How to Add and Remove Page Breaks in Microsoft Word

Quick Tips

Microsoft Word lets you insert manual page breaks so you can end a page that’s not necessarily full of text or other content.
Sometimes Word adds page breaks where you don’t want them, so knowing how to delete a page break is useful if you have unwanted blank spaces in your document.
Add page breaks with the insert menu and delete them by finding all page breaks using the show/hide all paragraph marker tool.

Not all documents need to look the same, which is why Microsoft gives you the option to add and remove page breaks in Word wherever you like. Adding page breaks is easy but some people struggle to delete them because they’re not always visible. In the following steps, you’ll learn how to insert or delete a page break in Word — and edit your documents like a pro.

Add and Remove Page Breaks in Word: Adding a Page Break

Step 1: Open your Word Document and decide where you want the first page break.

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Step 2: Make sure your cursor is at the point where you want the break and click “Insert” from the top tab of options.

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Step 3: Click “Page Break”, which should be an option in the group all the way to the left-hand side. This will automatically move all the content below the cursor onto the next page.

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Add and Remove Page Breaks in Word: Deleting Page Breaks

Step 1: If you loaded up your Word document and noticed blank spaces as shown above, you might worry — especially if you didn’t want those page breaks in or Word has added them automatically. You can find all page breaks in a document by first clicking the home tab, and then looking for the paragraph marker tool. When you hover over it, it should say “Show All.“

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Step 2: Click the Paragraph marker button or, alternatively, use the keyboard shortcut of CTRL and *. You’ll now see every paragraph end and any page breaks inserted into the document.

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Step 3: Make sure your cursor is on the page break and left-click once. Note: Don’t double-click here as this will highlight the paragraph marker, not the page break. Deleting the paragraph marker does not delete the page break.

Once you’ve done this, click the delete button on your keyboard to completely remove the paragraph break. It’s worth noting that you can’t delete the automatic page breaks that denote the end of the standard page. In other words, you can’t change a page-by-page format into one long scroll of information. However, by following the methods above, you can customize how long each page is and easily amend page breaks if you make an error.