How to Remove Section Breaks in Word: Easy Steps to Follow
A section break is a very handy tool for separating blocks of texts or unifying them under one type of formatting. However, some types of documents are better off without them, making all the texts align under one section.
Microsoft equips users with different options to remove section breaks in Word, each of which we will go through in this guide. Got a few minutes? Read on below to find out.
How to Remove Section Breaks in Word Manually
With this method, you can set section breaks and all hidden formatting markers to appear on your document and then delete the unnecessary ones. To do this,
- Go to the Home tab and then Show/Hide Editing Marks. Enabling this option will make all formatting symbols and paragraph marks pop up on your current document.
- Place your cursor right behind the section break and press the Delete key on your keyboard to remove it.
Quick Note: You won’t be able to remove section breaks unless you turn off Track Changes, so ensure it’s disabled. To do so, go to the Review tab, click the Track Changes drop-down, and select Track Changes to disable it.
- Alternatively, go to the Home tab again if you’d prefer to remove all section breaks at once.
- Select Replace to open the Find and Replace dialog box
- In the Find and Replace dialog box, click More in the bottom corner to expand the window
- Go to the bottom of the page and select the Special drop-down.
- Next, select Section Break from the options.
Quick Note: Ensure the Replace With text box is empty. Otherwise, delete any texts you find therein, as leaving them will replace the section breaks instead of removing them.
- You’ll see ^b in the Find What text box. Select Find Next till you get to the section break you want to remove
- Once you’ve found it, click Replace to complete the removal
- You can also click Replace All to remove all section breaks in the target document altogether.
How to Remove All Section Breaks with Microsoft VBA Module
Visual Basic for Application (VBA) is a great utility tool that you can harness to remove section breaks in Word, and it’s just as simple to use with the following steps:
- Press Alt + F11 keys to launch Microsoft Visual Basic for Application
- Once you’re in the window, click Insert and then Module
- Next, copy and paste the following codes in the module to remove all section breaks in a Word document:
Sub DeleSectionBreaks()
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = “^b”
.Replacement.Text = “”
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchByte = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchFuzzy = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub
- Press F5 on our keyboard or click the Run button to run the codes.
This method removes all the sections from an open document in bulk.
Final Notes
There you have it! That’s all you need to remove section breaks in Word. However, keep in mind that section breaks are not the same as page breaks. The latter only moves the content from a page after a break to the next page.
