How to Remove Extra Spaces in Word

Word text picks up extra spaces from typing habits, double-spacing after periods, and pasting from email or the web. This guide covers Word's own fix for double spaces and blank lines, what Word's Find and Replace can't do on its own, and one trap that catches people who think it isn't working.

Find and Replace for double spaces

Open Find and Replace, search for two spaces, and replace with one space:

Click Replace All again after it finishes. Word pairs up spaces two at a time, so a run of three or more spaces needs more than one click. Keep clicking Replace All until Word reports that zero replacements were made. That's the sign the job is done.

Spaces at the start or end of a line

Find and Replace matches exact text, not where that text sits on a line. There's no simple built-in search for "the start or end of every line." This is the case where pasting your text into the free tool and ticking Trim edges is faster than building a Find and Replace pattern by hand.

Removing blank lines

Open Find and Replace, then use the Special menu to insert paragraph marks:

As with double spaces, click Replace All repeatedly until Word reports zero replacements. Text with several blank lines in a row needs more than one pass to collapse completely.

The non-breaking space trap

Text copied from a webpage sometimes contains non-breaking spaces that look identical to regular spaces but aren't matched by a plain-space search, so a double-space replace can report zero replacements even though gaps are still visible. Turn on formatting marks (Ctrl+Shift+8) to see them; they show as a faint degree-sign-like dot instead of a plain dot between words.

For a one-off cleanup, or text pasted from more than one source, running it through the free tool first is usually faster than building the Find and Replace steps above by hand. It handles double spaces, blank lines, and line-start/end spaces in one paste.