You’re staring at a blank page. It is just sitting there at the end of your document, mocking you. You’ve hit backspace a dozen times. Nothing happens. Honestly, figuring out how to delete a page in google docs shouldn't feel like solving a Rubik's cube, but here we are. It’s one of those weirdly specific tech frustrations that can derail an entire afternoon of productivity.
Google Docs is a powerhouse, but it handles whitespace like a hoarding habit. Sometimes that extra page exists because of a stray paragraph break, a "ghost" formatting mark, or a margin setting that’s just a hair too wide. If you’ve ever tried to print a three-page report only to have the printer spit out a fourth sheet with nothing but a header on it, you know exactly why this matters.
The backspace method and why it fails
Usually, you just click the bottom of the blank page and lean on the backspace key. That works about 60% of the time. But when it doesn't, it’s usually because Google Docs thinks there is "content" there, even if that content is just a line of empty space formatted in 72-point font.
Select the empty space. Don't just click. Click and drag your cursor from the very bottom of the stubborn page all the way up to the end of your actual text. Once you see that blue highlight, hit delete. If that doesn't do the trick, the culprit is likely a page break. People often insert these by accident using the Ctrl+Enter shortcut.
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To kill a manual page break, place your cursor at the very beginning of the unwanted page. Hit backspace once. If the cursor jumps to the previous page and the blank one vanishes, you've won. If not, we have to look deeper into the document's DNA.
Hunting for hidden formatting
Google Docs doesn't show you formatting marks by default. It isn't like Microsoft Word where you can toggle a little "¶" icon and see every single hidden space. This is a design choice that keeps things clean, but it makes troubleshooting a nightmare.
One trick involves the "Selection" method. Use your mouse to highlight the entire blank page. If you notice the highlight is unusually "tall" or "thick," it means there is a large, invisible line break sitting there. Highlight it and change the font size to 1. This shrinks the invisible line so much that it often gets sucked back onto the previous page, effectively deleting the blank one.
The ghost of paragraph spacing
Sometimes the issue isn't a page break at all. It’s "Space After Paragraph."
Check your line spacing settings. If you have a paragraph at the very bottom of page one that is set to have 20 points of space after it, that invisible "cushion" might be pushing the cursor onto page two. Since the cushion is part of the paragraph, you can't "delete" it with backspace. You have to go into the Format menu, select Line & Paragraph Spacing, and click "Remove space after paragraph."
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Breaking the layout: Tables and Margins
Tables are the absolute worst for creating unkillable blank pages.
If your document ends with a table, Google Docs insists on placing a paragraph break immediately after it. You cannot delete this paragraph. It is a hard-coded rule of the software's layout engine. If that table reaches the very bottom of your page, that mandatory paragraph gets shoved onto a new sheet.
You're stuck with a blank page. Forever. Or so it seems.
The workaround here is a bit of a hack. You need to highlight that specific, stubborn paragraph mark on the blank page. Change its font size to 1. If that still doesn't pull it onto the table page, you'll need to adjust your bottom margin.
- Go to File.
- Select Page Setup.
- Look at your Bottom Margin.
- Reduce it from 1 inch to 0.5 or even 0.2.
This gives the table—and its mandatory "ghost" paragraph—enough breathing room to exist on a single sheet of paper.
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Removing pages on the mobile app
Doing this on a phone is a whole different brand of annoying. The Google Docs mobile app is simplified, which means you lose a lot of the granular control over margins and spacing.
On Android or iOS, you'll want to tap the three dots in the top right corner and toggle on "Print Layout." This is the only way to actually see where one page ends and another begins. Without this, you're just looking at a continuous stream of text. Once you're in Print Layout, find the break. Tap the area where the text stops and the blank space starts. Hold down to select, drag to the end of the void, and hit the delete icon on your keyboard.
If the page is still there, it’s almost certainly a Page Break. In mobile view, these appear as a gray line. Place your cursor right after that line and hit the backspace button on your virtual keyboard.
The Nuclear Option: Document Repair
Rarely, a document gets "corrupted" in a way that creates weird pagination issues. I've seen this happen when importing files from Word or OpenOffice. The formatting styles get tangled.
If you've tried the margins, the font size 1 trick, and the backspace marathon, and that page is still there, try this:
Copy everything except the very last paragraph of your document. Paste it into a brand new Google Doc. Usually, the "ghost" formatting lives in that final paragraph mark. By leaving it behind, you're essentially filtering out the bug. It’s a bit of a pain to fix your headers and footers again, but it’s better than sending a 50-page PDF with 10 blank pages scattered throughout.
Section Breaks vs. Page Breaks
There is a distinction here that most people miss. A Page Break just moves you to the next sheet. A Section Break (Next Page) creates an entirely new "container" for your content. This is what you use if you want one page to be Portrait and the next to be Landscape.
If you have an accidental Section Break, deleting it can sometimes mess up the formatting of the entire document because the "rules" for the previous section suddenly apply to the next one.
To see these, you must go to the "View" menu and ensure "Show section breaks" is checked. They will appear as blue dotted lines. Click right before the dotted line and hit Delete (not backspace). If you're on a Mac, that's Fn + Delete. This pulls the content together and usually collapses the extra page.
Final Actionable Checklist
When you're fighting a blank page, don't just click randomly. Follow this specific order to save time:
- Check for Page Breaks: Use Ctrl+A (Select All) to see if any weird blue highlights appear in the "blank" areas.
- Shrink the "Ghost" Line: Click the blank page, set font size to 1, and set line spacing to "Single."
- Adjust the Margins: Shrink the bottom margin in File > Page Setup to give the text more "room" to move up.
- Clear Formatting: Highlight the transition between the two pages and go to Format > Clear Formatting. This often resets any weird paragraph spacing you didn't know was there.
- The Table Fix: If a table is the culprit, right-click the table, go to Table Properties, and ensure there isn't any "Minimum row height" forcing it to be larger than it needs to be.
Stop fighting the software and start looking for the invisible instructions you've accidentally given it. Most of the time, Google Docs isn't broken; it’s just following your formatting rules too literally. Once you clear those hidden markers, your document will finally look the way it’s supposed to.