How to expand column text across the entire width of the page in Word?

Sometimes when we copy paragraphs and text between documents, we end up with a lot of garbled data which needs formatting. One of the big problems for most Word users is copping text from a two-column document into a one-column document. In such a case, all of the newly copied text is put into one single column, which does not fit into the width allotted on the page.

In such an instance, you get a lot of unnecessary paragraph marks in the document.

You can see for yourself if you click on the Show/Hide Paragraph mark in your Word document.

paragraph marks show

There is a very simple way to fix this, however. All you need to do is use the Replace/Find option.

Go to the Replace menu (CTRL +H is a keyboard shortcut for it), and click on More.

find and replace menu dialog

After that, click on Special to find the special symbol for the paragraph mark. Select it from the given list in the “Find what” menu.

replace unwanted paragraph mark

Now in the “Replace with” menu, simply enter an empty space. One press on the keyboard Space button should do it.

press space button word

Click on Replace and your problem should disappear. All of the unwanted paragraph marks will be replaced with spaces, which will allow the entire column text to be expanded across the entire width of the page.

document paragraph marks removed