Find and Replace Tool

How to use the Find and Replace Tool

1. Paste the text you want to edit.
2. Type what to find and what to replace it with. Leave Replace with empty to delete every match.
3. Tick Match case or Whole words only if needed. The live count under the options shows how many matches there are before you replace anything.
4. For patterns, tick Regular expression. You can then use groups in the pattern and $1, $2 in the replacement.
5. Select Replace all, check the result and copy it. To make another change, select Use result as text and replace again.

Example: reformatting dates with a regular expression

A list uses American-style dates such as 12/31/2026 and you need ISO dates such as 2026-12-31. With Regular expression ticked:

• Find: (\d{2})/(\d{2})/(\d{4})
• Replace with: $3-$1-$2

Each date is matched as three groups — month, day and year — and rewritten in the new order. Without regular expressions, a plain search for “colour” with Whole words only ticked would change “colour” but leave “colourful” and “watercolour” alone.

Bulk editing without a word processor

Find and replace is one of the most useful editing operations, but it is not always available where you are working — in a web form, a CMS field, a configuration file or a chat message. Pasting the text here, making every change at once and copying it back is faster and more reliable than editing occurrences by hand, especially when there are dozens of them.

What each option does

• Match case treats “Apple” and “apple” as different. Without it, all capitalisations match.
• Whole words only matches the search only when it is not part of a longer word. It works with letters from any alphabet, not just English.
• Regular expression interprets the search as a JavaScript regular expression. In the replacement, $& inserts the whole match, $1–$9 insert numbered groups and $<name> inserts named groups. Write $$ for a literal dollar sign.

When regular expressions are off, special characters such as ., * and $ are treated literally, so you can safely search for prices or file names.

Protection against runaway patterns

Some regular expressions can take an extremely long time on certain text — a problem known as catastrophic backtracking. To keep your browser responsive, regular-expression replacements run in a separate background worker that is stopped automatically if it takes longer than a few seconds, and the tool tells you to simplify the pattern. Your text is unaffected.

Limitations to keep in mind

• Formatting such as bold, links or fonts is not preserved; the tool works on plain text.
• Only one find-and-replace rule is applied at a time. Use “Use result as text and replace again” to chain several changes.
• Regular expressions follow JavaScript syntax, which differs slightly from other flavours such as PCRE or Python. Test complex patterns with the Regex Tester first.

How your data is handled

All searching and replacing happens in your browser, including in the background worker used for regular expressions. Your text is never sent to a server.

Frequently asked questions