Clearing Formats and Styles: MS Word

You can use the Clear Formatting command to remove formatting and styles from text in MS Word. When you remove all formatting and styles from text, it adopts the attributes of the Normal style. You can remove formatting and styles from a single instance or from all instances of that formatting or style.

Clear Formatting command appears at the top of the Pick formatting to apply list in the Styles and Formatting task pane whenever the Show option is set to Available formatting, Formatting in use or Available styles. Since the Normal style is a paragraph style, all font, paragraph, tab, border, language, and numbering formats are returned to those defined by the Normal style.

If you clear formatting from text formatted with a character style, the text adopts the formatting of the paragraph around it, rather than that of the Normal style.

• Applying the Normal style has the same effect as selecting the Edit menu, the Clear submenu and the Formats command.
   
• You can also clear formats by selecting the Edit menu, the Clear submenu, and the Formats command.
   
• When you clear a format, make sure that the format is not being used as a field. For example, Heading styles are used in creating a table of contents. If you clear a Heading style, that text will then not be included in the table of contents.

Follow the steps below to clear formats and styles:

1. Open the Styles and Formatting task pane (Format | Styles and Formatting).
    
2. Select the Show list at the bottom of the task pane.
    
3. Select Available styles or all styles.
    
4. Select the text containing the formatting or style you want to clear.
    
5. Select Clear Formatting at the top of the Pick formatting to apply list.

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