Paragraph Indent/Outdent Tool
Add or remove a configurable amount of leading whitespace (spaces or tabs) from every line of text, with separate Indent and Outdent modes.
Result:
How to Use the Paragraph Indent/Outdent Tool
Paste multi-line text, choose whether to use spaces or tabs, set the width (how many characters per indent level), and pick Indent or Outdent. Indent mode adds the specified leading whitespace to every non-empty line. Outdent mode removes up to that much existing leading whitespace from every line, without ever going negative — a line with less indentation than the requested amount is simply left flush.
Example
Indenting the two lines Line one and Line two with a width of 4 spaces produces Line one and Line two. Running Outdent on that result with the same width removes the leading spaces again, restoring the original text.
Common Use Cases
- Indenting a block of code or text pasted into a document that doesn't auto-indent.
- Outdenting a block of over-indented text copied from a nested list or code editor.
- Standardizing indentation width (for example, converting a 2-space habit to 4 spaces) before pasting into a shared document.
FAQs
- What is the difference between this tool and a plain "indenter" or "outdenter"? Nothing — this single tool covers both jobs. The mode toggle switches between adding indentation (indenting) and removing it (outdenting), so there's no need for two separate tools.
- What happens if a line has less indentation than the outdent width? Outdent removes only as much whitespace as actually exists at the start of that line — it never removes non-whitespace characters or pushes the line into negative indentation.
- Are blank lines affected? Indent mode skips empty lines so it doesn't add trailing whitespace-only lines; Outdent mode leaves empty lines as empty since there's no leading whitespace to remove.