8 Ways to Quickly Clear the Formatting of Characters or Paragraphs in Your Word Document

In this article, we will provide you with 8 ways to quickly and easily clear the formatting of characters or paragraphs in your Word document.

Now and then, there can be times when you just finishing formatting a document, only to find you have to clear certain formatting of the texts, such as character formatting or paragraph formatting only. Or sometimes you will just have to strip the whole document of its original formatting.

In the content below are the solutions to all issues mentioned above.

Remove Character Formatting Only

Character formatting as the name indicates refers to the formatting applied to text in character level, such as the italicization or underline.

The way to remove this kind of formatting is to select the target texts and then press “Ctrl+ Spacebar”. Then all of the words shall go back to the font in default size and style.

Remove Paragraph Formatting Only

Needless to say, paragraph formatting affects text in paragraph level, with all the alignments or shadings.

To clear paragraph formatting, you have to select texts first and next should press “Ctrl+ Q”. Here is the effect:

3 Ways to Remove Both Character and Paragraph Formatting

In case you want to get rid of both character and paragraph formatting with one way, you might as well take a look at the coming 3 methods.

Method 1: Use “Clear Formatting” Option

1. Firstly, always remember to select the texts.
2. Then go to click “Clear Formatting” in “Font” group under “Home” tab.

And here is the result:

Method 2: Clear All Styles

1. At first, have the texts in selection.
2. Next, click the down arrow button in “Styles” group under “Home” tab.
3. Now in the “Styles” window open, find and click “Clear All”.

Method 3: Change Back to Normal Text

1. Repeat the first 2 steps in the above method 2.
2. Only this time in the “Styles” window, you need to find and click “Normal”. The effect is the same as shown in method 1.

However, these 3 methods cannot help you to remove hyperlinks, if there are any in the document. In order to tackle this, you can read this article: How to Find, Change and Delete Hyperlinks in Your Word Document

Remove a Specific Style through a Document

1. Follow the first 2 steps in method 1 to open “Styles” window.
2. Then on the style pane, find the name of the style which you want to remove.
3. Move cursor on the style name and click on the upside-down triangle button.
4. Next click the “Clear Formatting of XX Instance(s)”. “XX” refers to the number of the style used in the document.

2 Ways to Strip all Formatting of a Document

These 2 methods will enable you to remove all formatting of a document including all hyperlinks it may contain.

Method 1: Use Macro

1. To start with, press “Ctrl+ A” to select the entire document.
2. Next press “Alt+ F11” to open the VBA editor.
3. Click “Insert” to insert a new module and double click to open it.
4. Then paste the following codes there and hit “Run”:

Sub RemoveAllTextFormatting()
  With Selection
    .ClearCharacterAllFormatting
    .ClearParagraphAllFormatting
  End With     
End Sub

Method 2: Paste as Unformatted Text

1. Press “Ctrl+ A” to select all texts.
2. Then continue to press “Ctrl+ C” to copy.
3. And open a new document and right click on it.
4. Choose “Keep Text Only” option.

Obtain a Tool to Fix Word Issues

Generally, Word works so fine that we rely so much on it to process our daily reports and documents. Yet, with all the features and functions working on our files, things can just go wrong. Thus, we suggest you can purchase a Word data fix tool in advance.

Author Introduction:

Vera Chen is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including xlsx file damage repair tool and pdf repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com