Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated March 9, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365
When you are working with documents—particularly long documents created by someone else—you may have a need to delete all the fields in the document. The answer to how you do this depends almost entirely on what you mean by "deleting" a field.
If you mean that you want to get rid of the fields and replace them with plain text that represents the result of the field, then the easiest method is to select the entire document (Ctrl+A) and then press Ctrl+Shift+F9 to "unlink" the fields. Everyplace there was a field, the field is deleted and replaced with the result of the field.
If you simply want to get rid of all the fields and don't care that they be replaced with anything, you can use the Find and Replace capabilities of Word. Follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
All the fields in your document should now be gone. If you have to get rid of fields in this way quite often, it makes sense to create a macro that will handle the task for you. The following is a simple, short macro that goes through all the parts of your document and removes all the fields.
Sub DeleteFields() Dim rng As Range For Each rng In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges With rng.Fields While .Count > 0 .Item(1).Delete Wend End With Next End Sub
You can, of course, assign the macro to the Quick Access Toolbar or a shortcut key so it can be called into action as quickly as possible.
It should be noted that if your document has multiple text boxes, this macro will only remove the fields from the main document and the first text box. (Don't ask why; it seems to be quirk in Word.) If you have fields in more than just the first text box, then you'll need a different macro approach:
Sub DeleteAllFields() Dim rng As Range Dim shp As Shape Dim TxtFrame As TextFrame For Each rng In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges With rng.Fields While .Count > 0 .Item(1).Delete Wend End With For Each shp In rng.ShapeRange Set TxtFrame = shp.TextFrame If Not TxtFrame Is Nothing Then If TxtFrame.HasText Then With TxtFrame.TextRange.Fields While .Count > 0 .Item(1).Delete Wend End With End If End If Next shp Next rng 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 (10818) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Deleting All Fields.
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2025-04-08 02:55:20
Susan
The first solution doesn't seem to work on Mac. Is there a different key combination that will delete the fields but leave the result for Mac? Thanks, Susan
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