How to Remove Blank Lines in a Word Document

Microsoft Word has been the user’s go-to word processor for a long time now. It can be attributed to the ease of functioning, plethora of features, and straightforward interface. Word offers multiple shortcuts for users which if done conventionally will require both time and effort.

One such issue is removing blank lines for a document. Blank lines do not just make the document look lengthier but also affect the readability. The unnecessary use of blank lines should be avoided when drafting a document but for pre-drafted documents, you can easily remove the blank lines with the method mentioned in the following sections.

Word adds a paragraph tag each time you hit ENTER to move to the next line. Two consecutive paragraph tags can show as blank/empty lines in your document. To remove the blank lines or double paragraph tags, you can either go manual for each OR use the ‘Replace’ option to remove all empty lines at once. We will walk you through the process of removing blank lines with the ‘Replace’ option.

Viewing Paragraph Tags in Word

This is how the document looks initially when there are blank lines between the text. Just click on the ‘Show/Hide ¶‘ option in Word’s control bar to view the paragraph tags. The double paragraph tags here indicate a blank line and replacing them with a single tag will remove the blank lines.

Remove Blank Lines in Word

To remove blank lines in a Word document, click on the ‘Replace’ option in the ‘Editing’ section at the top-right corner.

Next, enter ^p^p which indicates a double paragraph tag (‘^p’ is the code for paragraph tag) in the ‘Find what’ text box, and ^p which indicates a single paragraph tag in the ‘Replace with’ text box.

After you have entered it, click on ‘Replace All’ at the bottom. You will see a prompt informing you about how many replacements were made to the document.