Deleting a Range of Pages

Suppose you have a document of 50 pages and you want to delete pages 10 to 15. You may wonder if there is a way to delete that range with a single action.

Not with a single action, no. The reason is because Word technically knows nothing about pages. Page designations are very fluid, depending on all sorts of variables such as the amount of text in a document, what formatting is applied, and which printer driver is being used.

That being said, there is a relatively easy way to delete pages 10 to 15. Follow these steps:

1. Press F5. Word displays the Go To tab of the Find and Replace dialog box. The Pages option should be selected, by default, at the left of the dialog box.
2. Type 10 into the Enter a Page Number box and then press Enter. Word jumps to the beginning of page 10.
3. If the Find and Replace dialog box doesn't go away on its own (it will in some versions of Word), press Esc.
4. Press F8. This turns on Extend mode.
5. Press F5. Word again displays the Go To tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
6. Type 16 into the Enter a Page Number box and then press Enter. Word jumps to the beginning of page 16, but selects everything from the last insertion point location because you are using Extend mode. This means that you now have everything on pages 10 through 15 selected.
7. If the Find and Replace dialog box doesn't go away on its own (it will in some versions of Word), press Esc.
8. Press the Delete key.

Even though this process is noted here as 8 steps, it really is quite quick to perform. I was able to perform them in less than 5 seconds, which is a pretty fast way to get rid of a group of pages.

Another way to approach the task is to use the Zoom control to set a very small zoom factor. If you set something like 10% or 20%, you should see a number of pages on the screen at the same time. You can then use the mouse to easily select the pages you want to delete and then delete them.

If you haven't caught on to the idea yet, in Word you need to select text (not pages) and then delete the text. Thus, another way to quickly select the text that comprises pages 10 through 15 is to jump to the beginning of page 10 and make sure the insertion point is there. Then, click on the "thumb button" on the vertical scroll bar at the right of the window and drag it until you see that it is on page 15. As you hold the Shift key, click at the point on the page where you want your text selection to end. You can then delete the selection.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (7161) 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: Deleting a Range of Pages.