Remove Line Breaks
By Richard Rost
4 years ago
Remove Line Breaks or Hard Returns in Documents
In this Microsoft Word tutorial, I'm going to teach you how to remove line breaks or hard returns from Microsoft Word documents. It happens all the time. Someone sends you a text file or an email, and you want to edit it in Microsoft Word, but when you copy it over, the lines are all cut off. They either pressed ENTER at the end of each line (which is a no-no) or their software did it automatically. Let's see how to fix it.
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Intro In this video, I will show you how to remove unwanted line breaks or hard returns from your Microsoft Word documents using the Find and Replace feature. You'll see step-by-step how to clean up text pasted from sources like Notepad or email, including tips for handling both paragraph marks and line breaks, and how to make sure you only keep the actual paragraph breaks you want. I'll also show you how to use different paste options and cover a quick find and replace for double spaces after periods.Transcript Welcome to another Fast Tips video brought to you by wordlearningzone.com. I am your instructor Richard Rost. In today's video, I'm going to show you how to remove line breaks or hard returns from your Microsoft Word documents.
Here is the problem. I'm sure you've seen this happen at least once or twice. Someone sends you a file or an email with a document, but they hit Enter at the end of each line while they were typing it, or somehow it got converted that way. I know that sometimes when I send emails out through different pieces of software that I use, that software does this automatically. So I email it to someone and it ends up coming in like this in their inbox.
You want to take this information, copy and paste it over to Microsoft Word, and edit it like a nice, pretty document. You have a problem because, as we know if we've taken my Word courses, you don't press Enter at the end of each line. You let Microsoft Word do the word wrap for you, where it brings the text around to the next line automatically.
So how do we fix this when we get this sent to us from someone else? Let's take a look.
Here is problem number one. We're going to take a look at two different examples. One, if someone sends you a text file, like if you open it up in Notepad and you have this, they hit Enter at the end of each line. Then we'll take a look at an email in just a minute because they're both handled slightly differently.
So let's copy this text and put it inside Microsoft Word. Go to the top right corner, select all text, Control C, copy, then open up Word, go to a blank new document, and Control V to paste.
There is my text, and as you can see, it's cut off each line. The first thing I'm going to do is turn on the paragraph markings, this guy right there. Show/hide the paragraph markers, and you'll see this one has a hard return at the end of each line. We have to get rid of those.
The easiest way to do this is with a Find and Replace. Microsoft Word treats these characters as actual characters, so we can find and replace in our text. Up here in the Editing section on the Home tab of the ribbon, we're going to find Replace, and if you look, it says Control H. Remember that if you use this a lot. That's the keyboard shortcut, Control H. That will bring up the Find and Replace dialog box.
Now I want to find all these paragraph marks. Go to More, come down here to Special. These are all the special characters, and at the very top, there's Paragraph Mark. Don't pick Paragraph Character. That's different. That's the actual character of the paragraph symbol in your document. You don't want that one. You want Paragraph Mark.
Now, Word puts ^p in there. That's the shortcut code for a paragraph mark, and I want to replace those paragraph marks with nothing, just bring the next line up. Hit Replace All, and we made 34 replacements.
Let's move this over here. It looks okay so far, but it got rid of the actual paragraph marks that I want. Let's undo that. Control Z. Put it back the way it was. Right here, I want to keep that one. So anywhere I find two of them next to each other, we have to replace that with something else first. This is the trick.
What we're going to do is use ^p^p. Wherever you find two of those next to each other, replace it with something else, some kind of placeholder. I'll just put in here like (XXX), something that won't appear anywhere else in your document. Use curly braces or whatever.
Now hit Replace All. Made three replacements. That's fine. Each place there should be a paragraph break uses that little XXX thing. Now we can get rid of the regular paragraph marks. Go back to just a single paragraph marker and replace that with nothing. Hit Replace All. There we go. 28 replacements.
Now let's put the actual paragraph marks that we want back in. Put the XXX code that you made in there, and then go ^p here and then Replace All. There you go. Then you can have the document with the line breaks removed.
You might have some instances, as I can see right here, you might have to put a couple of spaces in randomly. Clean it up, or that could be an error in the original document. Let me see. Sometimes what happens is when the document comes in like this, sometimes they'll leave a little space after the line, and sometimes, like this line here, it didn't. So you might have to do a little manual editing.
Let's clear this up. I'm just going to delete this text, Control A, delete. Let's go take a look at the second thing that happens.
Here I am in my Gmail inbox. Someone did the same thing. They just copied and pasted the text and sent it to me in an email. I'm going to select all this text, right down to about there. Copy, Control C. Go back to Word, paste it in, Control V.
Now, in this case, it came in a little differently. Instead of paragraph marks, Gmail formats this with line breaks. It's the same thing as if you were to hit Shift Enter on your keyboard. Those are line breaks.
You could go through a whole different set of replacing these line break characters, the paragraph marks, and spaces. But the key here is when you paste in the text from Gmail or any other application, you want to make sure that you paste it in as plain text.
I've already moved off of that. Watch this. Let me undo. Let me paste it again. As soon as you hit paste, down here, you get this little box, the paste options. Drop that down and pick that option.
You have some different paste options here. Keep the source formatting, in other words, keep the way that Gmail formatted it. Merge formatting now, or this one, Keep Text Only. You only want the text, because now it brings it in just like that, just like normal text. Then we can use the same steps I just showed you a minute ago.
The alternative is you could take it from Gmail, copy and paste it into Notepad, and then copy and paste it from Notepad into Word, and then Word will have it as plain text. Either way, now it works the same as I showed you before.
While you're at it, do a replace for people who put two spaces after a period with just one space. There are people who learned typing back in 1980 who still do that. I'll be honest, I still do it sometimes too. You don't have to do that anymore. Now we've got fonts that are sized automatically, and there's a little bit of extra space in the period fonts now. Not all of them; I've found some that don't do that, but most do.
So there is your Microsoft Word Fast Tip for today. If you want to learn more about Find and Replace, I cover it in my Microsoft Word Level 2 class. It's only $1, folks, $1. It's an hour long.
Level 1 is free. It's on my website, 76 minutes long. It teaches you all the basics. It's free. Level 2 is another hour plus, and I'm currently in the process of rerecording all of my Word classes. It's currently 2022, and these ones are a little older, but all the stuff I show in these 2007 lessons, 2010, nothing's really changed. There's some advanced stuff they've added, but Word really has not changed that much since 2007.
So stop on my website, check them out. I hope you learned something today, and we'll see you next time.
If you'd like to see me release more Microsoft Word videos, be sure to like this video, subscribe to my channel, and post a comment below saying you'd like more Word videos. Right now, about 90 percent of the videos that I make are for Microsoft Access, database design, but I love Word, and I'm totally willing to make more Word videos, but I need to hear from you. The more people that comment, the more Word videos I'll make.
In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more about Microsoft Word, come to my website at wordlearningzone.com, and you can watch my full Microsoft Word Beginner Level 1 class absolutely free. It's over an hour long, and it covers all the basics. If you like Level 1, you can get Level 2, which is another full hour-long course for just $1.
Again, visit my website at wordlearningzone.com, or you can click on the links down below the video.Quiz Q1. What is the typical cause of unwanted line breaks in documents received from others?
A. Hitting Enter at the end of each line while typing
B. Inserting too many images
C. Using large font sizes
D. Changing the page orientation
Q2. What is the preferred way to handle word wrapping in Microsoft Word when typing a document?
A. Let Word handle word wrap automatically
B. Press Enter at the end of every line
C. Use Tab after each sentence
D. Manually add spaces to break lines
Q3. How can you view paragraph markings in Microsoft Word?
A. Use the Show/Hide Paragraph Markers button
B. Change the document view to Outline
C. Increase the font size
D. Print the document
Q4. In the Find and Replace dialog, which special character should you use to find hard returns or paragraph marks?
A. Paragraph Mark ( p)
B. Paragraph Character
C. Line Break ( l)
D. Section Break
Q5. What is the essential first step before removing all paragraph marks if you want to keep actual paragraph breaks?
A. Replace double paragraph marks with a placeholder
B. Delete all text in the document
C. Print the document first
D. Change the font to Times New Roman
Q6. Which keyboard shortcut opens the Find and Replace dialog in Microsoft Word?
A. Control H
B. Control P
C. Control D
D. Control F1
Q7. When pasting text into Word from Gmail, what undesirable formatting often appears?
A. Line breaks as if Shift Enter was used
B. Bold formatting on every word
C. Automatic hyperlinks on all text
D. Inverted colors
Q8. What is the recommended paste option to use when pasting text from Gmail into Word to avoid formatting issues?
A. Keep Text Only
B. Keep Source Formatting
C. Merge Formatting
D. Paste as Picture
Q9. What is an alternative method to paste plain text into Word if formatted text keeps causing problems?
A. Paste into Notepad first, then copy from Notepad into Word
B. Change paper size before pasting
C. Save as PDF before pasting
D. Use Print Preview before editing
Q10. What additional clean-up does the instructor suggest when preparing text in Word?
A. Replace two spaces after periods with one space
B. Change all text to uppercase
C. Add headers to each page
D. Remove all bold formatting
Answers: 1-A; 2-A; 3-A; 4-A; 5-A; 6-A; 7-A; 8-A; 9-A; 10-A
DISCLAIMER: Quiz questions are AI generated. If you find any that are wrong, don't make sense, or aren't related to the video topic at hand, then please post a comment and let me know. Thanks.Summary Today's video from Word Learning Zone explains how to remove unwanted line breaks or hard returns from your Microsoft Word documents. This is a common issue that happens when someone sends you a file or an email where they have hit Enter at the end of each line, or if a piece of software formats the text that way automatically. When you want to copy this information into Microsoft Word and make it look like a properly formatted document, those extra line breaks get in the way.
Ideally, you should let Word handle word wrapping for you and avoid pressing Enter at the end of each line. But if you receive a document with hard returns at the end of every line, you need a method to clean it up.
First, let's talk about how to fix this problem when you receive a text file, such as one you open in Notepad and see a line break at the end of every line. After copying this text into Word, the document will still have unwanted hard returns breaking up the text. The best way to address this is by using Word's Find and Replace feature.
To begin, show the paragraph marks in your document so you can see where the hard returns occur. Then open the Find and Replace dialog box, which you can access quickly with the Control H keyboard shortcut. You want to search for the Paragraph Mark special character, which Word represents using a shortcut code. Be careful not to select the Paragraph Character, as it's different.
At first, you might want to simply replace all the paragraph marks with nothing so all the lines join together, but this also gets rid of the real paragraph breaks you want to keep. The trick is to look for places where two paragraph marks appear in a row. These typically indicate the actual separation between paragraphs. Replace the double paragraph marks with something unique, like a placeholder (for example, (XXX) or some other string that will not appear elsewhere in your document). Once those are marked, you can safely remove all single paragraph marks.
After removing the singles, the only thing dividing your paragraphs is your placeholder string. Now, do a final Find and Replace to swap out the placeholder with a real paragraph break, and your document will be properly formatted. You may still need to check your document for small formatting issues or extra spaces, as manual edits might be required if the original text was inconsistent.
Next, let's discuss the situation where you receive this kind of text in an email, such as in Gmail. Emails may handle line breaks differently by using line breaks instead of paragraph marks. These are what you get when you press Shift Enter on your keyboard. When you paste this email text into Word, it might appear differently.
To solve this, make sure to paste as plain text. When you paste in Word, you get paste options; choose the one for "Keep Text Only." This removes formatting and allows you to follow the same Find and Replace steps described earlier. Alternatively, you can paste the email text into Notepad first, copy it again, and paste from Notepad into Word. Either way, this ensures you have plain text for the clean-up process.
While you are cleaning up your document, it's also helpful to use Find and Replace to correct double spaces after periods to single spaces. Many people still use two spaces out of habit from older typing conventions, but modern fonts and software do not require this anymore.
If you would like to learn more about using Find and Replace in Word, I cover this in detail in my Microsoft Word Level 2 class, which is available for just one dollar. If you are new to Word, I also offer a free Beginner Level 1 class that covers the basics, and both of these can be found on my website. The methods I teach work in versions of Word from 2007 onward since core features have changed very little.
If there is interest in more Microsoft Word video tutorials, let me know by liking and commenting. Although most of my content currently focuses on Microsoft Access and database design, I am happy to produce more Word videos if there is enough demand.
For complete step-by-step instructions on everything discussed here, you can find a full video tutorial on my website at the link below. Live long and prosper, my friends.Topic List Removing hard returns from Word documents
Using Find and Replace for paragraph marks
Understanding paragraph marks vs. paragraph characters
Replacing multiple consecutive paragraph marks
Replacing hard returns with placeholders
Restoring true paragraph breaks after line break removal
Dealing with line breaks from email (Gmail)
Pasting text as plain text using paste options
Using Notepad as an intermediary for plain text
Fixing double spaces after periods using Find and Replace |
