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How to remove or clear formatting in Word?

Author Amanda Li Last modified

When you are editing a document, sometimes you may need to remove or clear all formatting from the selection, leaving only the plain text in your document. This tutorial will introduce you some methods to remove all formatting from document in Word.

Remove all formatting with Clear Formatting

Remove all formatting with VBA

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Remove formatting with Clear Formatting

Step 1: Select a part of the document you want to remove all formatting or press shortcuts CTRL+ A to select the whole document if you need to remove formatting from entire document.

Step 2: Then apply Clear Formatting as follows:

Clear Formatting button on the Home tab on the ribbon

Note: This function cannot remove the formatting made by Formatting option for Latin alphabet text , Formatting option for Asian characters and Text highlight color.

Remove all formatting with VBA

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You can also use a VBA code to remove all formatting from the document in Word.

Step 1: Press Alt+F11 to open the VBA (Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications) window in Word;

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

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

VBA: remove all formatting from the active document

Sub ClrFmtg()
ActiveDocument.Select
Selection.ClearFormatting
End Sub

Note: Before you use this code to remove formatting, you need to select the part you want to remove formatting in your document. This code cannot remove the formatting made by Formatting option for Latin alphabet text , Formatting option for Asian characters and Text highlight color. And this code just can remove the formatting from all texts.

VBA: remove all formatting from specified paragraph in document

Sub ClrFmtg2()
ActiveDocument.Range(Start:=ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(2).Range.Start, _
End:=ActiveDocument.Paragraphs(4).Range.End).Select
Selection.ClearFormatting
End Sub

Note: this VBA will remove all formatting between paragraph 2 and paragraph 4. You can specify the paragraph number in the code.This code cannot remove the formatting made by Formatting option for Latin alphabet text , Formatting option for Asian characters and Text highlight color.

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