Files contain empty lines, If the file size is very small, You can delete it manually.

If the file contains a thousand lines, You want to find and remove empty lines.

It is very difficult and time-consuming to do it manually.

Notepad++ provides a Find and replace feature to search and replace the text or patterns of text with new text.

How to Remove Empty or blank lines in Notepad++?

There are multiple ways you can remove the lines.

  • Use Line Operations

  • Open the file in Notepad++ Editor.

  • Select Edit> Line Operations > select One of it

    • Remove Empty Lines
    • Remove Empty Lines( Containing Blank Characters)

  • It removes the empty or blank character line from the entire file

The only disadvantage of this approach is that it will not work with part or selection of text in a file.

  • Find and Search with regular expression

Find and search is an inbuilt feature in the editor.

  • Open Search > Replace or use Shortcut Ctrl + H

  • It opens Replace Window

  • Select and type below

    • Find What with ^\R - for blank lines, ^\h*\R for blank lines with empty characters)
    • Replace with empty
    • Check Wrap Around
    • Select Search Mode as Regular Expression
    • Click on the Replace All button.

  • Use TextFx plugin

    • First, TextFx plugin
    • Select TextFx >TextFX Edit > Select Delete Blank Lines or Delete Surplus Blank Lines
    • It removes empty lines and blank characters in empty lines.