Return to Normal View in Excel

Excel has three types of worksheet views:

• Normal View
• Page Break Preview, and
• Page Layout View

In most cases, you will be working with the Normal view.

If for some reason, your worksheet looks weird, it’s possible that the view setting is changed and you need to return to the Normal view.

In this article, I will show you three simple ways to return to Normal view in Excel.

Method 1 – Using the View Tab in the Ribbon

Below are the steps to return to Normal view in Excel using the option in the ribbon:

1. Click the View tab in the ribbon.

2. In the Workbook Views group, click on the Normal view icon.

That’s it! This would change the worksheet view to Normal.

When you change the view settings of any of the worksheets, it is only applied to that worksheet. It’s not applied to any of the other worksheets. If you want to apply it to all the sheets, you need to do it one by one, or use the VBA code I cover later in this article.

Method 2 – Using a Keyboard Shortcut

If this is something you need to do often, here is a simple keyboard shortcut to apply the Normal view to the worksheet.

ALT + W + L 

To use the above shortcut, press and release the Alt key, then press the W
key and then the L key.

Method 3 – Using Icons in the Status Bar

Another easy way to return the worksheet to the Normal view is to click on the Normal view icon in the status bar.

In the status bar, you will see the three worksheet view icons next to the zoom slider.

You can click on any of the icons to apply that view settings. So if you want to return to the Normal view, click on the Normal icon (as shown below).

When you return to the normal view, you will see a dotted line in the worksheet. This is a page-break line that indicates where a page will break when printed (i.e., part on the other side of the line will be printed in a different page). If you want to remove this dotted line, close and reopen the file again.

Method 4 – VBA to Return All Sheets to Normal View

As I mentioned, when you change the view setting of a worksheet, it’s only applied to that specific worksheet.

If you want to apply the Normal view setting to all the worksheets in your file, you can use the below VBA code.

Sub ReturnNormalView()
    Dim ws As Worksheet
    
    For Each ws In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
        ws.Activate
        ActiveWindow.View = xlNormalView
    Next ws
    
    'Return to first worksheet
    ThisWorkbook.Worksheets(1).Activate
End Sub

The above VBA code loops through each worksheet in the current workbook and changes the view to normal.

Normal View vs Page Layout View vs Page Break Preview

In case you’re curious about the difference between the three workbook view settings in Excel, below is a table that explains it.

I hope you found this article helpful.

Other Excel articles you may also like:

• How to Insert Page Breaks in Excel (& Remove, Delete Page Breaks)
• How to Print Excel Sheet on One Page (Fit to One Page)
• How to Make Cells Bigger in Excel?