Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Removing Tabs Used to Indent a Paragraph.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 13, 2026)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021
If you frequently convert documents from a different word processor to Word, there is a good chance you must remove tabs inserted at the beginning of paragraphs. Some word processors require tabs in order to indent the first line of a paragraph; Word does not.
About the only way to remove the unnecessary tabs is to go to the beginning of each of the paragraphs and press the Del key. You could, however, use Find and Replace in order to search for tabs and remove them. (Actually, you would search for a paragraph mark followed by a tab; this would then be replaced with a paragraph mark, thereby deleting the tab.)
A quicker way to take care of this problem is to develop a macro to do it for you. The following macro, TabsOut, searches for any hard return/tab combinations in your document (or your selected text) and removes the tab.
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here:
Sub TabsOut()
If Selection.Type <> wdNoSelection Then
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory, Extend:=wdMove
End If
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "^p^t"
.Replacement.Text = "^p"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub
Note:
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8958) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Removing Tabs Used to Indent a Paragraph.
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2020-02-10 10:20:22
Andrew
Similarly, to remove all whitespace at the beginning of every line would be to search for ^p^w and replace it with ^p. And to remove all whitespace at the end of every line to the same with ^w^p.
But if you use "Replace all" you have to watch out for underlined whitespace you may not want to delete, such as signature lines and tab-formatted tables. But since I usually am using these to reformat OCR'd documents, this is not so much of an issue.
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