Remove Empty Lines Tool

What Is the Remove Empty Lines Tool?

This tool cleans up blank lines in text -- either removing every blank line entirely, or collapsing runs of multiple consecutive blank lines down to a single one, useful for cleaning up excessive paragraph spacing without eliminating intentional breaks entirely.

How to Use This Tool

Paste text and choose "Remove all blank lines" or "Collapse consecutive blank lines to one." The cleaned-up version appears instantly.

How the Two Modes Differ

Practical Uses

• Cleaning up text copy-pasted from a PDF or document with excessive blank lines
• Tightening a data export that has stray empty rows
• Normalizing paragraph spacing in a document without removing all breaks

For trimming extra spaces within lines (not blank lines between them), see the Whitespace Trimmer.

Exactly What Each Mode Does to Your Text

The tool splits your text at every line break, whether the source uses Windows-style or Unix-style endings, and then rebuilds it joined with plain line breaks. In the remove mode, any line that is empty or contains only spaces and tabs is dropped. In the collapse mode, the first blank line in a run is kept and any further consecutive blank lines are dropped. Note that a kept blank line is left exactly as it was, so if it contained a few spaces, those spaces stay.

Worked Example

The starting sample is "Line one", an empty line, "Line two", two empty lines, and "Line three". In remove mode the output is three consecutive lines with no gaps: Line one, Line two, Line three. In collapse mode the output keeps one empty line between each pair, giving Line one, a blank line, Line two, a blank line, Line three. The double gap before Line three has become a single gap. Switching the dropdown between the two modes lets you compare the results immediately.

Details That Can Surprise You

• Line breaks in the output are always simple newlines. If you need Windows-style endings for a particular system, convert them afterward in your editor.
• Blank lines at the very start or end of the text are affected too. In remove mode they disappear. In collapse mode a run of blank lines at the top or bottom shrinks to one, rather than vanishing.
• Lines are judged blank only by whether they contain non-whitespace characters. A line holding only an unusual whitespace character may or may not be treated as blank depending on how that character is classified, so if a stubborn line survives, check for hidden characters.
• Text inside non-blank lines is never edited. Indentation, trailing spaces and internal spacing are all preserved.

Choosing a Mode for Specific Jobs

For prose, such as an article pasted from a PDF, collapse mode usually gives the best result, because it removes stray extra gaps while keeping paragraph separation. For structured data such as a list of URLs, email addresses, product codes or log entries, remove mode is normally what you want, since each entry should sit on its own line with nothing between. For source code, be more careful: blank lines often separate logical blocks and improve readability, so collapse mode is gentler, and you may prefer to leave blank lines alone entirely in formats where they carry meaning, such as Markdown paragraphs.

Checking Your Result

Compare the number of lines before and after in your editor if the count matters. If the output still looks spaced out, the extra space may come from long wrapped lines rather than true blank lines, or from paragraph spacing applied by the application you are pasting into rather than by the text itself.

Frequently Asked Questions