How to remove all text boxes in Word?

Text boxes offers users an easy way to manager blocks of text in document. But how to remove them when you formatting a document. This tutorial will show you several ways to get rid of all text boxes from Word document.

Manually remove all text boxes one by one
Remove all text boxes with VBA code
Easily remove all text boxes without removing text with Kutools for Word

Manually remove all text boxes one by one

If there are just one or two text boxes you want to remove, you can do as follows:

Step 1: Click inside the text box and press Ctrl+C to copy the text (skip this step if you don’t want to keep the text).

Step 2: Click the border of the text box, press Delete.

Step 3: Repeat step 1 and step 2 until all the undesired text boxes are removed.

Remove all text boxes with VBA code

While there are too many text boxes you want to remove, and you don’t want to keep the text inside either, VBA code will be great helpful. Please use VBA code to remove all text boxes in document as follows:

1. Press Alt+F11 to open the VBA window in Word;

2. Click Module in Insert tab, and insert the VBA code into Module window;

3. Click Run button to apply the VBA code (or press F5);

The VBA code to remove all text boxes without keeping text:

Sub Test()
Dim oShp As Word.Shape
Dim i As Long
For i = ActiveDocument.Shapes.Count To 1 Step -1
Set oShp = ActiveDocument.Shapes(i)
If oShp.Type = msoTextBox Then
oShp.Delete
End If
Next i
End Sub

Note: This VBA code can only remove the drawing text boxes.

Easily remove all text boxes with Kutools for Word

You can remove all text boxes but keep their contents or remove both text boxes and their contents in document with Kutools for Word.

Kutools for Word : With more than 100 handy Word add-ins, free to try with no limitation in 60 days.

1. Please apply this utility by clicking Kutools > Remove > Remove All Text Boxes. See screenshot:

2. If you just want to remove the text boxes and keep the text, please check Just remove text box, and keep the text option in Remove All Text Boxes dialog, then click OK. If you want to remove both the text box and the text, please uncheck it.

3. Then a dialog box is popping up to tell you how many text boxes are removed successfully, please click the OK button.

Then you can see all text boxes with or without contents are removed from the document. See screenshots:

Tip: After removing text boxes from document, blank rows may show up. Then the Remove Empty Paragraph Marks utility of Kutools for Word can help you remove all empty rows from document at the same time. Please click Kutools > Emty Paras > Remove Empty Paragraph Marks. See screenshot:

Then all empty rows are removed from current documemt automatically at the same time:

If you want to have a free trial of this utility, please go to free download the software first, and then go to apply the operation according above steps.