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Quickly replace or convert soft returns to hard returns in Word

Author: Sun Last Modified: 2025-03-20

If you need to replace or convert all soft returns (manual line breaks) into hard returns (paragraph marks), you may need at least several steps to get it done in Word. But with Kutools for Word’s Convert Manual Line Breaks to Paragraph Marks utility, you can quickly replace or convert all soft returns to hard returns in Word.

Hard return: Pressing the Enter key in Word ends a paragraph. It’s officially known as typing a hard return. Yes, it’s a return even though the key is known as Enter on a PC. The problem with the hard return is that it adds a bit of margin after a paragraph. That’s a good thing; you should have margin around paragraphs in a document.

Soft return: Those times when you don’t want air, when you need to put lines of text close together, you use a soft return. The soft return, or line break, is used primarily in titles and headings; when you have a long title and need to split it up between two lines, you press Shift+Enter to insert the soft return.

Convert or replace all soft returns to hard returns in whole document

Convert or replace all soft returns to hard returns in a part of the document

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Click Kutools > Convert > Convert Manual Line Breaks to Paragraph Marks. See screenshot:


Convert or replace all soft returns to hard returns in whole document

If you want to replace or convert all soft returns (manual line breaks) to hard returns (paragraph marks) in a document as shown in the below screenshot, you can quickly get it done as follow:

1. Put your cursor on the current document and then apply the utility by clicking Kutools> Convert > Convert Manual Line Breaks to Paragraph Marks. And a prompt box will pop out to remind you if you want to convert all manual line breaks to paragraph marks in whole document. Click Yes to start convering.

prompt box

2. You will see the results as shown in the below screenshots:

original document
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all manual line breaks are converted to paragraph marks in document

Convert or replace all soft returns to hard returns in a part of the document

If you only want to convert or replace all soft returns to hard returns in a part of the document as shown in the below screenshot, you can get it done as follows:

1. Please highlight and select a part of the document that you want to convert all soft returns into hard returns. And then apply the utility by clicking Kutools > Convert > Convert Manual Line Breaks to Paragraph Marks.

2. You will see the results as shown in the below screenshots:

original document
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all manual line breaks are converted to paragraph marks in selection

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