How to Change the Margins in Google Docs

Why Change Your Document Margins?

By default, every new Google Doc you create uses standard one-inch margins on all four sides (top, bottom, left, and right). This standard sizing is perfect for academic essays, official letters, and general reading.

However, there are many situations where the default one-inch margin is not ideal. If you are designing a resume, printing a flyer, or creating a newsletter, reducing the margins allows you to fit significantly more text and images onto a single page without making the font unreadably small. Conversely, if you are printing a draft for someone to manually edit with a red pen, increasing the margins provides them with much-needed white space to write notes.

Google Docs makes it incredibly simple to adjust these margins, either for the entire document or just specific sections.

Method 1: Using the Page Setup Menu (Most Precise)

If you need your margins to be an exact measurement (such as exactly 0.5 inches), the Page Setup menu is the best tool to use.

1. Open your document in Google Docs.
2. Click on File in the top menu bar.
3. Scroll down to the bottom of the dropdown list and click Page setup.
4. A dialogue box will appear. Look at the right side of the box under the Margins (inches) section.
5. You will see four text boxes: Top, Bottom, Left, and Right.
6. Click inside the boxes and type your desired measurements. (For a resume, 0.5 inches all around is a popular choice).
7. Click the blue OK button.

Pro Tip: If you want all future documents to use these new margins, click the "Set as default" button before clicking OK.

Method 2: Using the Ruler (Fastest)

If you prefer a visual approach and just want to roughly expand the text area without worrying about exact decimal measurements, you can use the built-in ruler.

1. Open your document in Google Docs.
2. Ensure the ruler is visible. If you do not see a ruler across the top of your document, click View in the top menu and select Show ruler.
3. Look at the ruler above your document. You will see a grey area on the far left and far right. The grey area represents the margin, while the white area represents where text can go.
4. Hover your mouse over the line where the grey and white areas meet. Your cursor will turn into a two-headed arrow.
5. Click and drag the boundary left or right to decrease or increase the margin.
6. You can do the same for the top and bottom margins using the vertical ruler on the left side of the screen.

How to Change Margins for Just One Paragraph

Sometimes you don’t want to change the whole document; you just want a specific block quote or paragraph to stand out by having wider margins than the rest of the text.

1. Highlight the specific text or paragraph you want to adjust.
2. Look at the ruler at the top of the screen.
3. Instead of clicking the grey margin boundary, look for the blue triangle (Left Indent) and the blue rectangle (First Line Indent) on the left side, and the blue triangle on the right side.
4. Click and drag the blue triangle inward.

This creates an indent for that specific paragraph, effectively creating a custom margin for just that highlighted section while leaving the rest of the document untouched.