How to Change the Margins in Google Docs

Let me start with something that provides the most customization and also helps to accurately set the margin in inches.

How to Change Margins in Google Docs With Page Setup Option

  1. Launch Google Docs and open any document that you want to change the margins for.
  2. Now click on File and then select the Page Setup option in the pop-up menu.
  3. It opens a pop-up where you can change the page size, orientation, and color of the page. Along with that, you should also see the Margins option on the right side. By default, all the values are set to 1 (inch) for all the documents.
  4. You can change the values of top, bottom, left, and right individually in inches according to your needs.
  5. Once done, click on the OK button in the pop-up to set the margins that you specified for that document. The changes will be applied to all the pages in that document.

How to Change Margins for One Page in Google Docs

The above method changes the margin for all the pages. If you prefer to change margins for a specific page, you can do that too using, again, the Page Setup option.

  1. Open the document in Google Docs and select the content with the cursor. Once you apply the margin for this selected content, it will be moved down to a new page and the margins will be applied to that specific page. All the content below the highlighted content will be moved to another page below. This way, you can set a margin for a specific page with the content that you have selected.
  2. Now click on File and select the Page Setup option in the pop-up menu.
  3. Now under the Apply to section, make sure the Selected Content option is chosen. So that these margins will be applied to only the content you have selected.
  4. Now change the margins for top, bottom, left, and right according to your need.
  5. Once done, click on the OK button to set the margin for that specific content which will be moved to a new page.

How to Change the Default Margin Sizes in Google Docs

As said above, Google Docs adds a 1-inch margin to all documents by default. Again, we will be using the Page Setup option.

  1. Open any document on Google Docs and then click on File, then select the Page Setup option in the pop-up menu.
  2. Here in the margin section, set the values that you want to set as default margin values for all the documents moving forward.
  3. Once done, click on the Set as default button to set these margin sizes as the default margin sizes. These new margin sizes will be applied to all the new documents you create on Google Docs moving forward but won’t affect existing documents. You need to open and set the margins manually for all the previous documents if you want to change them. Also, there is no way to bulk edit margins for multiple documents in Google Docs.

How to Change Margins for a Specific Paragraph in Google Docs

You cannot change the margin for a specific paragraph with the help of the Page Setup option. That is where the Ruler option comes in. Unlike the Page Setup option, you cannot change the values accurately by specifying inches, nor change the default margins or a specific page’s margin with Ruler. But there are two key advantages to the Ruler feature. You can change the margin for specific paragraphs and columns.

  1. Open any document in Google Docs and make sure the Show ruler is selected under the View tab.
  2. Now you should see a ruler at the top of the document.
  3. Place your cursor on any paragraph, heading, list, etc.
  4. Now just drag the blue pointer on Ruler to the left or right. While adjusting, you can also check the margin length in a small tooltip.
  5. Once you stop dragging, that specific paragraph will be moved to the set margin immediately. Instead of the pointer, you can also drag the start and end of the ruler to change the margin for the entire document. However, you can do that with the help of the Page Setup too.

How to Change Margins in Google Docs for Columns

While the Page Setup can only change the page margins, with the Ruler, you can also change the margin for columns.

  1. Open any document that has more than one column and make sure you have enabled the Show ruler option as we saw above.
  2. Now when you click on any of the columns, you should see a ruler at the top that also breaks into multiple columns accordingly.
  3. Now drag the line dividing the columns to the left or right to change the margin for both columns. If you move the line to the left, the right column becomes bigger and left column becomes smaller, and vice-versa.

How to Change Margins in Google Docs While Printing

Finally, if you don’t want to change the margin of the document but only in the hard copy, you can change the margins while printing itself.

  1. Open any document and click on File and then select the Print option in the fly-down menu.
  2. Change the Margin option to Custom. If you cannot find the Margin option, click on More settings, then you should find it.
  3. Now add margin to all four sides individually.
  4. Once done, click on the Print button to proceed. With this method, you can only increase the margin, but cannot reduce the margin that is already added to the document. For example, if your document has a 1-inch margin, you can change it to 1.5 by adding 0.5 inches while printing. But you cannot reduce the margin and make it 0.5 inches.
  5. How to Change the Margin in Google Docs on the Smartphone App? On the smartphone app, you can change the Paper size and Orientation in the Page Setup menu, but not the margin. The ruler option is also not available. If you want to change the margin on the smartphone, you can open Google Docs in desktop mode on the browser. It is unintuitive to use but gets the work done.
  6. How to Find the Margin of Any Given Document in Google Docs? You can easily find the margin of any document with the Ruler option. You can enable it by clicking on View > Show Ruler. It will show a scale at the top and left side of the document. Now you can measure the margin of your document manually.
  7. Can We Set Margins in Centimeters instead of Inches? No, we can only set the margin in inches on Google Docs. You have to manually convert centimeters into meters and count them.

Changing Margins in Google Docs

For the most part, you can just rely on Page Setup to change the margins. That option will be helpful to set margins for all the pages, for a single page, and can also change default margin sizes. However, use Ruler option to change the margin for columns. You can also rely on the margin option in print if you don’t want to make any changes to the margin in the digital copy. Speaking about columns, here’s how to add two images side by side on Google Docs.