Have you ever jumped back to normal view from print preview and noticed the annoying page break lines? They look distracting. They are like a naughty kid shouting for attention. look at me!!!

How do we get rid of those lines after completing our business with print preview?!?
Very simple. We just copy everything, press CTRL+C and then paste in a new workbook!
Of course, I am kidding. There is a better way.
You can click on Office button > Excel Options > Advanced > Scroll down to “Display options for this…” and then un-check Show Page Breaks option.
Aah, it would be much more simple to take a flight, go to Colombia, visit a coffee estate, gather beans, bring them back home, roast and ground them and make a coffee.
But then, we are not after Coffee. We are after those nasty print preview lines.
So here is a much simpler option to get rid of them, on click of button.
We just write a macro.
- Press ALT+F11 in your workbook to go to Visual Basic Editor (VBE).
- Now, locate Personal macros workbook in the project explorer. Just open the macros module (or insert a new one). [more on this here]

- Write a single line macro like this:
Sub disablePageBreaks()
ActiveSheet.DisplayPageBreaks = False
End Sub - Save your personal macros workbook.
- Come back to Excel (ALT+F11 again).
- Add this macro as a button to Quick Access Toolbar

- Now, you can just press the QAT button or use the relevant ALT shortcut (for eg. if the macro button is 4th one in QAT, you can just press ALT+4 to run it).
That is all. Now with all the saved time, you can go to Colombia for a cup of coffee. Make sure you bring me a kilo of that Juan Valdez beans.
More on Printing:
If you like to print and hurt a few trees, make sure you have read these.














17 Responses to “Custom Number Formats – Colors”
You are right, Chandoo. I was playing with the colour numbers last week and some of them don't appear different from each other. Others are totally different from yours.
@Duncan
Each version of Excel, post 2003, renders colors slightly differently
Different language versions may also have different default color palettes
Hello in french
excel 2010
colo1 = couleur1 = black
[couleur1]; [couleur2]; etc..
@Hui, thank you very much again for this great post.
However - under Excel 2007, Hungarian version your solution does not work with color names. I've tried both English and Hungarian names, but drops an error message "not valid formats"
Do you have any idea how to solve this issue?
thanks in advance
@Andras
Without a Hungarian version of Excel 2003 I don't think I can assist
Have you tried using the colour numbers? I couldn't get the names to work (despite using an english version of excel). but it did work with the numbers though. I left out the "u" and was easily able to produce burgundy using [color9]
Here a possible solution: find an English version of Excel, write there the formats using English names, then open the file in the Hungarian version and see the translation.
In Excel 2007 I can't get the colour names to work e.g Sea Green but the numbers do e.g color3 - colour3 does not work so I must bow to the country that has stolen my language (ha ha!)
Hey chandoo, nice Tip!
Wouldn't be easier just apply some conditional formatting for negative numbers and another for positive numbers? Or there's some cases that you can't do that?
Unfortunately the TEXT function doesn't color the cell as number formatting does.
Hi Hui,
Great post Sir, love the new way of formatting with color numbers.
I am using 2007, and it leads me to the last color number 56.
Thanks Hui.
[…] explains how to set up custom number formats with a wide array of […]
Thanks Hui - works a treat!
Thank you, very helpful.
Trying to figure out if it is possible to apply color only to a part of the cell?
E.g. I have a value formatted as Accounting with a currency symbol.
Those I find somewhat distracting though necessary. If I could make them less obtrusive by coloring them gray while the number would stay black, that would be great. Tried tinkering with the format string, but didn't get the desired result. Single color for complete cell value works, but coloring just part of it could not be achieved. Maybe somebody managed that?
Exactly what I was looking for - thank you!
colour in the Australian doesn't work - we have to go American and no problem.
I always thought is was 56 colours notice you have 57. Cool.
thanks
Analir Pisani
Customised Microsoft Office Training Specialist
Sydney - Australia
http://www.azsolutions.com.au
Thank You!