How to Delete a Blank Page in Word That Won't Go Away

To delete a blank page in Word, you have to delete whatever is creating it, because a page in Word is not an object you can select. It is the result of paragraphs, breaks and spacing that pushed text onto a new sheet. That is why pressing Backspace on an empty page often does nothing. There are six usual causes, and turning on formatting marks shows you which one you have in under a minute. Finding the cause first matters: delete the wrong mark and a landscape table can flip to portrait, or a header can disappear from half the document.

Six things that create a blank page

Find the cause first

Show formatting marks

Click Show/Hide ¶ in the Paragraph group on the Home tab, or press Ctrl+Shift+8 (Command+8 on a Mac). Paragraph marks, page breaks and section breaks appear on screen. Microsoft's guide to deleting a page starts every blank-page fix with this step, and its article on formatting marks explains how to keep chosen marks always visible.

See where the blank page sits

Use View > Multiple Pages to see the document laid out side by side. Whether the blank page is at the very end, next to a table, or right before a landscape page tells you a lot about the cause.

In a long document, open the Navigation Pane from the View tab, switch to the Pages tab and click the empty thumbnail to jump straight to it.

For breaks hiding at the bottom of a page, switch to View > Draft. Draft view runs the text continuously without page edges and shows every break as a labeled line across the text, so nothing can hide behind a page boundary.

Delete a blank page in the middle

Manual page breaks

These come from Ctrl+Enter or Insert > Page Break, often with a few extra presses of Enter in front. Put the cursor just before the Page Break line and press Delete. To clear every manual page break at once, press Ctrl+H, type ^m in Find what, leave Replace with empty and click Replace All. If some chapters must start on a new page, use Find Next and decide one at a time.

Page break before

A small black square next to an empty paragraph means that paragraph has Page break before turned on. Right-click it, choose Paragraph, and on the Line and Page Breaks tab clear Page break before. Many templates switch this on in their heading styles, so a single empty paragraph in a heading style can create a full blank page.

Section breaks

Section breaks are not page breaks. In Layout > Breaks, the top group is page breaks and the bottom group is section breaks: Next Page, Continuous, Even Page and Odd Page. A section break stores the formatting of the section before it, including orientation, margins and headers, so deleting it merges two sections and one takes on the other's layout.

To remove the blank page and keep the formatting, double-click the section break to open Page Setup, go to the Layout tab and change Section start to Continuous. Microsoft recommends the same approach. The exception is a section break around a landscape page: it has to start a new page for the orientation to change, so leave it alone and delete the empty paragraphs in front of it instead.

Delete a whole page of content

When a page has content you no longer need, click anywhere on it and press Ctrl+G (Option+Command+G on a Mac). In Enter page number, type \page, press Enter and then Close. Word selects the entire page; check the selection and press Delete.

Delete a blank page at the end

The paragraph after a table

Word always keeps one paragraph mark at the end of a document, and you cannot delete it. When a document ends in a table that fills the page, that mandatory paragraph is pushed onto a new page and you get a blank one. Make it small enough to fit:

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+8 and select the final ¶.
2. Click in the Font Size box on the Home tab, type 01 and press Enter.
3. If it still spills, set Spacing After to 0 on the Layout tab.
4. As a last resort, open the Font dialog (Ctrl+D) and check Hidden. With formatting marks turned off, the line no longer takes up space.

The Paragraph dialog shows the spacing that may be pushing the mark over the edge.

When one line still spills: the bottom margin

If it still won't fit, go to Layout > Margins > Custom Margins and reduce the bottom margin slightly. Microsoft's article uses a value such as 0.3 inches as its example. If a customer has fixed the margins for a submitted document, reduce paragraph spacing first so the margin stays on spec.

Worked example: two blank pages in a certificate of analysis

Crestview Foods sends Brightway Retail a certificate of analysis as a PDF with every shipment. The template is a cover page, two portrait pages of results and a landscape test table. This month's PDF came out at six pages, with a blank page after the cover and another at the end.

The quality coordinator turned on formatting marks and used Multiple Pages to see the layout. The first blank page came from six empty paragraphs at the bottom of the cover followed by a manual page break: the empty paragraphs overflowed the cover onto a new page, and the page break then started yet another. Deleting the six empty paragraphs fixed it.

The last blank page was the mandatory paragraph after the landscape table, which filled the page to the bottom margin. Setting that ¶ to font size 01 pulled it back. The section break before the landscape page stayed, since it is what makes the page landscape. Saving to PDF again produced the expected four pages.

👉 Show or Hide Formatting Marks in Word (¶ Symbols)

Blank pages that only appear in the PDF or printout

If the document looks fine on screen but the PDF or printout has an extra page, check the section break type. Odd Page and Even Page section breaks force the next section to start on an odd or even page, and Word inserts a blank page to make that happen. They usually come from templates designed for double-sided booklets. Double-click the break and change the section start to New page.

If you are stuck with a trailing blank page on a deadline, use File > Save As, choose PDF, open Options and set a page range that leaves out the last page.

Keep blank pages from coming back

For a template you reuse every month, fixing the cause once beats deleting blank pages every time:

• Start chapters on a new page with Page break before on the chapter's heading style, not with Enter or a manual break. The heading stays at the top of a page however long the previous chapter gets.
• Create space with Spacing Before and After instead of empty paragraphs. Spacing travels with its paragraph; an empty paragraph can end up alone on a new page.
• If the template ends with a table, set the paragraph after it to 1 pt with 0 spacing after, ahead of time.
• Use Next Page section breaks for landscape sections and avoid Odd Page and Even Page breaks unless you print booklets. Save the fixed file as a Word template (.dotx).

Version differences

The steps are the same in Microsoft 365 and Word 2016, 2019 and 2021. In Word for the web you can delete empty paragraphs and page breaks in Editing view, but section breaks need the desktop app. Word for Mac uses Command+8 for formatting marks and Option+Command+G for Go To.

FAQ

Q. Why can't I delete the blank page at the end of my document?

Word requires a final paragraph mark. If it lands on a new page, usually after a table, you get a blank page that Backspace cannot remove. Set that paragraph's font size to 01 so it fits on the previous page.

Q. I deleted a section break and my landscape page turned portrait. What happened?

The break stored the landscape section's formatting. Undo with Ctrl+Z, keep the break and delete only the empty paragraphs before it, or change the section start to Continuous instead.

Q. Backspace on the blank page does nothing.

The cursor may be at the end of the previous page, or what's left is the mandatory paragraph after a table. Turn on formatting marks to see what is actually on the page.

Q. Can I remove empty paragraphs across a whole document at once?

Yes. In Find and Replace, replace ^p^p with ^p and repeat until Word reports no more replacements, then check the remaining blank pages individually.

How inline AI cleans up submitted documents

inline AI opens the Word file and its PDF side by side, finds the breaks and empty paragraphs creating each blank page and removes them, keeping landscape pages and headers intact, then saves the PDF again. A folder of month-end certificates gets the same check, file by file, in one request.