Notepad++ - How can I replace blank lines [duplicate]

Question

I have a text file with a thousand lines of numbers like so:

402

115

90

...

As you can see there is a blank line in between each number that I want to remove so that I have

402
115
90
...

How can I do this?

Reichel

That move-to-SU voter, just put [notepad++] in your ignored tags and move on, because questions about a programmer's text editor are allowed here. – Blackcap

Answer 1

1. Press Ctrl+H (Replace)

2. Select Extended from SearchMode

3. Put \r\n\r\n in Find What

4. Put \r\n in ReplaceWith

5. Click on Replace All

Outlaw

Actually, this only works if there are only two new lines between each line of text. – Orlantha

@Griffin: The duplicate link I mention beneath the question goes beyond exactly two blank lines. – Blackcap

@YetAnotherUser: It's a plugin that ships with current Notepad++ installations by default. Or at least, as far as I can remember it does... – Blackcap

In my case, there were several blank lines instead of 2. Repeated click on "Replace All" did the trick. – Carnatic

Didn't work for me :( the trick edit->line operations->remove empty lines worked perfectly. – Kobylak

Answer 2

As of NP++ V6.2.3 (nor sure about older versions) simply:

1. Go menu -> Edit -> Line operations
2. Choose "Remove Empty Lines" or "Remove Empty Lines (Containing white spaces)" according to your needs.

Lettielettish

I'm trying this, but on a file with about 1.5 million empty rows. The program is just freezing. I'm not sure if it has crashed or just working through all of these rows. – Infundibuliform

A bit too late maybe, but for 1.5 million empty rows make a program, I recommend to use Perl a scripting langauge that works very well with text operations. – Veinstone

Answer 3

By the way, in Notepad++ there's built-in plugin that can handle this: TextFX -> TextFX Edit -> Delete Blank Lines (first press CTRL+A to select all).

Polygon

That one works for multiple empty lines too, thanks! – Silverfish

Answer 4

This will remove any number of blank lines

CTRL + H to replace

Select Extended search mode

replace all \r\n with (space)

then switch to regular expression and replace all \s+ with \n

Orlantha

Answer 5

You can record a macro that removes the first blank line, and positions the cursor correctly for the second line. Then you can repeat executing that macro.

Tiger

Answer 6

This should get your sorted:

• Highlight from the end of the first line, to the very beginning of the third line.
• Use the Ctrl + H to bring up the 'Find and Replace' window.
• The highlighed region will already be plased in the 'Find' textbox.
• Replace with: \r\n
• 'Replace All' will then remove all the additional line spaces not required.

Here's how it should look:

Cutty

Using NP++ 7.8.1 this is the only solution that works for me. I don't understand why I cannot find "\r\n\r\n" used in the many other solutions. – Artistic