Changing line spacing in Notes

I had to copy all the text in the note and paste it into TextEdit.

After changing the paragraph spacing, I had to paste it back into the Note using Paste and Retain Style.

Command Return works, but does not remove the original style copied from the source page.

"Format"->"Font"->"Remove Style" sounds like a great idea, but Remove Style was dimmed so I could not select it.

In Notes for macOS Sierra, the List option does not exist in the Format menu (Format -> Lists -> Insert).

In Mail, when you click New Message, a nice little format bar appears at the top of your message so that you can format text easily. Consistency used to be the hallmark at Apple. (Has the Usability test group been eliminated?) Including the format bar in Notes and other Apple apps where it is missing, would be a nice, consistent usability feature. Adding a paragraph line-spacing option to this format bar would be greatly appreciated, even hailed, improvement.

Regards.

Paula Metz

I was having a similar problem in Notes on Mavericks... Some parts of a note would be single space and other parts double spaced with no way to change this in Notes.

I found that the problem was the "Paragraph spacing/After" attribute of the text and the only way that I have found to make it all single spaced is this:

1. Copy the text from Notes into TextEdit
2. Do Edit/Select All in TextEdit so that all the text is selected
3. Use the Format/Text/Spacing command in TextEdit to set "Paragraph Spacing - After" to 0 points (my "doulble-spaced" text from Notes had this set to 13 points)
4. Copy all the text from TextEdit
5. Paste it into Notes with the Edit/Paste and Retain Style command

Hope this helps others. And yes, it sure would be nice if you could change this in Notes!

I'm using the new Mavericks version of Notes and have the same problem of adjusting line spacing within a note.

Even when I add to an exisiting note that has single space lines, double space lines are used.

Please, there must be a simple answer to this.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Whenever I copy/paste something to Notes I use a work-around to solve the double line spacing.

Copy/Paste text into Notes and then select all text

-> Format, Indentation, Increase

Now you select all text again

->Format, Indentation, Decrease

This does the trick for me.

I determined that if I highlight the entire area with different line spacing then use the "Format"->"Font"->"Remove Style" from the menus, I was able to reset the line spacing to single. The caveat was I had to re-introduce tabs back in. Not perfect but another work-around.

I'm using Mavericks.

After pasting some text into Notes the line spacing was at least double.

Could not find a way to change the line spacing using Notes.

Copied the text from Notes and pasted it into Text Edit.

Then changed the [Line and paragraph spacing] on the Text Screen Top Menu to 1.

Copied from Text Edit and pasted into Notes. Now the line spacing looks normal.

Sorry, this doesn't answer the question how to do it in Notes. It's a "work-around"

You may be talking about typing in the text directly and ending up will large line spacing.

This may help:

Copy some text from Notes, and paste it into Text Edit.

Change the "Line and paragraph spacing" to 1.

Copy text from Text Edit and paste into Notes.

If the lines are now single spaced after the paste, then open up a new blank Note window and type in something.

Hopefully all lines are now single spacing.

It's so basic. There should be an option to change the line spacing directly in Notes.

If there is a way to do it in Notes, I'd love to hear it.

My issue is when I create double line spacing to send to editors and the Mac Mail program keeps changing it to single line spacing. I never had this problem before switching to Mavericks from Snow Leopard. I need help fast because I am a published writer and have time sensitive issuess. In general the operating system seems more unstable and unpredictable then ever. Steve would not except something like this. He was a descision maker. Please, casn anyone help?

Another option, though still a "workaround' as opposed to a "fix," though it's shorter than copying and pasting into TextEdit.

Presuming you aren't using/needing bullets, I found that I could highlight the offending lines, select Format -> Lists -> Insert (any of the options), then repeat the same steps, effectively removing the List formatting you just applied, and the spacing goes back to "normal" (single).

Just a slightly quicker "solution."

Notes now has more formatting allowed than in pervious versions. I find that when I copy/paste to Notes, sometimes the formatting from the source is carried over and that's how the double line spacing (among other things,) is introduced. Some other apps like NeoOffice has a paste sub-menu that allows you to "paste unformatted text."

Try this:
In Notes app on Mavericks select all text, then copy in case you need to revert.

In the menu bar, go Format > Font > Remove Style.

This may have other unintended results on formatting you DO want, but this trick got my notes back to single spacing.

I too sometimes see double-spaced lines in Notes, but mostly on my iPhone (iOS 8.3, though this started for me under iOS 7, I think), but rarely in the same notes when I view them on my Macbook (Mountain Lion, OS X 10.8.5). I tried all the solutions suggested in this thread, and the only one that worked for me was to use my Macbook to go through each Note where double-spaced lines appear, and back-space to remove the offending return character, and replace it with a Control-Return, as suggested by Giovani above. Once I did that, I was able to create new lines within the body of the text where the double-spaced lines had been appearing, and the new lines weren't double-spaced.

I see no effect but indentation. Does not seem to affect line spacing at all.

I have figured out that if I use an intermediate step. Copy my text into the text editor first, change it to plain text and then paste it into a note it works perfectly.

Dear NUNeteru,

Line spacing is a rich-text function. eg a word processor or presentation manager, where users can specify rich text, such as colour, font, typeface, paragraph spacing and line spacing. In contrast, your phone's SMS won't allow any of that, as it's not a rich-text system.

In 2015, Notes added many rich-text features, but I don't know how to change line spacing.

I suspect that Mac Mail doesn't (didn't?) have that functionality.

Both Mail and Notes seem to be unable to change line spacing. Sorry. And disappointed, as I, too, prefer double-line spaced work, as it's much easier to read.

richard.

Although this is a work-around that works, but this actually sends a different line break character than the normal CR/LF character. This could likely cause a nightmarish headache when the app gets updated in the future, and all your notes may need to be reformatted again because the paragraphs are smudged together when they are meant to be separate, and while some other paragraphs are excessively spaced apart. This work-around is not a cure.

For a birth defect which Apple delivered to us with their Mountain Lion and Mavericks launches. I suppose they just ship out half-baked products, cross their fingers and hope for the best that no one would be the wiser to notice their deficiency before they manage to roll out updates that patches the bugs and the missing features. Yosemite and El Capitan has already come and gone, soon, yet the notes app is still plagued with bugs and suffering from missing features.

The combination of various issues translates to such a broken usage experience that I rather go through the hassle of migrating all my notes to another note-taking app from the App Store, and even pay for it, than to suffer any longer from Apple's incompetence in its Notes app. It is not uncommon that native productivity apps are often feature bare, limited in functions, in order to persuade users to pay for more premium solution such as Pages and iWorks, as had Microsoft hoped to cash in on Word by offering Edit natively. But the major difference here is that, Edit indeed can't do much, but for what it does, it does well.

Any update on this?

If I copy quote from the IGN forum board into Notes or text edit, I cannot get rid of the double line spacing. Why is this so difficult to deal with? I never had this problem in notepad or word. 😟

Hi,

For single line spacing, I'm using CTRL + RETURN on new lines...