How to Get Rid of Double Spacing in Outlook
By Kevin Lee
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.
Tips
- You can also change the line spacing of part of a message or note by selecting text before you the change line spacing. For example, you might want to use single spacing near the top of a message and double spacing near the bottom.
- The Paragraph window contains Before and After text boxes in the Spacing section. Default values in those text boxes are 0 pt, or points. If you'd like to add extra space before or after your lines line, replace 0 with larger values. For instance, if you type "3 pt" – without the quotes" in the "After" text box and click "OK," Outlook adds three points of extra space after every line. You might want to do this when you don't want your single-spaced lines too close together but you don't want them double-spaced either.
Warnings
- These steps apply to changing line spacing in Outlook 2013. Your results may vary if you use another Outlook version.
Writer Bio
After majoring in physics, Kevin Lee began writing professionally in 1989 when, as a software developer, he also created technical articles for the Johnson Space Center. Today this urban Texas cowboy continues to crank out high-quality software as well as non-technical articles covering a multitude of diverse topics ranging from gaming to current affairs.