How to remove page break in Word 2010

You can remove automatic and manually created page breaks in Microsoft Word with just a few clicks. Five/Getty Images

Page breaks can be a helpful formatting tool when working in Microsoft Word. But if you use too many — or worse, Word automatically inserts too many — your document can quickly become cluttered with blank spaces.

Here's how to adjust or remove page breaks in Microsoft Word, whether they're manual or automatic, on both Windows and Mac computers.

To remove a page break you added in manually, click the Home tab.
Click Show/Hide ¶ to display the page breaks in your document.

Click the Show/Hide paragraph button to see where your paragraph, section, and page breaks are. Abigail Abesamis Demarest/Insider
Find the manual page break you want to remove and double click the page break to highlight it.

Highlight the page break before you hit Delete. Abigail Abesamis Demarest/Insider
Finally, hit the Delete or Backspace key to remove it.

Select the paragraphs you want to adjust by highlighting them with your cursor.
Click the Layout or Page Layout tab.
Next, click Breaks in the Page Setup section.

Click the Breaks button in the Page Setup section under the Layout tab. Abbey White/Insider
In the Line and Page Breaks tab, choose the settings you want to apply. Turn these all off to reduce automatic page breaks.
If you choose "Widow/Orphan control": Word will automatically place page breaks to prevent you from starting a new paragraph on the last line of a page, or having the last line of a paragraph alone on a new page.
If you choose "Keep with next": Word will keep two consecutive paragraphs together and not separated by a page break.
If you choose "Keep lines together": This option will prevent Word from adding page breaks in the middle of a paragraph.
If you choose "Page break before": You can add a page break before the selected paragraph.

Select how you want Word to adjust your page break before clicking OK. Abbey White/Insider

To remove a manual page break, start by clicking the Home tab.
Next, select "Show all nonprinting characters ¶" to display the page breaks in your document.
Find the manual page break you want to remove, then click to the right of the paragraph mark. You can also highlight the page break.

Click to the right of or highlight the page break you want to delete. Abbey White/Insider
Hit the Delete key to erase it.

Select the paragraphs you want to adjust by highlighting them with your cursor.
Click the Format tab.
Choose Paragraph.

Click Format in the Apple toolbar and select Paragraph from the drop-down. Abbey White/Insider
Under the Line and Page Breaks tab, choose the settings you want to apply. Turn these all off to reduce automatic page breaks.
"Widow/Orphan control" will include at least two lines of a paragraph at the top or bottom of a page. This prevents you from having a new paragraph starting on the last line before a page break or having the last line of a paragraph alone on a new page.

"Keep with next" will keep two consecutive paragraphs together and not separated by a page break.
"Keep lines together" will prevent Word from adding page breaks in the middle of a paragraph.
"Page break before" can add a page break before the selected paragraph.

Select how you want the document to respond to your removed page break and click OK. Abbey White/Insider

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In Microsoft Word, you can insert section breaks to divide your document into sections and apply formatting to specific blocks of text.

For example, you can have a section with different margin sizes, sections with different headers and footers, and more.

Note: Section breaks differ from page breaks, which move the content after a page break to the beginning of the next page.

When you delete a section break, the text before and after the break combines into one section, which takes on the formatting of the latter section.

Here's how to remove section breaks from your Word document.

How to remove a section break in Word

Whether you're using Microsoft Word on Windows or Mac, the steps for removing section breaks are the same.

1. Select the Home tab if it isn't already selected for the document.

2. Select Show/Hide ¶ to show the section breaks in your document.

3. Click the area just before the section break you want to remove, then hit the Delete key.

Make sure Track Changes is disabled or you won't be able to remove section breaks. Select the Review tab and click Track Changes to expand the dropdown. Then, click Track Changes in the dropdown to disable the feature.

Turn off "Track Changes" first. Stefan Ionescu

How to remove several or all section breaks at once

If you have multiple sections breaks in a Microsoft Word document, it can be tedious to remove them one by one. Luckily, there's a way to remove several or all of them at once.

1. Select the Home tab if it isn't already selected in your document.

2. Click Replace to bring up the Find and Replace dialogue box.

3. Click More >> on the bottom left.

Expand the "Find and Replace" dialogue box. Stefan Ionescu

4. At the bottom of the dialogue box, click Special to expand the dropdown and select Section Break. You will see that ^b will appear in the Find what text box.

Select "Section Break" from the dropdown of the "Special" menu. Stefan Ionescu

Quick tip: Make sure the Replace with text box is empty. If there's anything in there, delete it, otherwise Word will replace the section breaks with whatever is in the text box.

5. Click Find Next until you find the section break you want to remove and then click Replace. Do this until you've removed the ones you want. Alternatively, you can remove all section breaks at once by clicking Replace All.