how to delete a header in word

9 Answers 9

For those with Word 2010, this can be achieved by right-clicking on the line in question, and selecting Paragraph, then changing "Outline level" to "Body text".

answered Sep 12 '14 at 8:57

word 2016 still works

Jun 18 '17 at 13:48
I tried this. Didn't work. Word 2010 appears to be a little buggy when it comes to mass removing headings.

Oct 24 '19 at 5:20
Works in the "opposite direction" too, if you want to add text to a table of contents or index but don't want to change its formatting, change its outline level from Body Text to whatever level you want.

May 4 '20 at 22:39

You open the paragraph dialog box under the Home tab (Alt+O+P).

Next, under the Indents and Spacing tab, click the drop-down list beside Outline Level. Select Body Text, and click Okay. It worked for me.

Vinayak

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answered Jan 3 '14 at 4:24

Just copy Heading 1 as a new style and apply it. Or copy it to Normal.

answered Sep 5 '11 at 16:38

surfasbsurfasb

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yep. create new style. "temp". One step, done

Mar 23 at 19:59

Assuming that your text has bullets under the heading.
Select all text you want to remove from heading. Then

Goto "View" -> "Outline" -> Choose "Body text"
Goto "Home" -> "Paragraph" and pick the "Bullet style" you want.
Goto "View" -> "Print layout"

Done.

zx485

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answered Mar 14 '20 at 14:09

This is the only answer here I found that actually works. Well done!

Apr 29 '20 at 16:37

Change the outline level of the text you do not want to go in the table of contents to "Body Text". To change the Outline level without messing up the rest of the formatting, select the text and then type SHIFT + ALT + left/right arrow. If you want to "downgrade" a paragraph from heading (level 1) or subheading (level 2) to body text, use the right arrow, if you want to upgrade to a higher level use the left arrow. Under the Outline View option you can double check what the outline level of each paragraph of your document is.

answered Jan 18 '17 at 23:30

None of the above answers worked for me as the Outline Level as suggested was disabled.

I don't know if the following is what you exactly wanted but . . .

Here's what worked for me.

Open the Word document and save it as Web Page (.htm or .html) document (Make sure to keep a backup Word version just in case anything goes wrong)
Open the html document using a text editor (Such as Notepad or Sublime Text)
Replace the heading tag with paragraph tag

If you have Heading 1 then replace h1 with p. Similarly, if you want to make other heading level to static, replace h< number > with p.
Save the html document.
Open the document with MS Word and save as MS Word format.

This removed the Heading Styles for me.

Also after last step I realised the code still had collapsing button. I removed it by following above answers i.e. Select the content and set Outline Level to Body Text.

Hope this helps.

answered Nov 11 '18 at 8:24

If you have a lot of headings and want to remove the formatting for all of it, simply to a Select All from the tool pane and from Paragraph menu change outline level to "body text" as suggested by the previous posters.

answered Nov 3 '16 at 14:41

I found out that if I go to the Outline View (View Tab->Outline), select all the headings (at once) and then in the Outlining select "Body Text", everything preserved as a style but headings (and "collapse/expand triangles") will DISAPPEAR! ;)

Hope this helps!

answered Apr 10 '19 at 7:36

Foolproof method: Mail the thing to yourself, this destroys all the evil in it completely. Then copy and paste it back from your email. Obviously before you do that check that the empty spaces do not have the evil heading format, delete the space!

answered Sep 18 '19 at 18:04

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