How to Extract Specific Pages From a Large MS Word Document

When you have a large Microsoft Word document, it can be a hassle to find the part of it you're interested in and especially tricky if you want to send somebody a specific page. However, there are a few approaches you can use to select a Word page and save it as a separate file. The most straightforward approach is undoubtedly to highlight the content you want in the usual way and copy it, but you can also use a macro to make things a little simpler – even if it might look more complicated.

The simplest approach is to navigate through the document until you locate the page you want to extract, highlight the text (and images or tables, if applicable), and then copy it into a new document. Click at the beginning of the page, hold the left mouse button down, and drag the cursor to the end of the page to highlight all the content you want. Then press Ctrl+C to copy the text or Ctrl+X to cut it out of the document. Copying is safer unless you definitely don't want the text in the document anymore.

Open a new Word document using Ctrl+N or by clicking the Office button and choosing New and then press Ctrl+V to paste the content into the new document. If you want to use Notepad or some other program to extract the page, open a new document there instead and do the same thing. All that remains is to save the new file, and you're done. Repeat this process with other pages, either combining them all into a single file or by producing multiple new one-page files.

The copy-paste method is fine for most purposes, but if you know the exact page number you want to extract, you can do it quickly. With the Word document open, press Ctrl+G to open the Find and Replace dialogue, and make sure the Go To tab is open. This shortcut takes you there automatically. Make sure Page is highlighted on the left and then type the number of the page you're interested in extracting using the field on the right.

Click the Go To button, and the cursor moves to the top of the page. Press F8 to put Word into Extend mode. Now, go back to the Go To dialogue and type the number for the next page after the one you want and press Go To again. This highlights the whole page. From there, you can copy and paste the content as described above.

There are numerous approaches you can use to split a Word document into multiple documents with VBA. Either click on the Developer tab and choose Visual Basic or press Alt+F11 to open Visual Basic directly. Choose Normal from the list on the left and then go to Insert from the menu at the top and click Module.

Now paste the following code into the window that opens up:

Sub SaveCurrentPageAsANewDoc()
Dim objNewDoc As Document
Dim objDoc As Document
Dim strFileName As String
Dim strFolder As String

' Initialization
Set objDoc = ActiveDocument

strFolder = InputBox("Enter folder path here: ")
strFileName = InputBox("Enter file name here: ")

' Copy current page.
objDoc.Bookmarks("\Page").Range.Select
Selection.Copy

' Open a new document to paste the selection.
Set objNewDoc = Documents.Add
Selection.Paste

objNewDoc.SaveAs FileName:=strFolder & "" & strFileName & ".docx"
objNewDoc.Close
End Sub

Ensure your cursor is on the page you want to extract in your Word document and go to the Visual Basic page and click Run (the Play button on the upper panel). You are prompted to enter a file path for where you want to save the document starting from your C: drive and then to provide a file name. Do both of these, and your file is created.