How to Remove a Page Break in Word 2010

A page break in Microsoft Word 2010 is an indicator to the program that you want to start a new page. There are actually two kinds of page breaks, however. One kind is the page break that you insert manually in a place before the physical end of the page.

The other kind of page break is the one that Word automatically includes when you have reached the end of a page and need to move to the next one to continue adding information.

You can learn how to manually remove a page break in Word 2010 that you have added, but you cannot remove an automatic page break that Word has inserted.

This ability comes in handy when you have added a page break, but come to discover later that you need to add additional information to the page, or that the page break is no longer needed.

Other types of breaks can be edited as well. For example, you can learn how to delete a section break in Word if you have created sections in one of your documents but need to change them.

Deleting a Manually Inserted Page Break in Word 2010

The problem that most people have when they are attempting to remove a Word 2010 page break is simply locating where the page break has been inserted. This is difficult to do in the normal Word 2010 view, so you need to enable an option to provide you with more detail about your document’s formatting.

Step 1: Open the document that contains the page break you want to delete.

Step 2: Navigate to the page in the document that contains the page break.

This is going to be the partially full page, not the page that starts after the page break.

Step 3: Click the Home tab at the top of the window.

word 2010 home ribbon

Step 4: Click the Show/Hide button in the Paragraph section of the ribbon at the top of the window.

how to remove a page break in word 2010

Step 5: Use your mouse to highlight the Page Break object or click in the margin to the left of the Page Break object.

selecting the page break object

Step 6: Press the Backspace or Delete key on your keyboard.

The information that had previously been pushed to the next page should now be back on the current page.

You can also click the Show/Hide button again to stop displaying the formatting information on the page, as some people find it to be distracting or confusing.

Summary – How to remove page breaks in Word

  1. Click inside the page that occurs before the page break.
  2. Click the Home tab at the top of the window.
  3. Click the Show/Hide button in the Paragraph section of the ribbon.
  4. Select the Page Break formatting mark.
  5. Press the Delete (or Backspace) key on your keyboard.
  6. Click the Show/Hide button again to stop showing the rest of the formatting marks.

Is there a lot of formatting applied to text in your document, and removing that formatting one element at a time is too tedious? Learn about a simple way to clear formatting in Word 2010 and simplify the process significantly.

Another formatting option that you might be wondering about is to remove the page break in a Google document.

If your papers have any manual page breaks, the following section will explain how to remove them.

Deleting Page Breaks in Google Docs

Even while automated page breaks in Google Docs may be handy in a variety of scenarios, you may manually insert page breaks in Google Docs by selecting Insert > Break > Page break.

For additional information, see our tutorial on how to remove page breaks in Google Docs.

However, if the layout of the document changes, this page split may become troublesome.

Fortunately, a page break can be prevented by completing the following steps:

  1. First, open the file.
  2. Position your pointer at the first line, immediately below the page break.
  3. Press the Backspace key.

By this time, the page break should have vanished, and the document’s content should be flowing properly.

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