Shortcut Key to Delete a Paragraph

Glenn knows how to select a paragraph (triple clicking) in order to delete that paragraph. Often, though, he likes to keep his hands on the keyboard without resorting to using the mouse. Glenn wonders if there is a shortcut key that would allow him to delete a paragraph without the need of selecting all the text in the paragraph first.

The standard way of deleting entire paragraphs with the keyboard relies on the use of multiple shortcut keys. This is the sequence that you could follow to do the deletion:

1. Press Ctrl+Up Arrow. This moves the insertion point to the beginning of the paragraph. (You obviously don't need to do this if the insertion point is already at the beginning of the paragraph you want to delete.)
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow. This selects everything to the end of the paragraph.
3. Press Delete.

Another quick way to do this using the keyboard is to simply press the F8 key four times, which selects the paragraph in which the insertion point is located. You can then press the Delete key to get rid of that paragraph.

If you want something shorter—perhaps something that uses a single shortcut key—then you will need to create a macro to do the deletion for you. There are a number of ways you can approach this in VBA, but this is, perhaps, the shortest way:

Sub QuickDelete()
    Selection.Paragraphs(1).Range.Delete
End Sub

Note that this single-line macro deletes whatever paragraph the insertion point happens to be in. If you have a selection made, then the first paragraph of the selection is deleted. You can assign the macro to a keyboard shortcut, and then you will have your single-keystroke method to delete paragraphs.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (5269) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021.