Removing paragraph numbers and titles throughout from document

Copper Contributor

I have a very large transribed Word document of around 900 pages in length. The transciber has added hundreds of paragraph numbers and titles to every paragraph throughout the document. I have included an example below:

3.3.1 Coming home
While I was looking forward to travelling home after being away for so long and seeing my parents, I was filled with dread on making the long, long journey. I would be travelling across half the globe to reach the family home in Newbraska.

3.3.2 The journey
After a short flight to Tokyo, I made my way to the docks and found the steamship 'Johnstown'. The captain welcomed us .........etc

I want to remove all the paragraph numbers and associated heading text but keep the body text to form a continues story. While I have looked at various posts to remove the paragraph numbering, I do not know how to remove the paragrpah numbering AND paragraph text globally throughout the document. Any advice would be appreciated!

5 Replies

@Jazza43 

 

If numbering has been done with styles, for example heading styles, you can search for each of the styles involved and replace with nothing.

 

In the Find & Replace dialog box (Ctrl+H), leave the "Replace with" field completely blank. Click in the "Find what" box and specify a numbered heading style via Format > Style. Click Replace All.  All paragraphs formatted in the specified style will be deleted.

 

Repeat the procedure for other text paragraphs, formatted in some other heading style, that you want to delete.

Hello @Jazza43 ,

you can strip text of all its formatting using the "Clear all formatting" icon on the Home ribbon.

Warning: this will return all style & direct formatting back to normal style.

 

Press Ctrl+a to select all text and click the button (in the print-screen marked yellow) to get rid of all formatting. All - I can't stress that enough, so be mindfull. On the other hand - you can do it in batches. And use the "Undo" function.

L.

@Lenka_Kerumova 

 

Note the difference between (a) removing formatting from text and (b) actually deleting all text paragraphs formatted in a particular way.

@Stefan_Blom 

 

Note the difference between removing formatting from text (a) using Find and Replace and (b) removing styles using "Clear all formatting" function.

@Lenka_Kerumova 

 

Difference noted, but the original poster asked for the following: "I want to remove all the paragraph numbers and associated heading text but keep the body text to form a continues story."