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: Finding and Deleting Rows.

Finding and Deleting Rows

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 5, 2025)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021

Sam has a document that contains some tables in which he wants to delete some rows. The rows contain specific text, which he can certainly delete by using Find and Replace, but he wants to delete the entire rows that contain that text.

There is no way to do this (delete rows) using the normal Find and Replace features of Word. Instead, you need to use a macro that will find the text and then delete the entire row. Here is a relatively simple macro that will do the job:

Sub DeleteRowWithSpecifiedText()
    Dim sText As String

    sText = InputBox("Enter text for row to be deleted")
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = sText
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    End With
    Do While Selection.Find.Execute
        If Selection.Information(wdWithInTable) Then
            Selection.Rows.Delete
        End If
    Loop
End Sub

This macro first displays an input box that asks the user to specify the text to be searched for. It then starts searching for all instances of that text. If an instance is found, then the selection is checked to make sure it is within a table. If it is, then the entire row is deleted, and the macro moves on to the next occurrence.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13148) 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: Finding and Deleting Rows.

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. Learn more about Allen...

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What is nine minus 3?

2022-10-20 09:12:08

Arya

Thank you. The macro saved my day

2022-04-01 10:31:59

Ariel <3

this is a KING post
thanks to you i learned what macros are, and how to achieve my desired outcome. thank you very much :)

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