Blank lines clutter exported data, break CSV imports, and make copy-pasted lists harder to process. Here are five reliable methods to strip them out.

Method 1: Online Tool (No Software Needed)

The fastest approach: go to remove-lines.com, paste your text, enable Remove Blank Lines, and click Process. Done in seconds. Works on any device, no installation required.

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Method 2: Excel / Google Sheets

In Excel, use Find & Replace (Ctrl+H). This doesn't directly remove blank rows from a column, but you can filter and delete empty cells. A better approach is to paste your list into column A and use =FILTER(A:A, A:A<>"") in Google Sheets to return only non-empty values.

Method 3: Notepad++ (Windows)

In Notepad++, go to Edit → Line Operations → Remove Empty Lines. There's also a "Remove Empty Lines (Containing Blank Characters)" option for lines with only spaces.

Method 4: Python

with open('input.txt') as f:
    lines = f.readlines()

non_empty = [l for l in lines if l.strip()]

with open('output.txt', 'w') as f:
    f.writelines(non_empty)

The key is l.strip() — this catches lines that contain only spaces or tabs, not just completely empty lines.

Method 5: Command Line

On Linux/Mac, use grep to filter non-empty lines:

grep -v '^[[:space:]]*$' input.txt > output.txt

On Windows PowerShell:

Get-Content input.txt | Where-Object { $_.Trim() -ne '' } | Set-Content output.txt

Lines with Only Spaces

A common gotcha: lines that look blank but contain spaces or tabs. Most simple methods miss these. remove-lines.com's Remove Blank Lines option handles both truly empty lines and whitespace-only lines correctly.