Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Strip Trailing Spaces.
Maybe I'm one of those compulsive-obsessive types, but I always go through my documents to make sure there are no trailing spaces at the end of a line. This makes the document neater and smaller. If you format ASCII files or documents you receive from other people, you will need to search for trailing spaces and remove them as you format the file for Word. The following macro, StripSpaces, will take out all spaces before paragraph marks and manual line breaks throughout your document.
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: 
Sub StripSpaces()
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = " ^p"
.Replacement.Text = "^p"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
While Selection.Find.Found
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
Selection.Find.Execute
Wend
Selection.Find.Text = " ^l"
Selection.Find.Replacement.Text = "^l"
Selection.Find.Execute
While Selection.Find.Found
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
Selection.Find.Execute
Wend
End Sub
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (969) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Strip Trailing Spaces.
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2017-06-08 13:13:01
Andy Reyes
Thanks for this macro. I do have a problem with it. It never stops running. I let it run for 20 minutes on a 28 page document and then closed the document by clicking on the red 'x'. It said that Word was not responding and I told it to go ahead. Word closed and recovered the document. The recovered document has all the trailing blanks removed, so the macro worked, it just never ended. My version of Word is 2013 (15.0.4420.1017) MSO (15.0.4420.1017) 32-bit.
2016-12-14 13:37:39
Lewis Pate
This code works very well in word 2010, for me. I use it to prepare a computer generated document for copying into a different computer system.
This makes my life much easier.
Thank You Sir!!!!!!
2014-10-16 01:26:54
Andre
The same can be achieved without macro by using the replace function.
Find: ^w^p
Replace: ^p
2013-04-29 14:42:16
Oliver Ortega Chua
This is really helpful. Thanks!
The only change I made was to search for "^w" (space, nonbreaking space, tab) instead of only spaces since I also can't stand stray tabs. :)
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