How to remove a section break in Word and reformat the layout of your document

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How to remove a section break in Word and reformat the layout of your document
You can remove section breaks in Word by deleting their special symbols.Morsa Images/Getty Images
  • Section breaks are a formatting tool in Word that allow you to break your document into separate sections.
  • You can remove a section break in Word by showing the page break icons, and then deleting them.
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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. Section breaks differ from page breaks, which move the content after a page break to the beginning of the next page.

Below, you'll find step-by-step instructions for how to remove a section break in Word on Windows and Mac Office programs. 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.

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How to remove a section break in Word for Windows

  1. Choose the Home tab if it isn't already selected for your 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.

    How to remove a section break in Word and reformat the layout of your document
    Select the section break you want to remove and hit Delete.Abbey White/Insider

How to remove a section break in Word on a Mac

  1. Click the Home tab.
  2. Then click Show all nonprinting characters (the ¶ button).
  3. Highlight the section break you want to remove by clicking on it, then hit the Delete key.

    How to remove a section break in Word and reformat the layout of your document
    You may be able to highlight your section break before deleting it.Abbey White/Insider
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