Discover the easy steps for deleting a document within Microsoft Word to keep your computer organized and free up space on your hard drive.
Microsoft Word is a powerful word-processing software that allows users to create, edit, and save various documents.
But, over time, the number of documents saved on your device can pile up and become overwhelming.
In such cases, learning how to delete documents from Microsoft Word is critical. Lucky for you, I can show you how to delete a Word document from your computer in just a few steps.
Want to delete a page from a Word document? Our delete a page in Word article can show you how to do that.
How to Delete a Document in Word
The steps in this guide were performed in Word for Microsoft 365 on a Windows 11 computer.
You can use any version of Word running on any Windows computer because the steps are pretty much the same.
Steps for deleting a document(s) from Microsoft Word:
Step 1: Within Microsoft Word, click the File tab at the top-left.
Step 2: Select the Open command from the left pane.
- At this point, if the document you want to delete appears under Recent Files. Right-click on it and select Delete.
Step 3: In the Open window, click the Browse button.
Step 4: Locate the file you want to delete and click on it.
Step 5: Right-click on the selected file and click on the Delete option. Note that if you want to delete multiple Word documents in this folder, hold down Ctrl while clicking on each file to select them.
Step 6: In the Delete File dialog box, select Yes to confirm that you want to move this file to the Recycle Bin.
To permanently delete these files, go to your desktop screen, right-click on the Recycle Bin, and select the Empty Recycle Bin option. Click the Yes button to confirm and permanently delete these files from the Recycle Bin.
You can also repeat this process to delete any unnecessary Word documents from a different folder on your computer.
Now that you’ve learned how to delete documents in Word. Look at how to autosave Word documents to cloud storage, such as OneDrive, with a Microsoft 365 subscription. It protects your files and saves disk space.
