To clear formatting in Microsoft Word, follow these steps:
- Select the text you want to clear formatting from. To clear formatting from the entire document, press Ctrl + A (Windows) or Command + A (Mac) to select all text.
- Go to the Home tab on the ribbon.
- In the Font group, click the Clear All Formatting button. This button looks like an eraser on an A and is usually located near the font size and color options. If you don't see it immediately, you might need to click the More button (three dots) to reveal additional options.
This action removes all character-level formatting such as bold, italics, underline, font color, font size, superscript, and subscript, returning the text to the default style of the document
. Additional tips:
- If you want to clear paragraph-level formatting (like indents and line spacing) as well, you can use keyboard shortcuts:
- Ctrl + Spacebar removes character-level formatting but keeps paragraph formatting.
- Ctrl + Q resets paragraph formatting to Normal style but keeps character formatting.
- Ctrl + Shift + N resets both character and paragraph formatting to Normal style
- To clear all styles applied, open the Styles pane from the Home tab and select Clear All at the top of the styles list
- If your document contains tables, headers, footers, or text boxes, you may need to clear formatting in those areas separately
- To remove manual page breaks that affect document structure, enable the Show/Hide formatting marks (Ctrl + Shift + 8) and delete the page break markers manually
Using these methods will help you quickly reset your Word document's text to a clean, uniform format ready for reformatting or styling as needed.
