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Remove Extra Spaces
Paste messy text and this free tool will Remove Extra Spaces from it — collapsing double and triple spaces into one, fixing tab characters, trimming the ragged edges of every line and deleting empty lines. It is the two-minute cleanup for text copied out of PDFs, emails, Word files and web pages. Tick only the fixes you want, watch the before and after counts, and copy the tidy result. Everything happens in your browser.
Untick an option if it removes something you actually want — code and poetry, for example, sometimes need their spacing left alone.
How to use this tool
- Paste your text into the top box.
- Tick the fixes you want — all five are on by default, which suits most copied text.
- The cleaned result and the before/after counts update as you type and tick.
- Press Copy Clean Text, or Download .txt for a longer document.
How the cleanup works
The tool runs your text through the ticked fixes in a fixed, sensible order — the same order a careful human editor would use:
Order matters. Tabs are converted first so they can join the space-collapsing step; lines are trimmed before blank lines are judged, because a line containing only spaces is a blank line in disguise; and the whole-text trim comes last, once the inside is tidy. Each option works on its own, too — untick “Remove blank lines” and your paragraph breaks survive while the spaces are still fixed. What the tool never touches is the inside of a word or the single spaces between words: it removes clutter, not content.
| Option | What it does | Turn it off when… |
|---|---|---|
| Collapse spaces | Every run of 2+ spaces becomes one | The spacing is meaningful (ASCII art, tables) |
| Tabs → space | Each tab character becomes a single space | You are cleaning code to paste back into an editor |
| Trim each line | Removes spaces at both ends of every line | Indentation matters (poetry, code) |
| Remove blank lines | Deletes empty lines between paragraphs | You want to keep paragraph spacing |
| Trim whole text | Removes space and blank space at the very start and end | Rarely — leading/trailing emptiness is almost never wanted |
The counts under the result are there so you can see the cleanup worked: characters, words and lines, before and after. On a long pasted document it is normal for the character count to fall by several percent — that is the weight of invisible clutter you were about to send, print or publish.
Worked example
The pre-filled box holds a tiny but typical mess: the line “a␣␣b␣” (double space in the middle, a trailing space), two blank lines, then “␣c␣”. With all five options ticked, the tool first collapses the double space, trims each line — which turns the space-only content into truly empty lines — deletes those blank lines, and trims the whole text. The result is two clean lines:
c
Nine visible characters of content, zero clutter. Scale that up to a ten-page PDF paste and the same five ticks save you an afternoon of hunting spaces by eye.
FAQ
How do I remove extra spaces from text?
Paste your text into the box and the tool cleans it instantly: runs of two or more spaces collapse into one, tab characters become a single space, every line is trimmed at both ends, blank lines are removed and the whole text is trimmed. Each fix has its own tick box, so you can keep the ones you want — untick 'Remove blank lines', for example, to keep your paragraph breaks.
Why does copied text have so many extra spaces?
Mostly because of how documents store layout. PDFs record where words sit on the page, not the spaces between them, so copying rebuilds the gaps approximately — often as double spaces or stray tabs. Justified text in Word stretches word gaps that copy out as wide spaces, and indented lines carry their indentation with them. The words are fine; only the spacing needs the cleanup this tool does.
Will this tool change my words or formatting?
It never changes a word, a letter or the single spaces between words, and it keeps your line breaks (minus blank lines, if that option is ticked). What it can flatten is spacing-based layout: indented code loses its indentation if line-trimming is on, and aligned tables built from spaces will collapse. For code or poetry, untick 'Trim each line' and 'Tabs to space' and use only the options you need.
What is the difference between spaces and tabs?
A space is a single fixed-width character; a tab is an instruction meaning 'jump to the next tab stop', so its width depends on the program showing it. Text that looks aligned in one editor falls apart in another when tabs are involved. Converting tabs to a single space makes pasted text behave the same everywhere, which is why the option is on by default when cleaning copied documents.
Can I clean a whole document at once?
Yes — paste as much as you like; the tool handles long documents in one pass and shows the character, word and line counts before and after so you can see how much clutter came out. For a very long document, use Download .txt to save the cleaned version as a file instead of copying it.
Is my text uploaded or saved?
No. The cleanup runs entirely in your browser as you type and tick; your text is never sent to a server, stored or shared. That makes it safe for drafts, documents and anything private — reload the page and it is gone.