A Word page break is often invisible until you show formatting marks. Once you can see it, a manual page break can be deleted like a character. Section breaks and paragraph settings need a little more care.
Does this affect you?
Use this for Word for Microsoft 365, Word 2021, and Word 2019 on Windows or Mac when a document jumps to a new page in the wrong place or has an unwanted blank page.
Show formatting marks and delete the break
This removes a normal manual page break inserted with Ctrl+Enter or Insert > Page Break.
- Open the Home tab.
- Click the Show/Hide paragraph-mark button, or press Ctrl+Shift+8 on Windows or Cmd+8 on Mac.
- Find the dotted line labeled Page Break.
- Click at the start of the line and press Backspace, or click before it and press Delete on Windows.
- Hide formatting marks again when finished.
After the break is removed, the text below it flows back onto the previous page.
Remove all manual page breaks at once
Use Find and Replace for long documents.
- Press Ctrl+H on Windows or Cmd+Shift+H on Mac.
- Open the expanded search options if needed.
- In Find what, choose Special > Manual Page Break on Windows, or type ^m directly.
- Leave Replace with blank.
- Use Find Next and Replace to review them, or Replace All to remove every manual page break.
Use Replace All carefully if some page breaks were intentional. Review the document afterward.
Remove a section break
Use this when the visible label says Section Break rather than Page Break.
- Turn on formatting marks.
- Find the double-dotted Section Break line.
- Click immediately before it and press Delete or Backspace.
- Check nearby headers, footers, page numbers, and orientation after deleting it.
More control
Fix a blank final page
A blank last page is often caused by one leftover paragraph mark. Turn on formatting marks, place the cursor before the final paragraph mark, and delete it if the page is otherwise empty.
Turn off Page break before
If a heading always jumps to a new page, click in that paragraph, open Paragraph settings, go to Line and Page Breaks, and clear Page break before.
Use Draft view
View > Draft makes breaks easier to see as clear bars, which helps in documents with many sections.
Sources
- Microsoft Support – Insert or delete a page break in Word (2025)
- Microsoft Support – Insert a section break (2025)
- Microsoft Support – Show or hide formatting marks in Word (2025)