Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Removing All Bookmarks.

Removing All Bookmarks

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 4, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

Some people absolutely love bookmarks. They do come in handy, but if someone else set bookmarks in a document, you may not need them once you get the document from them. If there are many, many bookmarks set (remember, we are talking about people who really love bookmarks), removing them all one at a time can be rather tedious.

If you find yourself in this situation, you will want to keep the following macro handy. It examines the active document (the one you are looking at) and removes all the bookmarks within it.

Sub RemoveAllBookmarks()
    Dim objBookmark As Bookmark

    For Each objBookmark In ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
        objBookmark.Delete
    Next
End Sub

You should note that this simply deletes the bookmark, not any text referenced by the bookmark.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1630) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Removing All Bookmarks.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is two more than 2?

2024-10-12 04:53:58

Ken Endacott

The macro RemoveAllBookmarks removes all bookmarks including hidden bookmarks. Hidden bookmarks have an underscore as the first character of their name and are used by Tables of Contents and some fields. Removing them can give error messages.

The macro RemoveAllUserBookmarks below will remove only user defined bookmarks.

Sub RemoveAllUserBookmarks()
Dim objBookmark As Bookmark
For Each objBookmark In ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
If Left(objBookmark.Name, 1) <> "_" Then objBookmark.Delete
Next
End Sub

2024-10-10 05:07:33

David Cone

Found a possible solution.

Go into Insert Bookmark, and I found a bookmark at the top of the list with a blank title.

Deleted that manually and the macro worked correctly after that.

2023-01-13 07:40:20

nevzat

i have the same problem:

Hi Allen, I tried your macro for deleting bookmarks and am getting the error 5891 "that property is not available on that object" .
Do you have any idea for how I might troubleshoot this?

Thanks

2022-09-13 10:24:25

jen

Hi Allen, I tried your macro for deleting bookmarks and am getting the error 5891 "that property is not available on that object" .
Do you have any idea for how I might troubleshoot this?

Thanks

2020-07-23 00:33:01

Pearl

Thank you, Allen for this macro.

2019-03-05 16:38:52

Camila

Thank you so much!

2018-01-31 15:07:35

Charles Robinson

How do i remove all bookmarks from only part of a document?

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