How to delete a page in Word

Word doesn’t really have pages to delete. It has text, and pages appear wherever the text runs. So “deleting a page” means deleting whatever is pushing content onto it, and sometimes that’s invisible.

How to delete a page with text or images

1. Click anywhere on the page you want to remove.
2. Press Ctrl + G (Option + Command + G on Mac), type \page, and press Enter. Word selects that whole page.
3. Close the box and press Delete.

You can also drag across the content with your mouse, but the \page trick is faster for long pages.

How to delete a blank page in Word

Blank pages are almost always caused by hidden formatting.

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + 8 (Command + 8 on Mac) to show formatting marks.
2. Look at the blank page. You’ll usually see one of these:
   • Several ¶ symbols: extra empty paragraphs. Select them and press Delete.
   • A line reading Page Break or Section Break: click just before it and press Delete.
3. Press Ctrl + Shift + 8 again to hide the marks.

The blank page after a table

If a document ends with a table, Word insists on a paragraph mark after it, and that mark can spill onto a new page. You can’t delete it, but you can shrink it:

1. Show formatting marks and select the ¶ on the blank page.
2. Set its font size to 1 in the font size box.
3. If the page still appears, go to Layout > Margins > Custom Margins and reduce the bottom margin slightly.

Find the page fast in long documents

Open View > Navigation Pane and choose Pages to see thumbnails of every page. Click the one you want to jump straight to it.

Working with a PDF instead? You can open it in Word to edit it, as shown in how to convert PDF to Word.