Find and Replace Text
Find every occurrence of a word or phrase in your text and replace it with something else, or delete it. Match case and whole words when you need to.
Runs in your browser. Your data is not uploaded.How our tools work
Leave empty to delete every match.
Enter the text to find.
How do I find and replace words in text?
Paste your text, type the word or phrase to find and what to replace it with, and every match is replaced in the result as you type, with a count of how many changed. Turn on “Match case” to replace only exact capitals, or “Whole words only” so cat doesn’t change category. Leave the replacement empty to delete matches.
Key features
Replace every match
All occurrences are replaced at once, and the number replaced is shown.
Match case
Replace only matches with exactly the same capital letters, or ignore case (the default).
Whole words only
Skip matches inside longer words, in any language, so “cat” doesn’t change “category”.
Literal text
Symbols such as . * $ and brackets are matched and inserted exactly as typed; nothing is treated as a pattern.
Chain replacements
Select “Use result as the text” to make another replacement on the result.
Common uses
- Rename a product, person or place throughout a document
- Fix a word spelt wrong many times
- Delete repeated phrases or characters
Example: change a word but not its relatives
Find “colour”, replace it with “color” and turn on “Whole words only”: “The Colour chart shows each colour and its colours” becomes “The color chart shows each color and its colours”. Matching ignores capitals by default, so Colour changes too, and “colours” is left alone because it is a longer word. The replacement is inserted exactly as you typed it, in lowercase.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does it count overlapping matches?
No. Matches are found and replaced from left to right without overlapping, so finding “aa” in “aaaa” gives 2 matches, not 3, and replacing it with “b” gives “bb”.
What if the replacement contains $1, $& or a backslash?
They are inserted exactly as typed. Unlike some editors, “$1”, “$&” and backslashes have no special meaning here, so you can replace a word with a price such as $5 without surprises.
Can I use regular expressions?
No. The search is always plain text, so characters such as . or * match themselves. This avoids surprising results.
Can I check each match before it is replaced?
No, every match is replaced at once, with a count. Your original text stays unchanged in the box above, so nothing is lost; to replace fewer matches, turn on “Whole words only” or “Match case”.
Can I find and replace line breaks?
No. The Find and Replace boxes are single lines, so they can’t contain a line break. To join lines, remove empty lines or turn tabs into spaces, use the Whitespace Cleaner.
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