How to remove page breaks in Word
In the Word text editor, there are many elements taken from printing and editing. One of them is the "page break" - a special marker that indicates that the following elements and text will start on a new page. There are two types of breaks. The first one is automatically inserted by the editor itself when the amount of space on the page runs out.
The second one can appear when transferring/copying text from other documents, as well as accidentally pressing hotkeys. Such a break can be troublesome, but removing it is not difficult. Let's go through all the effective ways to remove a page break in Word 2007-2019.
Method #1
First, you need to go to the "Home" tab, enable "Show all characters" in the "Paragraph" section by clicking the button with a special symbol on the toolbar. The hotkey is "Ctrl + *". This will allow you to see the page break as a symbol on the page. The second way is to go to the "View" tab, in the "Views" section, click on "Draft". To return to the previous mode, click on "Page Layout".
Next, go directly to the page break and click in front of it to display the "text cursor" on the page. To remove it, press the "Delete" key. Part of the text from the other page will be moved to the deletion point, completely replacing the empty space on the sheet.
Method #2
Deleting multiple page breaks on 3-5 sheets is easy to do manually. For large documents, this approach is impractical. In this case, you need to use tools that allow you to delete/replace elements in bulk.
To delete multiple page breaks, you need to:
- Press the "Ctrl + H" key combination. This will open the "Find and Replace" tool.
- Click on the "More > >" button in the lower left corner of the window.
- Click on the empty field "Find" and click on the "Special" button at the bottom of the window.
- Select "Page Break" and click on the "Replace All" button.
- Word will display a notification with the result "Done. Number of items replaced: ...".
- Click "OK" and proceed to edit the document.
Method #3
To create page breaks, use the standard combination "Ctrl + Enter". Sometimes, when working with large documents, a person makes a reflexive mistake and accidentally presses the combination multiple times. To delete several such page breaks, go to the "Home" tab, click on the "Editing" button on the toolbar, and select "Find" from the menu.
In the left part of the document, the "Navigation" panel will open, in the field of which the symbol representing a page break "^m" will be inserted. Go to the "Page" tab on this panel, switch between pages, and examine the search results. To delete, move the cursor to the beginning of the page break and delete it.
Method #4
In some cases, large empty spaces between text parts may be caused by the space before and after paragraphs. When displaying special characters, the page break will not be visible. To check this, select the text with the left mouse button, right-click to bring up the menu, and select "Paragraph". Another way is to select the text, go to the "Layout" tab, the paragraph section on the toolbar, and click on the arrow in the upper right corner.
In the first tab "Indents and Spacing", look for the "Spacing" section, fields "Before:" and "After:". If one of the values exceeds a reasonable value, for example, 354 pt, then the page break is caused by this. To fix it, edit the spacing in the appropriate field, setting the value as "Auto", "0", or the desired option. Confirm the changes by clicking the "OK" button.
Method #5
In documents with tables, page breaks are often encountered, especially if the element is at the end of the page and the Word editor has to move part of the table. As a result, some cells end up on a new page, and empty space appears on the previous one.
To fix page breaks after a table in Word, you need to:
- Click the left mouse button on the table, go to the "Layout" tab, and click on "Table Properties".
- Go to the "Properties" section on the toolbar.
- In the "Table Properties" window, switch to the second tab "Row".
- Check the option "Allow row to break across pages".
- Confirm the change by clicking the "OK" button.
If there is visually enough space on the page, you can use tip number one. Simply click on the page break after the first part of the table and press "Delete". If, for some reason, the table is divided into multiple parts, use "Find and Replace" to search and delete.
These are effective methods for removing page breaks of any type. Before editing a document, it is recommended to make a backup copy. If you have any questions or have trouble resolving a page break issue, write in the comments - we will help you figure it out and resolve it.
