If you have ever worked with a long document in Microsoft Word, you might have encountered section breaks. A section break is a special character that marks the end of one section and the beginning of another in a Word document.

A section break allows you to apply different formatting options to different parts of your document. For example, you can use section breaks to:

Change the page orientation from portrait to landscape or vice versa
Change the page size or margins for some pages
Insert different headers and footers for different sections
Create columns or newspaper-style layouts
Insert page numbers or other document elements that restart or vary by section

Section breaks can be helpful for creating complex layouts, but sometimes they can also cause problems. For example, you might want to remove a section break that is causing unwanted blank pages or formatting changes. In this article, we will show you how to delete a section break in Word easily and quickly.

Delete a section break in Word

Deleting a section break in Word is not as simple as deleting a normal character. If you try to delete a section break by pressing the Delete or Backspace key, you might end up deleting some text or formatting along with it. This is because when you delete a section break, you also delete the formatting of the section that follows it.

In this section, we will go through a step-by-step process on how to delete a partition in Word without much hassle. Follow the instructions given below to do the same:

Step 1: Revealing the section breaks: To see where the section breaks are in your document, you need to turn on the Show/Hide feature. To do this, click on the Home tab and then click on the Show/Hide button (¶) in the Paragraph group. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl+* on your keyboard. This will display all the hidden formatting marks in your document, including the section breaks.

This is an image of revealbookmarkword ss1

Step 2: Selecting and deleting the section break: To select a section break, you need to place your cursor just before or after it and then drag it over the section break symbol. Alternatively, you can double-click on the section break symbol to select it. To delete a selected section break, you can press either the Delete or Backspace keys on your keyboard. This will remove the section break and merge the two sections into one.

This is an image of deletesectionbreak ss1

Note: After deleting a section break, you should check if the formatting of your document has changed. If you notice any unwanted changes, such as page orientation, margins, headers and footers, columns, etc., you can undo them by using the Format Painter tool or by applying the desired formatting manually.

Delete all section breaks at once

If you want to delete multiple section breaks at once, you can use the Find and Replace feature.

Follow the instructions given below:

Step 1: To do this, click on the Home tab and then click on Replace in the Editing group. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl+H on your keyboard.

Step 2: In the Find and Replace dialog box, go to More > Special.

This is an image of deletesectionbreak ss2

Step 3: From the list of special characters, choose Section Break and then click on Find Next. This will find all the section breaks in your document. You can then click on Replace All to delete them all at once.

This is an image of deletesectionbreak ss3

Section breaks are useful for creating complex layouts and formatting in Word documents, but they can also cause problems if you want to delete them. To delete a section break in Word, you need to show the section breaks, select them, and then delete them. However, you should be careful not to delete any text or formatting along with them.

Also read: How to change the Text Orientation in Microsoft Word?

Frequently answered questions (FAQs)

Let us head to some FAQs on the topic:

Why can’t I delete a section break word?

There could be several reasons why you can’t delete a section break in Word including protected documents, incorrect selections, or the Track Changes are turned on. Go to the Review tab > Track Changes to turn it off. After that, try deleting the section break once again.