How to remove a blank page in Word
Turn on formatting marks with Ctrl+Shift+8, then delete the stray paragraph mark, page break, or section break, plus the 1-point trick for a table's blank page.
A blank page in Word almost always hides an invisible character you can’t see until you switch on formatting marks. Press Ctrl+Shift+8 (⌘+8 on a Mac) to reveal them, then find and delete the stray paragraph mark, manual page break, or section break that is pushing content onto an empty page. The one page you can’t delete outright is the final one Word forces after a table, and there is a specific trick for that.
Turn on formatting marks first
You can’t fix what you can’t see. Press Ctrl+Shift+8 to show every paragraph mark, space, and break in the document, or click the Show/Hide ¶ button on the Home tab in the Paragraph group. Suddenly a blank page reveals its contents: a run of empty paragraph marks (¶), a dotted line reading Page Break, or a double dotted line reading Section Break. Now you know which of the fixes below applies. Press the same shortcut again to hide the marks when you’re done.
Delete stray paragraph marks or a page break
Extra blank lines are the most common cause. With marks showing, click just before the first ¶ on the blank page, hold Shift, and drag to select the empty paragraphs, then press Delete or Backspace. Each ¶ is one press of the return key that has to go.
A manual page break looks different: a dotted horizontal line labeled Page Break. Click it once to select it, or double-click to highlight it fully, then press Delete. Word closes the gap and the following content flows back up. Per Microsoft’s Delete a blank page guide, this is the fix for a blank page that sits in the middle of a document rather than at the end.
Symptom, cause, and fix at a glance
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Blank page in the middle of the document | Manual page break | Ctrl+Shift+8, select the break, press Delete |
| Invisible extra blank lines | Stray empty paragraph marks | Select the ¶ marks, press Delete |
| Blank page only at the very end | Word’s required final paragraph pushed over | Shrink that ¶ to 01 pt font |
| Blank page right after a table at the page bottom | Mandatory empty paragraph after the table | Set that paragraph to 01 pt, shrink the bottom margin if needed |
Page begins blank with a square by the first ¶ | “Page break before” is switched on | Uncheck it in Line and Page Breaks |
| Blank page after a section break at the end | Next Page section break | Cursor before the break, press Delete |
| Blank page appears only when printing | Bottom margin overflow or section break | Check Layout > Breaks, reduce the bottom margin |
Fix a blank page caused by a table
If your table ends at the very bottom of a page, Word forces an empty paragraph after it, and that paragraph can spill onto a new blank page you cannot simply delete. The reliable fix is to shrink it until it fits. Show formatting marks, select the paragraph mark that sits below the table, click inside the Font Size box on the Home tab, type 01, and press Enter. At one point, the paragraph tucks back onto the preceding page and the blank page disappears.
If it still won’t fit, the bottom margin is likely too deep. Go to Layout > Margins > Custom Margins and set the bottom margin smaller, around 0.3", which is Microsoft’s suggested value. Our walkthrough on how to change margins in Word covers doing this for one section without disturbing the rest of the document.
Remove a section-break blank page
A Next Page, Odd Page, or Even Page section break tells Word to start a fresh page, and that can leave an empty one behind. If the blank page is at the end of the document and a section break sits just above it, place your cursor directly before the break and press Delete.
Be careful in the middle of a document: deleting a section break makes the text above it adopt the formatting, headers, and margins of the section below. If you need to keep the section but stop it forcing a new page, don’t delete it. Open the Page Setup dialog with the small arrow in the Layout > Page Setup group, go to the Layout tab, and set Section start to Continuous. That keeps your section-specific settings while removing the page break the section was causing.
Find the page fast, then delete it whole
When you can’t scroll straight to the offender, open the Navigation pane with Ctrl+F (or View > Navigation Pane) and click Pages to see thumbnails of every page. Click the blank thumbnail to jump right to it.
To remove an entire page regardless of what’s on it, click anywhere on that page, press Ctrl+G (Option+⌘+G on a Mac), type \page in the Enter page number box, press Enter, and select Close. Word selects the whole page as a block; confirm it’s highlighted and press Delete. One caveat: Word for the web has no formatting-marks toggle and can’t edit section breaks, so for anything beyond deleting a plain empty paragraph or page break you’ll need the desktop app.
None of this touches your text, but if a document ever closes before you meant it to, keep how to recover an unsaved Word document handy. To keep blank pages from creeping back, prefer real page breaks (Ctrl+Enter) over hammering the return key, and leave formatting marks on while you build long documents so a stray ¶ never grows into a phantom page. If tracked edits are cluttering the view while you hunt, how to track changes in Word explains how to toggle and clear them.