What each option removes
- Extra spaces
- Collapses runs of spaces and tabs to a single space. Line breaks are left alone.
- Trim lines
- Removes leading and trailing whitespace from every line.
- Blank lines
- Collapses runs of empty lines to a single blank line, keeping paragraph breaks.
- Line breaks
- Joins everything into one paragraph. Use it on text copied out of a PDF.
- HTML tags
- Strips anything between angle brackets and keeps the text.
- Smart quotes
- Converts curly quotes, curly apostrophes and dashes to their plain equivalents.
- Invisible characters
- Removes zero-width spaces and joiners, and converts non-breaking spaces to ordinary ones.
- Duplicate lines
- Keeps the first occurrence of each line and drops later repeats. Blank lines are kept.
Order of operations
Options apply in the order listed, so trimming happens before blank lines are collapsed and duplicates are removed last. Selecting several at once is normal, and the output updates as you type.
Invisible characters are the usual cause of a paste that looks clean but breaks a form validator or a spreadsheet import.
Questions
How do I remove line breaks from text copied out of a PDF?
Turn on Line breaks, which joins the text into one paragraph, then Extra spaces to collapse the gaps the join leaves behind.
What are invisible characters and why do they matter?
Zero-width spaces, joiners and non-breaking spaces are copied invisibly from web pages and documents. They look like nothing but break form validation, search matching and spreadsheet imports.