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!

Are these text paragraphs formatted in Word's built-in heading styles? If so, you can search for each specific style name and replace with nothing.

Press Ctrl+H to display the Find & Replace dialog box. Click in the "Find what" box and click the Format drop down to specify which style you want to search for. Leave the "Replace with" box completely blank. Click Replace All. Repeat with other styles.

Attached Images

findReplaceHeading.png (24.3 KB, 15 views)

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thank you for your quick reply. When I use the drop down on the ‘Find what’ box there is no option to choose ‘Style: Heading 1’ or Style: Heading 2’ – it’s just blank.

You should see the "Style" command on the Format drop down. Are you saying that this option is missing?

Attached Images

styleOptionFormatDropDown.png (82.2 KB, 14 views)

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

See a similar thread in the Tech Community forum: Removing paragraph numbers and titles throughout from document - Microsoft Tech Community

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

There is no 'style' command in the format box as an option. In fact there are no options to choose at all. I tried the link you posted in your reply, but that just took me back to my original question - was that your intention?

If you are not seeing the buttons labelled Format, Special and No Formatting, you should be seeing a button labelled More. Click that one to reveal all available options.

If you are not seeing any of these options, clarify which version of Word you are running.

I included the link to the other thread because it is a good policy to let contributors know that you have also asked in another forum. I'm assuming you are the one who posted there as well, although you used a different user name.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

I have now successfully managed to format the document by removing the headings as you've suggested. Happy days - many thanks for saving me a ton of work!