select the sheets either by using the Ctrl or Shift key and then navigate to the Page Layout section and select the margins.
How to apply the changes only to print and not apply the setting?
By navigating to File and selecting the Margins from the Print section, you can apply the margin changes only when you print the sheet onto paper. The margin changes do not apply to the sheet.
How do I customize the margins in Excel?
You can customize the margins based on your preferences by navigating to Page Layout and clicking on Custom Margins from the Margins dropdown. Or, you can navigate to File and under the Print category, click on Show Margins to customize the margins.
Closing Thoughts
Changing and customizing the margins based on the data and your personal preferences helps make the printed content organized and pleasing to look at.
In this article, we saw how to change the margins in Excel. You can either choose the default margins or customize and specify the margins based on your preferences.
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Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA. He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!