How to remove line breaks in Word

Two kinds of line break

Turn on formatting marks with the ¶ button on the Home tab to see which kind your text has:

• Paragraph mark (¶): made by pressing Enter. Text pasted from a PDF or an email often has one at the end of every line.
• Manual line break (↵): made by pressing Shift+Enter. It starts a new line inside the same paragraph.

The Special menu lists both, so you can replace one without touching the other.

Remove every line break (Windows)

1. Go to Home > Editing > Replace, or press Ctrl+H.
2. Select More to see all the options.
3. Click in Find what but don't type anything.
4. Open the Special menu and choose Paragraph Mark (or Manual Line Break). Word puts the character's code in the box for you.
5. In Replace with, type a single space.
6. Select Replace All.

Microsoft suggests choosing Replace rather than Replace All when you're unsure, so you can check each change before it's made.

Remove every line break (Mac)

1. Select View > Navigation Pane, then the magnifying glass.
2. Select Settings, then Advanced Find & Replace, and open the Replace tab.
3. Select the arrow at the bottom of the dialog to show all the options.
4. Click in Find what, open the Special menu and choose the break you want to remove.
5. Type a space in Replace with and select Replace All.

Keep paragraphs, remove the breaks inside them

Text from a PDF usually has a break at the end of every line and a blank line between paragraphs. Replacing every break would merge the whole document into one block. Do it in three passes instead:

1. Protect the paragraph gaps. In Find what, add Paragraph Mark from the Special menu twice. In Replace with, type a marker that doesn't appear in your text, such as ###. Replace All.
2. Join the lines. In Find what, add Paragraph Mark once. In Replace with, type a space. Replace All.
3. Put the paragraphs back. In Find what, type ###. In Replace with, add Paragraph Mark from the Special menu. Replace All.

Then clean up double spaces: put two spaces in Find what and one in Replace with, and Replace All until Word finds none.

The faster way for pasted text

If the text came from a PDF, an email or a website, it's quicker to clean it before it goes into Word. Paste it into the box below. It keeps paragraphs, joins the lines inside them, rejoins words split with a hyphen at the end of a line, and tidies double spaces in one go. Then copy the result into your document.

Rejoining hyphenated words is the part Word's Find and Replace can't do easily. A PDF that splits "infor-" and "mation" across two lines leaves "infor- mation" after a simple replace; the tool turns it back into "information".

Breaks that aren't line breaks

Some gaps in Word look like line breaks but aren't:

• Paragraph spacing. Space before or after a paragraph looks like an empty line. Check it on the Layout tab and set it to 0 if you don't want it.
• Page and section breaks. These show in the Special menu too, as Manual Page Break and Section Break.
• Text wrapping. In a narrow table cell or text box, Word wraps text onto new lines without any break character. Widen the cell or box instead.
• Borders. A line drawn under a paragraph is a border, not a break. Remove it from the Borders menu on the Home tab.

Before you replace everything

• Save a copy of the document first, or be ready to press Ctrl+Z.
• Turn on the ¶ marks so you can see what changed.
• Headings, lists and tables also end with paragraph marks, so Replace All joins them too. Use Replace and Find Next to step through them, or clean only the pasted part in the tool above.