If you’ve ever finished writing an essay only to realize there’s a blank page at the end that you can’t seem to delete, you know how frustrating it can be. MS Word includes an end paragraph in all its documents that can’t be deleted. If the ending text of your paper takes up a whole page, an invisible paragraph can be pushed to a new, blank page. Read on to learn what to do if this happens to you.
Adjust the Formatting
One trick you can try is to make that last paragraph as short as possible. First, you must turn on the paragraph marks. Click the paragraph symbol in the home tab, usually near the line spacing options.
Alternatively, you can press Ctrl+Shift+8 for Windows or ⌘+8 on a Mac.
Highlight the bottom paragraph symbol and change the font to 01. Hit Enter, and the paragraph should become small enough to move back up from the blank page, removing it.
To hide the paragraph marks, simply click the paragraph symbol again or press Ctrl+Shift+8 (for Windows) or ⌘+8 (for a Mac).
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If this trick doesn’t work, try making the bottom page margin smaller. Go to the Layout tab, click Margins, go to Customize Margins, and change the bottom margin to something small, like 0.2 or 0.3 inches. You can choose for this to only apply from this point forward, so it doesn’t mess up the formatting of the rest of your document.
Page and Section Breaks
Another issue that could cause an unwanted blank page is a page break. These formatting tools allow you to separate sections of text so that they start on new pages. To see if one of these is causing the issue, turn the paragraph marks back on by following the instructions from earlier. You can see if a page break is inserted somewhere. If there is, you can select it with your cursor and hit Delete on your keyboard to remove it.
If you see a section break instead, deleting it could cause some formatting issues. In this case, when you select it, a box should pop up. Click on Layout at the top and change the section start to Continuous. This should remove any blank pages generated from the section break.
Proofreading and Editing
Hopefully, this has helped remove any wonky unwanted blank pages in your essay, paper, report, or any other document you’re working on. And if you’d like an expert editor to check it for spelling, grammar, punctuation, formatting, references, or clarity, try our proofreading service for free today by uploading a 500-word sample.