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How to Delete an Unwanted Blank Page in Word

2 minute read

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Microsoft Word users may run into this problem from time to time: a blank page either in the middle or at the end of a document that cannot seem to be deleted. Frustrating! You can choose to print only select pages, but that doesn’t exactly solve the problem.

Here are some possible steps to delete your unwanted blank page. The video above will also walk through these steps.

Basic solutions

  • The most basic solution: go to your unwanted blank page, click as close to the bottom of the page as you can get, and press your backspace key until the page is removed.
  • Go to the VIEW tab, select Navigation Pane in the Show section, select the blank page thumbnail in the left panel, and press your delete key until it is removed.
  • Check your sections: Go to the PAGE LAYOUT tab, click the Margins button, and select Custom Margins. Click the Layout tab. In the drop-down menu next to Section start, make sure that New page is selected. Click OK.

Use paragraph symbols

  • Detect what’s on the page by displaying paragraph marks and formatting symbols. Look on your blank page to see if there are any symbols, especially the paragraph mark,
    or ¶. Select the symbol and delete it, and you will likely also delete your blank page.
  • If your blank page is in the middle of the document, it may be due to a manual page break.  With paragraph marks turned on, you will be able to see the page break. Select it and delete it.

Trouble with tables

  • If there is a table at the end of your document, Word will automatically insert a paragraph after it, often resulting in a blank page at the end. While you can’t delete this inserted paragraph, you can make it extra small so it doesn’t cause a new page to be displayed. With paragraph marks turned on, select the paragraph symbol and change the font size to 1 point.
  • If you still see a paragraph mark on the blank page, change the spacing around it. Select the paragraph symbol, go to the Paragraph section and launch the Paragraph formatting dialog box by clicking the pop-out icon in the lower right corner of the section. On the Indents and Spacing tab, change any spacing before or after the paragraph to 0. Change the Line spacing to 0. Click OK.
  • If those two options didn’t work, you can hide the paragraph. Select the paragraph symbol, and launch the Font dialog box by clicking the pop-out icon in the lower-right corner of the Font section on the HOME tab. Select the Hidden check box in the Effects section and click OK.

Click here to watch this video on YouTube.

Even with the latest Office versions this is still the preferred way of deleting a blank page in Word, and it seems that it will remain so.

Updated for 2021

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