Remove Empty Lines: Tidying Pasted Text
Text copied from a PDF, a web page, or a chat window often arrives with a blank line after every line. Removing them loses no words; it just stops the text from being stretched out.
Open the tool：Remove Empty Lines
When you actually need it
PDF and web copies are the worst offenders: every line is followed by a blank one, so a page of text fills two screens once pasted into a document. Removing the blanks and then setting paragraph spacing gives a more predictable layout.
Chat logs, subtitle drafts, and single columns copied out of a spreadsheet carry the same baggage. Before counting rows or importing into a system, removing blank lines stops empty values from being read as records. Long runs of blank lines in code are another common target.
- Cleaning up a PDF or web copy
- Removing empty rows before an import
- Compressing blank runs in code
How to avoid breaking the layout
A line counts as empty when it contains nothing but whitespace, so lines holding only spaces or tabs are removed too. That is usually what you want, but it also means alignment built from spaces on otherwise empty lines disappears.
Removing every blank line also removes the gaps between paragraphs, leaving one solid block. If the original used blank lines to mark paragraphs, split them again afterwards. Markdown is the risky case: paragraphs, lists, and code blocks all depend on blank lines, so the rendered structure changes.
- Whitespace-only lines are removed as well
- Paragraph gaps disappear with the blanks
- Markdown needs blank lines between blocks
Alternatives and when not to use it
If you want to keep paragraph spacing and only collapse repeats, reduce runs of blank lines to one with a find-and-replace or a script, then tidy spaces separately. This tool removes them all, which is a heavier change.
For Markdown, a formatter such as Prettier is safer than deleting by hand, and for code use the editor formatter. Plain text destined for an email or a web form is the case where removing blank lines is exactly right.
FAQ
Are lines with only spaces removed?
Yes. The test is whether a line contains any non-whitespace character, so lines with spaces or tabs alone are deleted too. If those spaces were used for alignment, the layout changes.
Why did my Markdown formatting break?
Markdown separates paragraphs, lists, and code blocks with blank lines. Once those are gone the blocks merge and the rendered structure changes. Use a Markdown formatter instead.
Does it delete any actual text?
No. Only lines with no visible characters are removed, and the content and order of the rest stays the same. Keep a backup anyway so you can compare afterwards.
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