How to Delete a Page in Google Docs

Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.

• Western Governors University

Ryan Perian is a certified IT specialist who holds numerous IT certifications and has 12+ years' experience working in the IT industry support and management positions.

What to Know

• Put the cursor at the end of the sentence that precedes the page. Highlight the page, then press Delete or Backspace.
• Click once before the page break and press the Delete key. Or, go right after the page break and press Backspace.
• Adjust line spacing: Format >Line & paragraph spacing >Custom spacing. Lower the After number.

There are several reasons why there are extra pages or blank spaces in your Google Doc. This article explains how to delete them, including empty pages, page breaks, and funky formatting.

Use the Delete Key

This method is easy and makes the most sense for the majority of situations. Whether the extra page is there due to unnecessary spaces or content you no longer want, removing it involves selecting the unwanted area.

1. Place the cursor at the end of the sentence that precedes the blank or unwanted page. For example, to delete page 2 in a document with 3 pages, start at the end of page 1 or the very start of page 2.

Click and drag downward, somewhat slowly to avoid going too far, and stop near the next sentence you see (if it’s a blank page) or just before the next sentence you want to keep. In our example, we stop at the end of page 2 or the beginning of page 3. The idea is to select all of page 2 since we want to remove it.

You don’t have to actually delete a page if you just want to avoid printing it. When you go to File > Print, change the Pages option to Custom and pick which pages to print. That’s how it works in Chrome; it’s similar in other browsers.

Undo a Page Break

Creating a page break can make blank pages. You can remove a page break similar to how you’d remove an extra page, but you don’t have to worry so much about highlighting anything.

1. Locate the page break. Since it’s white space you want to remove, look for a large blank space in the document. One way to verify that it’s a page break and not just blank paragraphs is by pressing the down arrow. If it jumps down further than a single line, you’ve got a page break there.

Click once before the page break and press the Delete key. Or, go right after the page break and press Backspace. You might have to repeat this one or more times if there are extra spaces.

Adjust Line Spacing

Google Docs might be adding extra space after paragraphs. This is a setting that can apply to the entire document and that no amount of backspacing can fix. Here’s what to do if you have extra pages or blank spaces that you can’t seem to remove normally:

1. Select just before the first word in the document.

Go to Format >Line & paragraph spacing >Custom spacing.

Lower the After paragraph spacing number or just set it to 0.

If that doesn’t work, repeat these steps but select the first sentence after the blank space and change the Before value during step 3.

Change the Margins

Although less common, margins that are too big could be the reason for extra pages. Making the margins smaller gives you more room to write on each page, thus preventing unnecessary blank spaces.

Adjust the values in the Margins column (in the Pages tab). If the bottom margin, for example, is set to a number that’s too large, then Docs is forcing too much text to run over onto the next page. Lowering the number fixes this.