How to remove a blank page in Word – 6 ways

How to remove a blank page in Word. In the process of working in the Microsoft Word text editor, users are faced with empty extra sheets inside the document, so they have questions about how to delete a blank page in Word. It is necessary to remove unnecessary pages in order to bring the finished document to its proper form.

This problem occurs for several reasons, mainly due to the formatting of the document. Blank additional paragraphs, page breaks, or other formatting appear in the text.

Most of these elements are normally hidden from the user, so he does not see them when working on a document. The user needs to resolve the issue of how to remove a blank page in Word, which may be located in different parts of the document.

Most often, blank pages appear at the end of a Word document, quite often after tables located at the bottom of the sheet, less often at the beginning of the document, and very rarely in the middle.

The problem of blank pages in MS Word 2007-2019 versions occurs for several reasons:

• there are hidden characters in the text of the document;
• the table has been moved in the text;
• the presence of extra hyphens and spaces in the text.

In this guide, you will find instructions on how to remove a blank page in a Word document running in the following versions of the program: Word 2019, Word 2016, Word 2013, Word 2010, Word 2007.

How to delete an empty sheet in Word – 1 way

First, let’s look at how to delete the last blank page in Word in the easiest way. To do this, we use a command that is executed using a keyboard key.

Do the following:

1. Click the mouse cursor on an unnecessary blank page of the Word document.
2. Press the “Backspace” (←) or “Delete” (Del) keyboard key.

This command removes extra paragraphs from a document. If there are several invisible paragraphs on the page in the form of empty lines, the Del key will have to be pressed several times until the unnecessary page disappears.

If this method did not help us achieve the desired result, consider other alternatives.

How to delete a blank page in a Word document – 2 way

A common cause of blank pages is the presence of non-printable characters on the document sheet: new paragraphs. To verify this, you need to enable the display of non-printing hidden page markup characters in Word – paragraph marks and other elements.

You can do this in the following ways:

• Press the keyboard keys “Ctrl” + “Shift” + “8” at the same time.
• In Word 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, go to the “Home” menu, in the “Paragraph” group, click on the “Show all characters” icon (¶).

Hidden elements will appear in the editor window – paragraph marks (¶).

To remove a blank page from a document, do the following:

1. Select one or all paragraph marks with the mouse.
2. Press the “Delete” key.

A page break may appear along with paragraph marks on a page. To remove this element, it must be selected along with the paragraph marks.

How to delete a blank page in Word – 3 way

A blank page in a Word document may be due to individual Page Break or Section Break elements that need to be removed.

Do the following:

1. In the “Home” tab, we enter the “Paragraph” group, and then click on the icon of non-printing characters (¶).
2. A Page Break element will appear on a blank page.
3. Select the element or click the Page Break element with the mouse pointer, and then press the Delete key.

How to delete the last blank page in Word – 4 way

If removing a blank sheet from a Word file using the previous methods was unsuccessful, it is likely that there is a table at the end of the document.

By default, in Word, an empty paragraph is always added after the table, and if the table is located at the very bottom of the page, then this empty paragraph is transferred to another sheet of the document. As a result, an additional, unnecessary page appears.

You can solve the problem by changing the font size in this invisible paragraph.

Do the following:

1. In the Word file, go to the “Home” menu, click on the “Show all characters” icon (¶) located in the “Paragraph” group.
2. On the blank page immediately below the table, click the paragraph icon (¶).
3. In the Home menu, in the Font group opposite the field with the name of the font used in the document, change the font size for the selected paragraph icon.
4. If you select the font size “1”, then the blank page will disappear from the document.
5. Disable the “Show all characters” icon (¶).

Now, in the Word document, after the table located at the bottom of the page, there is no unnecessary blank sheet.

How to remove a blank page located in the middle in a Word document – 5 way

There are situations when a blank page appears in the middle of a Word document. Sometimes, this happens when editing a document.

The appearance of a blank page is affected by the Page Break or Section Break feature. It is clear that an empty sheet is not needed and must be deleted.

Go through the steps:

1. Turn on the display of all icons using the keys “Ctrl” + “Shift” + “8”.
2. Click in front of the Section Break element.
3. Press the “Delete” key.

How to delete the first blank page at the beginning of a document in Word – 6 way

There are situations when it is necessary to delete a page in the Word, located at the very beginning of the document, before the table of contents or the main part of the text.

To do this, you need to do the following:

1. Press the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl” + “G”.
2. In the “Find and Replace” window that opens, go to the “Go to” tab, in the “Enter page number” field, insert the expression: “page” (without quotes).
3. Click on the “Go” button.
4. The first page is highlighted with a strip along the edge of the document.
5. Press the “Delete” key.

The first blank sheet will be removed from the Word document.

Article Conclusions

If there are questions about how to remove blank pages in Word, the user can use several methods to solve this problem. Extra blank pages often appear at the very end of the document, sometimes at the beginning, and very rarely in the middle. Blank pages are usually caused by missing special paragraph elements or page breaks.