How to Delete Blank Lines in Word

Text pasted from an email, a web page or a PDF often lands in Word with an empty paragraph after every real one, sometimes three or four. The quick fix: turn on formatting marks, open Replace, search for ^p^p with ^p as the replacement, then run Replace All again and again until no matches remain. Before you start, decide whether you want every blank line gone or one kept between paragraphs, because the codes differ.

After the empty paragraphs are gone, here is how to turn off the paragraph marks in Word again.

Pick your fix: no blank lines, or one between paragraphs

These steps apply to Word for Microsoft 365 on Windows and to Word 2024, 2021, 2019 and 2016, which share the same Find and Replace dialog. Match what you see with formatting marks on to the row below.

What you see with marks on	What you want	Find what	Replace with
¶ on its own line between paragraphs	No blank lines at all	^p^p (repeat)	^p
Runs of two, three or more empty ¶ lines	Exactly one blank line between paragraphs	^13{3,} (wildcards on)	^p^p
↵ (bent arrow) on empty lines	Real paragraphs, no gaps	^l^l	^p
Dots or arrows before an otherwise empty ¶	No blank lines	Remove the spaces or tabs first, then use row one	^p
No extra ¶ at all, just a gap	Tighter text	Nothing to replace; it is spacing	See the spacing section

See what each blank line is made of

A blank line in Word is never really blank. It is a character you can’t see until you switch the hidden marks on, and the right code depends on which character it is.

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+8 (use the 8 on the main keyboard, not the number pad), or select the ¶ button on the Home tab.
2. Look at the empty lines. A pilcrow (¶) is a paragraph mark, created by pressing Enter. A bent arrow is a manual line break, created by Shift+Enter or by text copied from email and some web pages.
3. Check for tiny dots (spaces) or right arrows (tabs) in front of the ¶. A line that holds only spaces won’t match ^p^p, because there are characters between the two marks. Clear those first with the methods for removing stray spaces in Word.
4. If there is no extra mark between two paragraphs but the gap is still wide, the space comes from paragraph spacing, not from a blank line.

Press Ctrl+Shift+8 again when you are done to hide the marks. They never print either way. Both this shortcut and Ctrl+H are in Microsoft’s list of Word keyboard shortcuts.

Remove every blank line with Replace

Save a copy of the document first if it matters. Replace All changes the whole file in one go.

1. Click at the very start of the document (Ctrl+Home).
2. Press Ctrl+H, or go to Home > Editing > Replace.
3. In Find what, type ^p^p. The caret is Shift+6, and the p must be lowercase.
4. In Replace with, type ^p.
5. Select Replace All. Word reports how many replacements it made.
6. Select Replace All again, and keep going until the count reaches 0.

Why more than one pass? Each pass turns every pair of marks into one. A run of four marks (a paragraph plus three empty lines) becomes two after the first pass and one after the second. If you aren’t sure of a code, select More >> and then Special in the dialog to pick it from a list instead of typing it. Microsoft’s Find and Replace reference lists the other options in that panel.

Keep exactly one blank line between paragraphs

Some documents, such as scripts, plain-text exports or letters, are meant to have one empty line between paragraphs. You only want the extras gone. A wildcard search handles every run at once.

1. Open Replace (Ctrl+H) and select More >>.
2. Check Use wildcards. With this on, Word uses a different set of codes, and ^13 stands for a paragraph mark in the search box.
3. In Find what, type ^13{3,}. That means three or more paragraph marks in a row.
4. In Replace with, type ^p^p, which leaves one paragraph end plus one empty line.
5. Select Replace All, then clear Use wildcards so it doesn’t affect your next search.

Want every blank line gone in a single pass instead? Use ^13{2,} in Find what and ^p in Replace with. Microsoft’s help pages don’t document this pattern, so try it on a copy first.

Clean up text pasted from emails and PDFs

Pasted text has its own quirks. Email and web text often uses line breaks (^l) instead of paragraph marks, and PDF text frequently ends every printed line with a break, so sentences are chopped mid-way.

• Empty lines are bent arrows: Replace ^l^l with ^p, then any remaining ^l with ^p if those were meant to be paragraphs. The ^l code is listed as Manual Line Break under Special.
• Every line of a PDF paste ends with a break: Replace ^l with a single space to rejoin the sentences. More on this in removing line breaks in Word.

Here is a worked example for a harder case. A three-page report pasted from a PDF ends each printed line with a paragraph mark, and real paragraphs are separated by an empty one. Replacing every ^p with a space would glue the whole report into one block. Instead:

1. Replace ^p^p with a placeholder that doesn’t appear in the text, such as ###. That marks the real paragraph breaks.
2. Replace ^p with a space. The chopped lines rejoin into sentences.
3. Replace ### with ^p. The real paragraphs come back, with no blank lines.

If the paste also brought odd fonts and colors, clearing all formatting in Word resets the text before you tidy the spacing.

Blank lines Replace can’t reach

Find and Replace can skip a few empty paragraphs that Word treats as part of the layout, such as:

• An empty paragraph directly before a table.
• The last paragraph mark inside a table cell, before the end-of-cell marker.
• An empty paragraph at the end of a content control, which forms often use.

Delete those by hand: click in the empty line and press Delete or Backspace. An empty table row is not a blank line at all; delete the row itself. When the leftover is a whole empty page at the end, the steps for deleting a page in Word cover that, and pasted content full of manual breaks may need all page breaks removed too.

One more lookalike: a thin line across the page that won’t go away is a drawn line or a border, not a blank line. Microsoft’s steps for removing a line say to select it and press Delete, or, if you can’t select it, place the cursor just above it, open the arrow next to Borders on the Home tab, and choose No Border.

Use paragraph spacing instead of pressing Enter twice

Blank lines usually come back because someone presses Enter twice to separate paragraphs. Paragraph spacing does the same job without empty paragraphs, so Replace, page breaks and layout behave predictably. Set a few points of space after each paragraph in the paragraph settings, and the gap appears automatically every time you press Enter once.

If the gaps are too wide after cleanup, it is spacing again, not blank lines. See removing extra space between paragraphs for the settings, removing extra space in Word to match each other kind of gap to its fix, and fitting a document onto one page if the goal was to save a page.

Check the result and undo

• Look before you leave: With formatting marks still on, scroll through. Headings, lists and tables should still sit on their own lines.
• Undo right away if paragraphs merged: Press Ctrl+Z immediately after Replace All. Merged paragraphs usually mean ^p was typed in Find what instead of ^p^p, or the document had no blank lines in the first place.
• Keep the copy until you are happy: A large document can need several passes, and the saved copy is your fallback if an earlier pass went wrong.

Empty paragraph questions

Why does one Replace All pass leave some blank lines behind?

Because each pass only collapses pairs. Wherever three or more marks sat in a row, at least one empty line survives the first pass. Run it again until Word reports 0, or use the wildcard pattern to handle every run at once.

How do I delete blank lines in only part of a document?

Select that part first, then run Replace All. Word works through the selection, and it may then ask whether to continue through the rest of the document; choose No to leave the rest alone.

Why can’t I delete the empty line just above a table?

Replace can’t remove it, but you can usually delete it by clicking in it and pressing Delete. If the table sits at the top of the document, that empty line is the only place to type above it, so you may want to keep it. If you delete it, click at the start of the first cell and press Enter to get it back.

Can I stop Word adding blank lines when I paste?

The blank lines come from the source text, not from Word. Pasting as plain text and then running the cleanup above is the most reliable route; for repeated imports, setting paragraph spacing in your template keeps the result tidy.

Next step: open the document, turn on formatting marks, and use the table at the top to pick your codes.