Add line numbers to text

Numbered lines without a word processor

Line numbers are useful whenever people need to refer to a specific line: reviewing a contract clause by clause, discussing a poem or a script, quoting part of a log, checking the steps of a procedure or sharing a short piece of code. Word processors can number lines, but the setting is buried in a menu and disappears when you paste the text somewhere else. Here the numbers become part of the text itself, so they travel with it wherever you paste it.

Format the numbering the way you need it

You can start at any value, not only at 1, and choose the step, which allows counting by twos, by tens or even backwards with a negative step. The separator after the number can be a dot, a closing parenthesis, a dash, a colon or a tab; the tab produces columns that line up when you paste into a spreadsheet. With zero padding on, the numbers are given the same width, so 01, 02 … 10 stay aligned instead of jumping when the count reaches a new digit.

Blank lines

By default blank lines are left unnumbered and do not use up a number, which is what you want in a text made of paragraphs separated by empty lines. Untick the option to number every line, blank or not.

Removing existing numbering

The second action removes numbers at the start of lines, in the common forms 1., 1), (1), 1:, 1- and number-plus-tab. It is the quick way to clean a list that was copied from a numbered document, a web page or an AI answer and then needs to be renumbered or used without numbers. The stats tell you how many lines were changed, so you can spot lines that did not start with a number.

What it does not do

The tool numbers lines as they were pasted; long lines that wrap on your screen count as one line. It does not create numbered lists with automatic formatting for Word or Google Docs, and roman numerals or letters (a, b, c) are not supported.