If you are looking for a way to remove double spaces in a Microsoft Word document, it is likely that you are either dealing with a document with double spaces between paragraphs or a document with double spacing between the sentences.
While having single or double spacing between the paragraphs can be a matter of personal choice or the required submission format (acadamic essays & research papers), the old practice of adding a double space after every period, comma and colon might be perceived as ignorance or mistake by others.
In case you are interested, you can read more about the origins of double spacing between sentences in this article.
Remove Double Spaces in Word Document
If you are dealing with a document with double spacing between paragarphs, it can easily converted into a document with regular spacing by using “Paragraph spacing” feature as available in Microsoft Word.
Similarly, Microsoft Word comes with a robust “Search & Replace” function; which can be used to remove double spacing between words in a Word document.
1. Remove Double Spacing Between Paragraphs in Word Document
If you are dealing with a large document, you can single space the whole or part of the document by using the following steps.
1. Open the Word Document that has double spacing between the paragraphs.
2. Once the document is open, switch to Design tab and locate Paragraph Spacing option.
3. Next, click Paragraph Spacing and select No Paragraph Space option in the drop-down menu.
Clicking on No Paragraph space option will override the current double spaced setting for the document and switch it back to the default (single space) setting.
2. Remove Double Spacing Between Sentences in Word Document
As mentioned above, double spacing between sentences in a Word Document can be removed by using the “Search & Replace” function as available in Microsoft Word.
1. Open the Microsoft Word Document that has double spaces between sentences.
2. Select a portion of the Document and click on the Replace option as available in the Home menu.
3. On the “Find and Replace” window that appears, insert two spaces in “Find What” box, and insert one space in “Replace With” box.
Note: You can also press CTRL + H to bring up the “Find and Replace” dialogue box
4. After typing or inserting the Find and Replace items, click on Replace All button to replace all instances of double spaces with single space in the selected portion of the Word document.
5. You will see a pop-up, informing you about the number of replacement done. Click on OK to close the pop-up.
Similarly, you can select remaining portions of the document and repeat the above steps to replace double spaces between sentences with a single space.
Note: If you do not select any portion of the document and use Search & Replace, Microsoft Word will search the entire document for double spaces and replace them with single space.
However, the disadvantage of allowing “Search and Replace” to work on the whole document is that Microsoft Word will replace all instances of double spaces, including tab spaces. For this reason, it is safer to perform the “Search and Replace” procedure on selected sections of the Word Document.