Show and hide rulers

Pages provides horizontal and vertical rulers to help you lay out text and objects in your document. You can show or hide the rulers and set the rulers to display units in points, inches, or centimeters. The vertical ruler is always available for page layout documents. For word-processing documents like a letter or report, you need to turn on the ruler in Pages preferences.

You can also use the ruler to set margins and tab stops, and you can drag alignment guides from the ruler onto the page.

Enable the vertical ruler for word-processing documents

  1. Choose Pages > Preferences, then click Rulers.

  2. Select the checkbox next to “Enable vertical ruler for documents with body text.”

Show and hide rulers

  • Do one of the following:

    • Click View in the toolbar, then choose Show Ruler (or Hide Ruler).

    • Choose View > Show Rulers or View > Hide Ruler (from the View menu at the top of your computer screen).

    • Use the keyboard shortcut Command-R.

Change ruler units

  1. Choose Pages > Preferences, then click Rulers.

  2. Choose an option from the Ruler Units pop-up menu (Points, Centimeters, or Inches).