Word Remove Delete All Tables: How to Do It

To remove or delete all tables from a Word document at once, you must use a workaround—there is no single built-in “delete all tables� button. The most reliable method is to use Word’s Find and Replace feature with a special wildcard code, or to run a short VBA macro; both approaches are explained below.

Why Word Has No Direct “Delete All Tables� Command

Microsoft Word treats each table as an object anchored to a paragraph. The Ribbon’s table tools let you delete the current table, clear its contents, or merge/split cells, but there is no command that scans the whole document and removes every table. This is by design: Word’s interface prioritizes actions on the current selection, and bulk operations are left to Find and Replace or macros.

For a one-off cleanup, you can manually select each table (click the cross icon that appears when you hover over the table) and press Backspace or Delete. But if the document has dozens of tables—common in imported PDFs, legal briefs, or data-heavy reports—doing that by hand is slow and error-prone. The methods below automate the process.

Method 1: Use Find and Replace with Wildcards (No Coding)

This is the safest non-programming approach. It works in Word 2013 through Microsoft 365 on Windows and Mac (with slight menu differences).

1. Press Ctrl+H (Windows) or Cmd+H (Mac) to open the Find and Replace dialog.
2. Click More (or the expand arrow) to show advanced options.
3. Check the box for Use wildcards.
4. In the Find what field, type: ^t — this is the code for a tab character, which appears inside every table cell.
5. Leave the Replace with field completely empty.
6. Click Replace All.

What this actually does is remove every tab character in the document. Since tables rely on tabs to separate cell content, deleting all tabs destroys the table structure, leaving the text (if any) as plain paragraphs. The table borders disappear, and the document becomes a linear text flow.

Important caveat: This also removes tabs you may have used intentionally outside tables (e.g., for indents or aligned lists). To avoid that, first make a backup copy of the document, or use the macro method below which targets only tables.

Method 2: Run a VBA Macro to Delete All Tables

If you are comfortable with a few lines of code, a macro is the cleanest solution—it removes the entire table objects, not just the tabs. This works in all desktop versions of Word.

1. Press Alt+F11 to open the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) editor.
2. Go to Insert → Module.
3. Paste the following code:

Sub DeleteAllTables()
    Dim i As Long
    With ActiveDocument
        For i = .Tables.Count To 1 Step -1
            .Tables(i).Delete
        Next i
    End With
End Sub

4. Press F5 to run the macro, or close the editor and run it from View → Macros.

The loop goes backward from the last table to the first, which avoids the common “index out of rangeâ€� error that occurs when deleting objects in a forward loop. The .Delete method removes the entire table, including its borders and content.

Note: This macro deletes all tables in the active document. If you have multiple sections or want to preserve some tables, you would need to modify the code to skip certain ranges—but for a full cleanup, it works as-is.

Method 3: Manual Deletion for a Few Tables

If you only have a handful of tables, the manual method is quick and gives you control over which ones go.

• Hover over the table until a small cross icon appears at the top-left corner.
• Click that icon to select the entire table.
• Press Backspace (not Delete) to remove the table and its contents.

Pressing Delete only removes the content inside the cells, leaving an empty table frame. Many users make this mistake and wonder why the table won’t go away.

Common Problems and How to Avoid Them

Problem 1: Find and Replace removes needed tabs. Solution: Use the macro method, or first copy the document and run the find/replace on the copy, then compare.

Problem 2: Macro deletes tables in headers/footers? The macro above only affects the main document body. Tables inside headers, footers, text boxes, or footnotes are not touched. If you need to remove those too, you must run the macro separately in each of those areas, which is more complex.

Problem 3: The document has nested tables. A nested table is a table inside a cell of another table. The macro’s .Delete method deletes the outer table and everything inside it, so nested tables disappear automatically. The Find and Replace method also works, but it may leave behind stray tab characters in odd places.

Problem 4: You want to delete only empty tables. Neither method above distinguishes between empty and filled tables. To delete only empty tables, you would need a more advanced macro that checks if a table has any text—but that’s beyond the scope of a quick cleanup.

What Happens to the Content After Deletion?

When you delete a table with the macro, the content is gone permanently—there is no “convert to text� step. If you need to keep the data but remove the table borders, use Convert Table to Text instead. That command is found under Table Tools → Layout → Convert to Text. It lets you choose a separator (tab, paragraph, etc.) and keeps the text in the document.

The Find and Replace method effectively mimics “convert to text� with tabs as separators, but it does not give you a choice of separator—it simply removes tabs, so the content may end up jammed together if cells had no spaces.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Will deleting all tables also delete the text inside them?
A: Yes, the VBA macro deletes the entire table object, including all text. The Find and Replace method deletes the tabs but leaves the text—though it may be rearranged or merged with surrounding paragraphs. If you want to keep the text, use “Convert to Text� instead.

Q: Can I undo the deletion?
A: Yes, if you act immediately. Press Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z on Mac) right after running the macro or Replace All. However, if you close and reopen the document, the undo history is cleared, so make a backup copy before proceeding.

Q: Does this work in Word Online or Google Docs?
A: Word Online does not support VBA macros, and its Find and Replace does not have a wildcard option for tabs. In Google Docs, you can use the “Find and Replace� with a regular expression (if you enable it) to match tab characters, but there is no one-click “delete all tables� either. The desktop version of Word is the most reliable for this task.

Q: Why does the Find and Replace method sometimes leave empty paragraphs?
A: Because each table is preceded by a paragraph mark. When the table is destroyed, that paragraph mark remains, creating an empty line. You can remove extra empty paragraphs by using Find and Replace again: find ^p^p and replace with ^p, repeating until no double paragraph marks remain.

Q: Is there a way to delete tables only in a specific section?
A: Yes, with a modified macro that loops through tables in a range. For example, you can select a section of text and use Selection.Range.Tables instead of ActiveDocument.Tables. This requires a bit more VBA knowledge, but it is doable.

Q: What if the macro gives an error “Run-time error 5941�?
A: That error means the requested table does not exist. It usually happens if you run the macro twice—the first run deletes all tables, and the second run finds none. Just close the error and run it only once on a fresh document.

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in t | Number of tables | count | 1 | 0
out tables | Tables to delete | count | t | 0