As much as we writers hate to delete our precious words on the screen, it's as necessary as an outhouse is to a 19th century farm (pun intended).
In fact, deleting the current paragraph may be the first macro I ever wrote for myself, and I hate to say that it's probably one of my most used ones.
Thanks for your interest
This content is part of a paid plan.
How it's usually done ...
So, how do we normally delete a paragraph in Microsoft Word?
Hold down delete and watch the cursor chew up the letters?
Or grab the mouse and select the paragraph before pressing the delete key?
Although using the mouse is not really that bad, it usually feels faster than it is.
A better way ...
You could speed up both methods by deleting whole words at a time (Command+Delete on Mac or Control+Backspace on Windows) or using the keyboard to select the paragraph in the second case, but why not transform it into a single keystroke?
Enter macros in Word
Microsoft added macros to its office suite way back in 1993 to allow us to automate repetitive tasks and provided bigger tools for power users. It is and was most popular in Excel even from the beginning, but I think a lot of power Word users (writers being one group) neglect its utility to speed up their own everyday tasks.
Create the empty macro
You first need to create an empty macro for the delete command. The easiest method is to start recording a macro but stop recording before doing anything. If you want a more careful directions, see the Creating an empty VBA macro article on this website.
I created this macro using a keyboard shortcut Command+Shift+Delete on Mac or Control+Shift+Backspace in Windows, but keyboard shortcuts are definitely a matter of preference, so use what you like.
Then just open the Word VBA editor using Option+F11 on a Mac or Alt+F11 in Windows. The empty macro will look like the following in the VBA editor:
Focusing on the text, our specific macro today will look like:
The extra description at the top is a comment meant for you, the reader. All comments start with a single quote character in VBA. You may omit comments if you wish, but as things get more complicated, it's generally a good idea to include some non-trivial description of what you're doing because you might not remember what you were thinking a year from now. The above comment is redundant, so I'm getting rid of it.
Deleting the paragraph
After you've got your empty macro, believe it or not, deleting the current paragraph is just a single-line VBA command. Create an empty line after the comment if you kept it and add:
The whole macro will look like:
We usually indent the commands of a macro to make them easier to distinguish from the definition of the macro, but it is not technically required in VBA.
Save the macro (Command+S on Mac or Control+S in Windows) and then boom ... from now on, one keyboard shortcut deletes the current paragraph in Word. No selection necessary. No keyboard calisthenics. Just move on with your work.
I love this macro for it's simplicity and utility. Like I said, I hate how much I use it, but it is definitely a workhorse of a macro. The farm wouldn't run as efficiently without it.
Dissecting the workhorse
For those that want a little more, let's unpack the tidy, one-line command.
Notice how the VBA command reads almost like English. One of the plusses with using it.
Selection tells Word to look at the selected text or the current cursor location at the blinking "I-bar" (not the mouse pointer) if there is no selection.
Paragraphs tells Word to look at all paragraphs included in the selection. If there is no selection, then "all paragraphs" means the current one.
First tells Word to pick the first paragraph.
Range tells Word to work with the whole paragraph text (kind of; it's a little more complicated but that will do for now).
Obviously, Delete is the action to take on the paragraph text. You could also use Cut if you want to put the text on the clipboard. I've actually made both, assigning cutting the paragraph text to the clipboard to Command+Shift+X (or Control+Shift+X on Windows).
All of this is chained together with periods to let Word know we are successively using the previous element for the next part of the command.
That's it. Go forth and edit (delete) faster!
