Remove Empty Lines

What this tool does

Blank lines pile up when text is copied between programs, exported from a PDF, or pasted from an email. They break up lists, add awkward gaps, and create empty elements when pasted into a web editor. This tool removes them — either all of them, or just the extras when several stack up in a row.

How to use it

1. Paste the text with the blank-line problem.
2. Choose Remove all blank lines for a tight block, or Collapse runs to keep single blank lines as separators while removing the doubles and triples.
3. Keep Treat lines with only spaces as blank on, so lines that look empty but contain spaces are removed too.
4. Copy the cleaned result.

How blank lines are detected

The tool works line by line. A line is considered blank when it is completely empty, or — with Treat lines with only spaces as blank on — when it contains nothing but spaces and tabs. That second option matters because "empty" lines from a copy-paste often hold a stray space, which a naive tool would keep.

In remove mode, every blank line is deleted and the remaining lines close up. In collapse mode, a run of consecutive blank lines is replaced by a single blank line, so paragraph separation is preserved while the excess is removed. This is the right choice when the blank lines are meaningful but there are simply too many of them.

Windows and old Mac line endings are normalized first, so a file from any operating system is cleaned consistently. The Trim spaces option additionally removes leading and trailing whitespace from the non-blank lines it keeps.

Examples

This input (each ¶ is a line):

First line

Second line



Third line

In remove mode becomes three tight lines. In collapse mode it becomes:

First line

Second line

Third line

with single blank lines kept as separators and the extra gaps removed. A frequent use: a list pasted from a spreadsheet arrives with a blank line after every row; remove mode turns it back into a clean list in one click.

Common use cases

• Cleaning copied lists where every item is separated by a blank line.
• Tidying PDF and email exports that scatter blank lines through the text.
• Preparing text for a CMS so it does not create empty paragraphs.
• Normalizing spacing between paragraphs with collapse mode.
• Compacting data before importing it into another tool.

For repeated lines rather than blank ones, use Remove Duplicate Lines; to also reorder, use Sort Lines.

Privacy and security

Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, so pasted lists and documents stay private. Your options are saved locally. See the privacy policy.