Replace line breaks in Word

What is a line break

In a word processing program like Microsoft Word, a line break is a special character that marks the end of one line of text and the beginning of a new line. When you press the "Enter" key on your keyboard, it inserts a line break at the point in the document where the cursor is located. In Microsoft Word, it looks like this:



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Why replace line break

To ensure the source file is formatted correctly, line breaks should be replaced with paragraph breaks. In Word, a paragraph break is represented by a special symbol called a "pilcrow" (¶), which is visible in the "Show/Hide" button.



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How to replace line break with paragraph break

- Press Ctrl + h to open the Find & Replace dialog box.
- In Find what, type ^l (lowercase L)
- In Replace with, type ^p.
- Click on Replace All.



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Line breaks in the end of each line

Sometimes texts copied from a PDF file may have incorrect format. You may see that in the end of each line, there is a line break.

To fix this issue, you can replace all line breaks with nothing (leave blank).

Updated on: 01/24/2023