Text Unwrapper
Fix the line breaks in text copied from a PDF or email. Free, no signup.
How It Works
Paste the text and the clean version appears below as you type. Line breaks inside a paragraph become single spaces. A blank line, or a short line that ends a sentence, starts a new paragraph. A word split by a hyphen at the end of a line is put back together. Bullets and numbered items stay on their own lines. Click Copy and paste the result into Word, Google Docs or an email.
New to the problem? The guide to copying text from a PDF without line breaks explains why it happens and other ways around it.
Why PDF and Email Text Breaks Into Lines
A PDF is a page layout, not a document with paragraphs. Each line of text is placed at a fixed position, and most files don't record where one paragraph ends and the next begins. When you copy, the viewer guesses and usually inserts a line break after every visual line.
Plain-text email has a similar history. The email format standard (RFC 5322) says a line must not be longer than 998 characters and should not be longer than 78, so plain-text mail programs often wrap lines before that point. Quoted replies keep those breaks.
What Each Option Does
| Option | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Re-join split words | mean- ing | meaning |
| Keep compounds | well- known | well-known |
| Short sentence line | …the end. Next one | New paragraph |
| Lists | • Item wrapped | • Item wrapped |
| Collapse spaces | two spaces | two spaces |
If a paragraph is split where it shouldn't be, untick the paragraph detection option and separate paragraphs with a blank line in the input instead.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does text copied from a PDF have line breaks in the middle of sentences?
A PDF places each line of text at a fixed spot on the page. When you copy it, most PDF viewers put a line break at the end of every visual line, because the file usually doesn't say where a paragraph starts and ends. Pasted into Word or an email, those breaks stay, so each line becomes its own short paragraph.
How does the tool know where a real paragraph ends?
A blank line always ends a paragraph. With the paragraph detection option on, a line that ends in . ! ? or : and is clearly shorter than the full lines around it also ends a paragraph, as long as the next line starts with a capital letter or a number. That is how the last line of a paragraph usually looks in a PDF.
What happens to words split with a hyphen at the end of a line?
When the next line starts with a lowercase letter, the hyphen is removed and the two halves are joined, so mean- and ing become meaning. The hyphen is kept when the next part starts with a capital or a digit, when the word already contains a hyphen (state-of-the-art), and after common prefixes such as self-, well- and ex-. Untick the option to keep every hyphen.
Are bulleted and numbered lists kept?
Yes, with the list option on. A line that starts with a bullet (such as •, -, * or ◦) or a number or letter followed by . or ) starts a new line, and any wrapped lines that follow it are joined back into that item.
Can it fix text where words are run together without spaces?
No. Some PDFs copy out with spaces missing between words, or with letters in the wrong order, because of how the file stores its text. This tool only joins and splits lines; it can't recover spaces that were never in the copied text.
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. The text is processed by JavaScript in this page as you type. Nothing is sent to a server, so it's safe for private emails and documents.