When you create a document, do you consider its structure? Similar to Microsoft Word, Google Docs provides page and section breaks. These tools help you space out your content by inserting pages and creating sections.
If you’re new to using page and section breaks in Google Docs, we’ll walk you through the basics. We’ll explain how to insert them, hide or show section breaks, and remove breaks that you no longer need.
Add a Page or Section Break in Google Docs
Adding a break in Google Docs is easier than you might think. Open your document and place your cursor where you want to insert the break. Then, click Insert > Break from the menu. Choose “Page Break” or “Section Break” from the pop-out menu.
- Page Break: Drops the text after your cursor to a new page.
- Section Break (Next Page): Starts a new section on the next page.
- Section Break (Continuous): Starts a new section on the same (current) page.
Page breaks are ideal if you have a heading or are starting a new paragraph and are at the bottom of a page or if you want a separate page for each topic or category in your document
RELATED: How to Keep Lines of Text Together in Google Docs
Section breaks are handy for spacing out images and other content or if you want to insert columns for a small area in the document.
Show or Hide Section Breaks
Since page breaks do not display any type of indicator in your document, there isn’t a way to show or hide them. As you’ve learned above, a page break simply starts a new page.
Section breaks, on the other hand, have a blue dotted line indicating the start of the section.
While this section indicator is helpful, it might be distracting to you. Luckily, you can hide it. Click View > Show Section Breaks in the menu.
This deselects it by removing the checkmark and the blue dotted line disappears.
To show the section breaks again later, head to the same spot in the menu and select Show Section Breaks to put a checkmark next to it. You should then see those dotted lines for your section breaks once again.
Remove Page and Section Breaks
If you insert a page or section break that you no longer want, you can remove it. The way you do this differs on Windows versus Mac because you’ll use specific keys on your keyboard.
RELATED: All of the Best Google Docs Keyboard Shortcuts
Remove a Break on Windows
To remove a page break in Google Docs on Windows, place your cursor in front of the text at the top of the page. Then, press Backspace. This moves the content up to the previous page.
To remove a section break on Windows, place your cursor on the line directly above the section break. This is easiest to do if you have Show Section Breaks enabled. Then, press Delete.
Remove a Break on Mac
To remove a page break in Google Docs on Mac, place your cursor in front of the text at the top of the page. Then, press Delete. This moves the content up to the previous page.
To remove a section break on Mac, place your cursor at the start of the line with the section break. Again, you can enable Show Section Breaks to make this simpler. Then, press either Fn+Delete or Control+D.
For another way to structure your document, especially if it’s a brochure or pamphlet, take a look at how to create multiple columns in Google Docs.
