How do I remove double spaces in Word?

You can do it in Word with Find & Replace (search for two spaces, replace with one), but it only catches that one case. Paste the text above and the cleaner strips every variant — double spaces, tabs, zero-width characters, extra blank lines — in one pass.

What is a regex for whitespace?

\s matches any whitespace character (space, tab, line break, plus Unicode whitespace). \s{2,} matches two or more in a row. [^\S\r\n]{2,} matches two or more horizontal whitespace characters without eating line breaks, which is what you want for most 'collapse multiple spaces' tasks.

Does this work with tabs?

Yes. Enable 'Remove tabs' to convert tabs to a single space. The cleaner treats tabs and spaces separately so you can target them independently.

Can I remove line breaks too?

Yes. Enable 'Remove line breaks' to collapse the entire text into one line. Useful for CSV cells or when the source used line breaks as soft wraps rather than paragraph separators.

What are zero-width characters?

Invisible Unicode characters that sneak in from word processors: ZWSP, ZWJ, ZWNJ, and BOM. They look like nothing but cause string-matching code to fail. The cleaner removes them by default.

Will it break my code indentation?

Only if you enable 'Remove tabs' or 'Trim each line' on code. For prose, the defaults are safe. For code, disable those two rules and keep the rest on.

Multiple Whitespace Remover

Collapse extra spaces, tabs, and line breaks in one click.

All cleaning happens in your browser. Your text is never uploaded.

Input

155 characters

Cleaned

Hello, world!

This text has multiple issues:

multiple blank lines, extra spaces, trailing whitespace, tabs, and zero-widthgarbage.

132 characters · −23 removed

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What is a Multiple Whitespace Remover?

A whitespace remover strips unwanted spaces, tabs, line breaks, and invisible characters from a block of text. Messy whitespace enters text from a dozen places — copy-pasting from a PDF, OCR output, old-school email quoting, a tab-indented CSV column, or an editor that inserted zero-width Unicode characters without telling you. The result: broken JSON, off-centre layout, failed CSV parsers, and lots of tiny formatting bugs nobody can reproduce until someone runs the text through a cleaner.

Whitespace comes in several forms. The ordinary space (U+0020) is what a spacebar produces. The tab (U+0009) is a single character that renders as a variable-width gap depending on the font and editor. A line break might be a lone line feed (\n, Unix), a lone carriage return (\r, classic Mac), or both together (\r\n, Windows). On top of those, text can contain non-breaking space (U+00A0), thin space, and a whole family of Unicode whitespace characters that look identical to a regular space but break string-matching code.

Zero-width characters deserve a special mention. The Zero-Width Space (ZWSP,U+200B), Zero-Width Joiner (ZWJ, U+200D), Zero-Width Non-Joiner (ZWNJ,U+200C), and Byte-Order Mark (BOM, U+FEFF) are invisible but very real; they sneak into text from Word, Google Docs, and many CMSes. They cause string comparisons to fail silently and make grep and find-and-replace behave mysteriously. Our cleaner strips them by default.

The cleaning rules are composable. Collapse multiple spaces reduces any run of 2+ spaces (but not tabs or newlines) to a single space, per line. Trim each line strips leading and trailing whitespace on every line independently — the right thing for code blocks and markdown. Collapse blank lines reduces 3+ consecutive blank lines to 2, which keeps paragraph breaks while removing the "scroll holes" that come from overly-enthusiastic Shift+Enter pressing. Remove line breaks is the nuclear option — it joins the entire text into one line, which you typically want for CSV cells or when the source treats line breaks as soft wraps rather than paragraph markers.

Developers use this tool to sanitise fixture data before importing into a database, to strip OCR artefacts from scanned PDFs, and to normalise Git diffs that got polluted by whitespace changes. Writers and editors use it to clean copy-pastes from PDFs where each line ends in a manual line break, making paragraphs impossible. Content managers use it to de-pollute text copied from Word, which often includes a dozen invisible formatting characters for every visible one.

How to use the Whitespace Remover

Paste your messy text. Drop whatever is broken into the input box.
Pick the cleaning rules. The defaults cover 90% of cases; toggle extras for stricter cleans.
Review the cleaned output. The right panel shows the result and a count of removed characters.
Copy or download. Paste back into your source or save as a .txt file.

Features

Eight composable cleaning rules with live preview.
Strips zero-width Unicode characters (ZWSP, ZWJ, ZWNJ, BOM) by default.
Optional non-ASCII stripping for pure-ASCII outputs.
Preserves paragraph structure while collapsing blank-line runs.
Character diff shown in the output panel.
Copy and download; no network traffic.

Frequently asked questions

How do I remove double spaces in Word?: You can do it in Word with Find & Replace (search for two spaces, replace with one), but it only catches that one case. Paste the text above and the cleaner strips every variant — double spaces, tabs, zero-width characters, extra blank lines — in one pass.
What is a regex for whitespace?: \s matches any whitespace character (space, tab, line break, plus Unicode whitespace). \s{2,} matches two or more in a row. [^\S\r\n]{2,} matches two or more horizontal whitespace characters without eating line breaks, which is what you want for most 'collapse multiple spaces' tasks.
Does this work with tabs?: Yes. Enable 'Remove tabs' to convert tabs to a single space. The cleaner treats tabs and spaces separately so you can target them independently.
Can I remove line breaks too?: Yes. Enable 'Remove line breaks' to collapse the entire text into one line. Useful for CSV cells or when the source used line breaks as soft wraps rather than paragraph separators.
What are zero-width characters?: Invisible Unicode characters that sneak in from word processors: ZWSP, ZWJ, ZWNJ, and BOM. They look like nothing but cause string-matching code to fail. The cleaner removes them by default.
Will it break my code indentation?: Only if you enable 'Remove tabs' or 'Trim each line' on code. For prose, the defaults are safe. For code, disable those two rules and keep the rest on.