How to Delete a Page in Word

To delete a page with content on it: click at the start of the page, hold Shift and click at the end of the last line, and press Delete. To delete a blank page: turn on formatting marks with Ctrl+Shift+8 (Cmd+8 on a Mac), find the paragraph marks or page break creating the page, and delete those.

Word has no “delete page” command, and that is the source of nearly all the difficulty. A page is not an object in a Word document — it is simply where the text happened to run out of room. You cannot delete a page; you delete the content and the formatting marks that were filling it, and the page stops existing.

Turn on formatting marks first

Before anything else, press Ctrl+Shift+8 on Windows or Cmd+8 on a Mac. This shows the invisible characters — paragraph marks, page breaks, section breaks, tabs — that are actually creating your pages. Nearly every “I cannot delete this page” problem is a character you cannot see, and this turns an unsolvable problem into an obvious one. Press the same keys again to hide them when you are done.

Deleting a page that has content on it

The reliable method, which works in every version:

1. Click at the very start of the first line on the page you want gone.
2. Scroll to the end of that page, hold Shift, and click after the last character.
3. Press Delete or Backspace.

For a longer document there is a faster route. Press Ctrl+G (Cmd+Option+G on a Mac) to open Go To, type \page in the box, choose Go To, then Close — the whole page is selected, and Delete removes it.

Text from the following page will flow up to fill the space, which is correct behaviour and occasionally alarming. If the result is not what you wanted, Ctrl+Z.

The blank page that will not go away

This is the version of the question people actually search for, and there are four distinct causes. With formatting marks visible you can tell them apart in seconds.

Empty paragraphs. A column of ¶ marks with nothing beside them. Somebody pressed Enter repeatedly. Select them and delete.

A page break. A dotted line labelled “Page Break”. Click just before it and press Delete.

A section break. A double line labelled “Section Break”. These are riskier than they look, because a section break carries the formatting of everything before it — margins, orientation, headers and footers. Deleting one can reformat the preceding section to match the following one. If the document has landscape pages or different headers in different parts, expect that and check the result.

The final paragraph mark. This is the one that generates the most frustration. Word requires every document to end with a paragraph mark and will not let you delete it. If the preceding content ends exactly at a page boundary, that mandatory mark is pushed onto a new page and you get a blank final page you cannot remove by deleting.

Two fixes for it. Select the final paragraph mark and set its font size to 1pt (Ctrl+Shift+P, type 1, Enter) — usually enough to pull it back onto the previous page. If not, select it and use Home → Paragraph → Line and Page Breaks, then tick Hidden in the Font dialog. Alternatively, reduce the bottom margin slightly under Layout → Margins → Custom Margins.

A table that ends at the page boundary. Word always places a paragraph mark after a table, and if the table finishes flush at the bottom of a page, that mark lands on the next one. Same fix: shrink it to 1pt or hide it.

Page breaks versus section breaks

Worth separating properly, because deleting the wrong one causes damage that is not obvious until later.

A page break only says “start the next content on a new page”. Deleting it is safe; text reflows and nothing else changes. To find every one in a long document, use Find and Replace (Ctrl+H), click More → Special → Manual Page Break to insert ^m in the Find box, and leave Replace empty.

A section break divides the document into parts that can have different page setups. Deleting one merges the two sections, and the text before it adopts the formatting of the section after it. On a document with a landscape page in the middle, or different headers per chapter, or restarted page numbering, that is a visible mess. Before deleting one, check what is different either side of it — and if the answer is nothing, it is safe.

Deleting a page in Word on a phone or tablet

The mobile apps are more limited and there is no formatting-marks toggle, which removes the diagnostic step the desktop version depends on. What works:

Tap at the start of the page, then drag the selection handle to the end of the content you want removed and tap the delete key. Selection handles are fiddly over more than a screen’s worth of text, so this suits a short page.

For a blank page on mobile, place the cursor at the very start of the blank area and press backspace repeatedly. You are deleting paragraph marks blind, so watch what happens above — and stop when the page disappears.

Realistically, a stubborn blank page is worth leaving until you are at a computer. Without formatting marks you cannot see whether you are dealing with empty paragraphs, a page break or a section break, and the mobile apps do not expose the font-size trick for a final paragraph mark. If you are on a phone and the document is finished apart from one unwanted page, converting it to PDF and removing the page there is quicker and safer than fighting the app.

When the document is already a PDF

If what you actually have is a PDF — something exported, downloaded or received — do not convert it to Word to delete a page. Conversion re-flows the entire document: columns shift, tables break, fonts substitute, and you will spend longer repairing the layout than the page deletion was ever worth.

Pages in a PDF are discrete objects, which makes this the easy case. Split PDF extracts exactly the pages you want to keep and drops the rest, and Organize PDF lets you see the pages as thumbnails and delete or reorder them directly. Both run in your browser with no upload.

If the document is scanned and you were converting it to Word to edit the text, that is a separate job — run OCR to get real text out of the images first.

Frequently asked questions

How do I delete a page in Word?

Click at the start of the page, hold Shift and click at the end of its last line, then press Delete. For a faster route in a long document, press Ctrl+G, type \page, choose Go To and then Close, which selects the whole page ready to delete.

How do I delete a blank page in Word?

Turn on formatting marks with Ctrl+Shift+8 (Cmd+8 on a Mac) to see what is creating the page. It will be empty paragraph marks, a page break, a section break, or the mandatory final paragraph mark. Delete the first three; shrink the last one to 1pt.

Why can I not delete the last blank page in Word?

Because Word requires every document to end with a paragraph mark and will not let you delete it. If your content ends exactly at a page boundary, that mark is pushed onto a new page. Select it and set its font size to 1pt, or hide it in the Font dialog.

How do I remove a page break in Word?

Turn on formatting marks, click just before the dotted line labelled Page Break, and press Delete. To find them all in a long document, open Find and Replace and search for ^m with an empty Replace field.

What is the difference between a page break and a section break?

A page break only starts the next content on a new page and is safe to delete. A section break divides the document into parts with their own margins, orientation, headers and page numbering — deleting one merges the sections and reformats the earlier text to match the later one.

How do I delete a page in Word on my phone?

Tap at the start of the page, drag the selection handle to the end of the content, and delete. There is no formatting-marks toggle on mobile, so a stubborn blank page is hard to diagnose — that one is worth leaving until you are at a computer.

How do I delete a page from a PDF?

Do not convert it to Word first, which re-flows the whole layout. Pages in a PDF are discrete objects, so Split PDF can extract just the pages you want, or Organize PDF lets you delete and reorder them from thumbnails.

Why does a blank page appear after my table?

Word always places a paragraph mark after a table, and if the table ends flush with the bottom of a page, that mark lands on the next one. Select it and set the font size to 1pt, or hide it, and the page disappears.

In short

Almost every difficult case here is solved by the same first move: turn on formatting marks and look at what is actually there. Once you can see whether it is an empty paragraph, a page break, a section break or Word’s mandatory final mark, the fix follows immediately. And if the document has already become a PDF, none of this applies — pages in a PDF are real objects and removing one takes seconds.

Written by Mehran

Founder of QuickMerge. Practical guides built around the real behavior and limits of the tools. Connect on LinkedIn.