Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 30, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365
Daniel has a problem that many people may face from time to time. He gets documents from others in his office, and they often contain a large number of styles that he needs to delete. Deleting a large number of styles one at a time is a real pain, so he is looking for a way to delete a large number of styles all at once.
The easiest way to do this is to use a behind-the-scenes tool called the Organizer. Follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Styles tab of the Organizer.
Remember that built-in styles (such as Normal) cannot be deleted from the list of styles.
One final note: I've had some people tell me "I want to delete all styles in a document because I don't use them and I want none of them there." The short answer to this is that you can't do it. Why? Because everything in Word (and I do mean everything) is based on styles. Whether you want to use styles or not, they are still there, in the background, and cannot be done away with. Thus, my comment about the inability to delete built-in styles.
Understanding that styles are intrinsic to how Word works, the better solution is to learn how to work with styles so you can format your documents quicker, easier, and more consistently. This takes time, to be sure, but you'll be less frustrated in the long run if you invest that time. Here's a good place you can start:
https://tips.net/T9627
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9653) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Deleting a Large Number of Styles.
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2022-03-16 11:06:47
Rachyl
Thanks for the tip! Do you know if there is a way to remove all styles from a document that are not a part of the applied template? For context, I develop templates for proposal writers, and they will often paste in text from other documents... complete with their styles. It's been an uphill battle to get them to learn to paste unformatted text, and when the documents come to me for cleanup there are often multiple unwanted styles included. It would be great if I had a way to remove them all, leaving only the ones that actually belong in the template. I know I'd still have to apply the correct styles to their text, of course... but then at least the Styles list would only have the *right* styles in it!
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