How to Delete a Section Break in Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is one of the most popular word processing software available in the technology market for a multitude of platforms. The software, developed and maintained by Microsoft offers various features for you to type and edit your documents. Whether be it a blog article or a research paper, Word makes it easy for you to make the document meet the professional standards. You can even type a full e-book in MS Word! Word is such a powerful word processor that could include images, graphics, charts, 3D models, and many such interactive modules. One such formatting feature is the section break, which is used to create several sections in your Word document.

Contents

• How to Delete a Section Break in Microsoft Word
• Types of Section Breaks in Microsoft Word
• How to Add a Section Break in Microsoft Word
• How to Search for Section Break in MS Word
• How to Delete a Section Break in Microsoft Word
• Method 1: Remove Section Breaks Manually
• Method 2: Remove Section Breaks using the Find & Replace option
• Method 3: Remove Section Breaks Running a Macro
• Method 4: Remove Section Breaks of Multiple Documents
• Method 5: Remove Sections Break using Third-Party Tools

How to Delete a Section Break in Microsoft Word

A Section break is a formatting option in word-processing software that lets you split your document into many sections. Visually, you can see a break that divides the two sections. When you cut up your document into various sections, you can easily format a particular part of the document without affecting the remaining part of the text.

Types of Section Breaks in Microsoft Word

• Next page: This option would start a section break in the next page (that is, the following page)
• Continuous: This section break option would begin a section on the same page. Such type of section break alters the number of columns (without the addition of a new page in your document).
• Even page: This type of section break is used to start a new section on the next page that is even-numbered.
• Odd page: This type is opposite to that of the previous. This would start a new section on the next page that is odd-numbered.

These are some of the formattings that you can apply to a particular part of your document file using section breaks:

• Changing the orientation of the page
• Adding a header or a footer
• Adding numbers to your page
• Adding new columns
• Adding page borders
• Starting the page numbering later

Thus, section breaks are useful ways of formatting your text. But sometimes, you might want to remove the section breaks from your text. If you no longer need section breaks, here is how to delete a section break from Microsoft Word.

How to Add a Section Break in Microsoft Word

1. To add a section break, navigate to the Layout tab of your Microsoft Word then choose “Breaks”,

2. Now, select the type of section break your document need.

How to Search for Section Break in MS Word

To view the section breaks you have added, click on the ¶ (Show/Hide ¶) icon from the Home tab. This would show all the paragraph marks and section breaks in your Word document.

How to Delete a Section Break in Microsoft Word

If you want to remove the section breaks from your document, you can easily do it by following any of the methods mentioned below.

Method 1: Remove Section Breaks Manually

Many people wish to remove section breaks manually in their Word documents. To achieve this,

1. Open your Word document then from the Home tab, enable the ¶ (Show/Hide ¶) option to see all the section breaks in your document.

2. Select the section break that you wish to remove. Just dragging your cursor from the left edge to the right end of the section break would do that.

3. Press the Delete key or the Backspace key. Microsoft Word will delete the selected section break.

4. Alternatively, you can position your mouse cursor before the section break then hit the Delete button.

Method 2: Remove Section Breaks using the Find & Replace option

There is a feature available in MS Word that allows you to find word or sentence and replace it with another one. Now we are going to use that feature to find our section breaks and replace them.

1. From the Home tab of Microsoft Word, choose the Replace option. Or press Ctrl + H keyboard shortcut.

2. In the Find and Replace pop-up window, choose the More>> options.

3. Then click on the Special Now choose Section break from the menu that shows up.

4. Word would fill the Find what text box with “^b” (You can also type that directly in the Find what text box)

5. Let the Replace with text box be empty as it is. Select the Replace all Select OK in the confirmation window. In this way, you could remove all the section breaks in your document in one go.

Method 3: Remove Section Breaks Running a Macro

Recording and running a macro could automate and simplify your task.

1. To begin with, press Alt + F11 The Visual Basic Window would appear.

2. On the Left Pane, right-click on Normal.

3. Choose Insert > Module.

4. A new module would open, and the coding space would appear on your screen.

5. Now type or paste the code below:

Sub DeleteAllSectionsInOneDoc() With Selection    .HomeKey Unit:=wdStory    With Selection.Find      .ClearFormatting      .Replacement.ClearFormatting      .Text = "^b"      .Replacement.Text = ""      .Forward = True      .Wrap = wdFindContinue      .Format = False      .MatchCase = False      .MatchWholeWord = False      .MatchWildcards = False      .MatchSoundsLike = False      .MatchAllWordForms = False    End With    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll End With End Sub

6. Click on the Run option or press the F5.

Method 4: Remove Section Breaks of Multiple Documents

If you have more than one document and want to eliminate the section breaks from all the documents, this method might help.

1. Open a folder and place all the documents in it.

2. Follow the previous method to run a macro.

3. Paste the code below in the module.

Sub DeleteAllSectionBreaksInMultiDoc() Dim StrFolder As String Dim strFile As String Dim objDoc As Document Dim dlgFile As FileDialog Set dlgFile = Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFolderPicker) With dlgFile    If .Show = -1 Then      StrFolder = .SelectedItems(1) & "\"    Else      MsgBox "No folder is selected! Please select the target folder."      Exit Sub    End If End With strFile = Dir(StrFolder & "*.docx", vbNormal) While strFile <> ""    Set objDoc = Documents.Open(FileName:=StrFolder & strFile)    With Selection      .HomeKey Unit:=wdStory      With Selection.Find        .ClearFormatting        .Replacement.ClearFormatting        .Text = "^b"        .Replacement.Text = ""        .Forward = True        .Wrap = wdFindContinue        .Format = False        .MatchCase = False        .MatchWholeWord = False        .MatchWildcards = False        .MatchSoundsLike = False        .MatchAllWordForms = False      End With      Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll    End With    objDoc.Save    objDoc.Close    strFile = Dir() Wend End Sub

4. Run the above macro. A dialogue box would show up, browse for the folder you made in step 1 and select it. That’s all! All your section breaks would vanish in seconds.

Method 5: Remove Sections Break using Third-Party Tools

You can also try using third-party tools or add-ins available for Microsoft Word. One such tool is Kutools – an add-in for Microsoft Word.

Note: It would help if you kept in mind that when a section break is deleted, the text before the section and after the section are combined into one single section. This section would contain the formatting used in the section that came after the section break.

You can use the Link to previous option if you want your section to use the styles and headers from the previous section.

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I hope this guide was helpful and you were able to delete section break in Microsoft Word. Keep posting your queries and suggestions in the comments section.