Deleting Multiple Building Blocks

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 9, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016


Jussara needs a way to delete a number of different Building Block entries. She wonders if there is a way to easily delete multiple entries all at once.

You would think that the Building Block Organizer would allow you to delete multiple entries at the same time. Not so! It only allows you to delete entries one by one; in everything we tried to create a selection set we were foiled.

This is where a third-party add-on would come in real handy. Fortunately, such an add-on is available from Word MVP Greg Maxey; you can find a complete discussion of Building Blocks and his add-on here:

http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tip_pages/building_blocks_autotext.html

If you are working in a corporate environment, the inability to delete multiple Building Blocks (and thereby effectively manage those Building Blocks) can be a real problem. In some corporations, this has led to categorizing Building Blocks by storing them in separate templates. These templates can be stored in the Building Blocks folder, and when starting Word the entries they contain will show up as Building Blocks available to the user.

The advantage of storing the Building Blocks in separate templates is that you can manage them by simply replacing one or more templates as you need to update the Building Block entries. (In a corporate environment, the updating of the templates can be done automatically, via a script that runs when the user logs into the network.) Want to get rid of a category of custom Building Blocks? Just delete the template that contains those entries, and they will then be gone the next time Word is started.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11274) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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