How to Get Rid of Double Spacing in Outlook

By Kevin Lee

Send compact Outlook messages by eliminating double spacing.
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Microsoft Office products allow you to change the way those programs display lines and paragraphs. If your Outlook line spacing settings are greater than one, an extra line may appear between lines in messages, notes and other Outlook items. While double-spaced email messages are readable, you may want to make them more readable by getting rid of double spacing. You can do that for a selection, a document or all documents you create.

Change the Line Spacing in the Current Document

Step 1

Launch Outlook and create a new item, such as an email, meeting, contact or appointment.

Step 2

Click "Format Text" and then click the "Line and Paragraph Spacing" icon. This icon consists of four horizontal lines stacked vertically with up and down arrows next to it. After you click the icon, you'll see a menu containing numbers such as 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0. These numbers represent different line spacing values.

Step 3

Click "1.0" to set the line spacing to 1. You can verify that the spacing has changed by typing text in the window you selected. For instance, if you start a new message, Outlook uses single-spacing when you type your message. When you alter line spacing using this method, your change only applies to the new task, contact, meeting, email or appointment you're creating. For instance, if you start a new message, Outlook uses the default line spacing when you type the new message. If that default is 2, you'll see double-spaced lines when you type the new message.

Change the Default Line Spacing

Step 1

Create a new item, such as a meeting, contact, email message or appointment.

Step 2

Click "Format Text" and then click the "Line and Paragraph Spacing" icon. Click "Line Spacing Options" to open the Paragraph dialog. This dialog has controls that help you adjust line spacing, paragraph spacing, page breaks and other properties.

Step 3

Click the "Indents and Spacing" tab and select "Single" in the "Line Spacing" drop-down menu.

Step 4

Click "Set as Default" to view a dialog window that contains two options. Click "All Documents Based on the NormalEmail.dotm template" if you want to apply the changes to all Outlook documents. Otherwise, click "This Document Only" to apply the changes to the current document. Click "OK" to apply the changes.

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