Change grid spacing and other gridline settings

Gridlines help give you visual cues when you're formatting in Office. In PowerPoint and Word, you change some of the grid spacing options. In PowerPoint, you can only change the increments of grid measurements, which allows you to adjust the precision of object alignment. In Word, you can change the distance between gridlines shown on the page by adjusting horizontal and vertical spacing.

PowerPoint

1. In Normal view, right-click an empty area or margin of a slide (not a placeholder), and then click Grid and Guides.

2. Under Grid settings, enter the measurement that you want in the Spacing list.

Tip: If you want these settings to be the default settings for all of your presentations, click Set as Default.

To change or undo these settings, repeat these steps. To turn off gridlines, see Show or hide gridlines in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel.

If you want to change the measurement units in PowerPoint, see Change the ruler units from inches to centimeters.

Word

1. On the Layout or Page Layout tab, in the Arrange group, click Align, and then click Grid Settings.

2. Do any of the following:

   • To specify horizontal spacing, under Grid settings, enter the measurement that you want in the Horizontal spacing list.

   • To specify vertical spacing, under Grid settings, enter the measurement that you want in the Vertical spacing list.

   • To extend the drawing grid to the edge of the document, under Grid origin, clear the Use margins check box.

   • To display only some gridlines, under Show grid, select the Display gridlines on screen check box, and then click the number of gridlines that you want to display in the Vertical every or Horizontal every lists.

To change or undo these settings, repeat these steps. To turn off gridlines, see Show or hide gridlines in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel.

Tip: If you want these settings to be the default settings for all of your documents, click Default.

See also

Show or hide gridlines in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel

Change the ruler units in PowerPoint from inches to centimeters

Snap charts, pictures, and objects to a grid to align or format them