Find return in word

Remove Paragraph Marks or Hard Returns in Microsoft Word Documents

Article by: Avantix Learning Team | Updated January 10, 2021

Applies to: Microsoft^® Word^® 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 or 365 (Windows)

You can easily remove or delete hard returns or paragraph marks in Microsoft Word using Find and Replace. In order to view and delete hard returns, you should display paragraph marks or symbols. In Word, it’s better not use use hard returns (where you’ve pressed Enter or Return) to handle spacing after paragraphs or create new pages. The fastest way to remove extra hard returns (typically two hard returns) is to use Word’s Find and Replace command and special characters.

Recommended article: How to Add or Remove Page Breaks in Microsoft Word

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Showing hard returns or paragraph marks

To view hard returns or paragraph marks and other nonprinting characters in Microsoft Word:

1. Click the Home tab in the Ribbon.
2. Click Show/Hide ¶ in the Paragraph group. Paragraph marks, tabs, spacing and manual page breaks will display but will not print. Click the same command to hide the paragraph marks and other nonprinting characters.

Removing a single hard return or paragraph mark

You can remove a single hard return or paragraph mark by dragging over it and pressing Delete.

Removing hard returns or paragraph marks using Find and Replace

Although you can select hard returns and press Delete to delete them, if you have a long document, it’s easier to use Find and Replace to delete extra hard returns. Typically, you’ll want to replace two hard returns with one.

To remove two hard returns or paragraph marks and replace with one using Find and Replace:

1. Save a copy of the Word document.
2. In the copy, position the cursor at the beginning of the document.
3. Click the Home tab in the Ribbon.
4. Click Replace in the Editing group or press Ctrl + H. The Replace dialog box appears.
5. Click More >> to expand the dialog box (if necessary).
6. Click in the Find what box.
7. From the Special menu, choose Paragraph Mark. The characters «^p» will appear.
8. From the Special menu, choose Paragraph Mark again. Two paragraph mark codes should appear (his represents two hard returns).
9. Click in the Replace with box.
10. Ensure there is nothing in the Replace with box by pressing Delete (multiple times if necessary).
11. From the Special menu, choose Paragraph Mark. The characters «^p» will appear.
12. Click Find Next.
13. Click Replace and then click Find Next to go to the next instance. Repeat for each instance. If you want to remove all instances of two hard return and replace with one hard return, click Replace All.

Below is the expanded Find and Replace dialog box:

Find and Replace is an extremely useful dialog box in Word. You can use it to find and replace formatting, styles and other special characters.

Moving forward, it’s best practice to use paragraph spacing (before and after paragraphs) to handle spacing rather than pressing Return or Enter twice after titles, subheadings and body paragraphs.

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The Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box. In the Find What box, enter the text for which you want to search. To search for a paragraph mark, enter ^p; to search for a line break, enter ^l.

How do I insert a carriage return in Find and Replace?

To replace with carriage returns (ie U+000a ) you have to create a carriage return in your text ( Shift+Return ) select and copy that character (e.g. position yourself on the line that contains it then type End, Shift+Left-Arrow, Ctrl+C ) then copy this character into the Replace With field.

How do you replace a character with a line break in Word?

Press CTRL + H for the replace form. Enter the character(s) that you want to replace with a line break. As the ‘replace with’ text you type |^ (and maybe some more characters that you need to keep) Hit ‘replace all’ and you will have your text with line breaks.

What is a new line return in Word?

“Carriage return” is a term commonly used with typewriters that you still hear today when business people talk about word processing. On computers, adding a carriage return means pressing the “Enter” key to add a hard line break so your cursor returns to the left margin to start a new paragraph.

How do I find and replace a hard return in Word?

How do I remove hard returns from my Word document?

1. Under the Home menu, click “Replace”
2. Under the Replace tab, make sure you’re in the “Find What” field.
3. Click “More” and then “Special”
4. Select “Paragraph Mark”
5. Click onto the “Replace With” field.
6. Press the space bar once.
7. Click “Replace All”

How do I find and replace return in Word?

Find and replace text

1. Go to Home > Replace or press Ctrl+H.
2. Enter the word or phrase you want to locate in the Find box.
3. Enter your new text in the Replace box.
4. Select Find Next until you come to the word you want to update.
5. Choose Replace. To update all instances at once, choose Replace All.

What’s a hard return in Word?

A “Hard Return” is placed into a word processing document when the “Enter” or “Return” key is pressed. It is most commonly used to separate paragraphs within a document. It is referred to as a “hard return” because it simulates a “carriage return” action used on typewriters to start a new line of text.

What is return in Word?

A return is the process of jumping from the end of one line of text to the beginning of the next line. Word processors utilize two types of returns: hard returns and soft returns. Whenever you press the Return or Enter key while editing a document, the word processor inserts a hard return.

What is the difference between a hard and soft return in Word?

Hard returns are used to signify the end of a paragraph, whereas soft returns simply signify the end of a line.

How do I insert a hard return in Word 2019?

The first way is to press the Enter key where you want the line to end. This results in a hard return being entered in the document. This action (pressing Enter) indicates that you have reached the end of the paragraph and want to start a new one.

How do I do a soft return in Word?

Press CTRL+F to open the Find and Replace dialog box. and then click the Special button and locate Paragraph Mark. to the newsgroup so that others can learn as well.

How do you show a return in Word?

Show or hide tab marks in Word

1. Go to File > Options > Display.
2. Under Always show these formatting marks on the screen, select the check box for each formatting mark that you always want to display regardless if the Show/Hide. button is turned on or off. Clear any check boxes for ones you don’t want always displayed.

How do I type a return symbol?

Nomenclature. The return key symbol is U+23CE ⏎ RETURN SYMBOL, an arrow pointing down and leftward; however, rendering of the symbol varies greatly by typeface, with it appearing hollow in some or with an additional initial rightward bar in others. For this reason, U+21B5 ↵ or U+21A9 ↩ are sometimes used instead.

What is line feed and carriage return?

A line feed means moving one line forward. The code is n . A carriage return means moving the cursor to the beginning of the line. The separation comes from typewriter times, when you turned the wheel to move the paper to change the line and moved the carriage to restart typing on the beginning of a line.

What is RN English?

RN means “Right Now”.

What is the use of t in Java?

What does t mean in Java? This means to insert a new tab at this specific point in the text. In the below example, “t” is used inside the println statement. It is similar to pressing the tab on our keyboard.

Written by: Hrishikesh Pardeshi, Founder at Flexiple, buildd & Remote Tools.
Last updated: Mar 03, 2023

If your job heavily revolves around writing or formatting content, you might be well acquainted with how unnecessary paragraph marks become a nuisance. Even if you have encountered them for the first time, it’s likely that their use has left you confused.

So, we’ve compiled the below points to help you understand more about paragraph marks in Word and how to remove them. This will help you churn out well-formatted docs every time with ease.

You can also skip directly to How to remove paragraph marks in Word.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What is a hard return?
2. How can you display paragraph marks in a document?
3. How to remove hard returns
4. Remove paragraph marks in Word — Find & replace paragraph marks
5. How to remove paragraph marks: Step-wise summary

What is a hard return?

A hard return or paragraph break is essentially the ending of a line and beginning of a new paragraph. Pressing the Enter key while editing the document results in the word processor inserting a hard return. The enter key forces the line to break to the next paragraph.

On the other hand, soft returns allow you to continue typing without needing to press enter to go to the next line. With a soft return, words that go beyond the right end of the text-box are automatically transferred to the next line, without having to press Enter. This is also called ‘word wrapping’.

How can you display paragraph marks in a document?

A backward ‘P’ symbol (¶), known as a ‘pilcrow’, is used to represent a hard return. You can choose to display paragraph marks in your Word document.

To do so, go to the ‘Home’ tab -> ‘Paragraph’ group. You will find a pilcrow as shown below, select it by clicking on it. This is called the ‘Show/ Hide Paragraph mark’ option.

Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut ‘Ctrl + *‘ to enable it. This function displays all the characters that won’t be printed (hidden characters). With this function enabled, you can see where hard returns occur and spot where the text breaks at the wrong places.

Hard returns tend to create all sorts of errors in the formatting of content.

However, when word wrapping is enabled, soft returns make sure that your formatting remains intact. Soft returns are represented by an arrow which faces downwards then to the left side. You could also invoke a soft return via the keyboard shortcut ‘Shift + Enter’.

How to remove hard returns

One direct way of removing paragraph marks in Word is to do it manually. You can edit the text by manually deleting the extra hard returns and adding a space or any other punctuation you prefer. Cleaning the document in this way is tedious, though, and there is a simpler way of going about with it, as we explain in detail below.

Remove paragraph marks in Word — Find & replace paragraph marks

You can remove paragraph marks in Word by using the ‘Find’ and ‘Replace’ commands, which are present on the right side of the ‘Home’ tab. Alternatively, you can use ‘Ctrl+F’ for ‘Find’ and ‘Ctrl+H’ for ‘Replace.’

Since it is a special display character and hence not available on most keyboards, you can’t simply type in the paragraph mark inside the text box. Therefore, you would need to open the Find and Replace dialog box, click on ‘More’ and select ‘Special’.

A list of characters and symbols that you can find and replace in any line is shown here. ‘Paragraph mark’ will be shown at the top of this list.

However, you could also just insert ‘^p’ in the ‘Find what’ textbox to save time. In the ‘Replace with’ text box, insert the character you want to replace it with.

Now, there may be some places where you actually want to retain paragraph marks, like at the end of a true sentence. Removal of these along with the rest would alter your text and you’d not be able to distinguish an actual paragraph end from an unnecessary hard return. In such a case, you’d need to find where there are two hard returns, at the end of the true sentences. You can then replace all such instances with a desired placeholder. It may be something like a set of asterisks (***) or any symbol of choice which isn’t normally present in your text. You can do so either by using the ‘Find next’ option followed by ‘Replace’, or by using ‘Replace All’ to clean all at once.

For removing the unnecessary hard returns from the document:

Step 1: Simply enter a single ‘^p’ in the ‘Find what’ text box

Step 2: Enter what you want to replace it with (for this, you could use a space or leave it blank) and hit ‘Replace all’. Or, you could also do it one by one using ‘Find next.’

Step 3: Clean up the placeholders by copying them in the ‘Find what’ text box and inserting the ‘^p’ in the ‘Replace with’ text box.

Your document should now be good to go.

How to remove paragraph marks: Step-wise summary

To sum it up, the following set of steps should help you easily remove paragraph marks in Word:

1. Make a copy of the document so you don’t affect the original
2. Activate the ‘Replace’ command (Ctrl+H or Home->Replace)
3. Go to ‘More’ -> ‘Special’ in the ‘Find and Replace’ dialog box
4. Select ‘Paragraph mark.’ ‘^p’ will display in the ‘Find what’ text box
5. Depending on your preference, use a space in the ‘Replace with’ field or leave it empty
6. In case you deleted some of the paragraph marks you wanted to retain, find the placeholder you used and replace the desired ones with a paragraph mark
7. Do a quick review of your document to make sure the text is formatted well

The above method can be used not only for Word, but for Excel and any other MS software you use. You can also watch the video below to understand the process in detail.

When you use a typewriter, you press the Return, or Enter, key at the end of each line. This signifies you are done with one line and ready to begin the next. In Word, however, you do not have to do this. When you set up your page margins, Word is programmed to know that when you reach the right margin your text should automatically wrap to the next line.

There may be times, however, when you want to end a line before you get to the right margin. In these instances, you can end a line in either of two ways. The first way is to press the Enter key where you want the line to end. This results in a hard return being entered in the document. This action (pressing Enter) indicates that you have reached the end of the paragraph and want to start a new one.

The other way to end a line is to press Shift+Enter; this results in a soft return, sometimes called a line break or a newline character, being entered in the document. Hard returns are used to signify the end of a paragraph, whereas soft returns simply signify the end of a line.

If you have changed your view options so you can see all nonprinting characters, then a hard return appears on your screen as a paragraph mark (a backwards P), and a soft return appears as a down-and-left pointing arrow.

Author Bio

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen…