Find and Replace: Match Case, Whole Words and Regular Expressions

What is it?

Find and Replace changes every copy of a word or phrase in one go and tells you how many changes it made.

Who is it for?

Writers replacing a name throughout a story, office staff updating dates or prices in a template, students fixing a repeated mistake, and developers editing many lines of code or data with patterns.

How to use it

1. Paste your text.
2. Type what to Find and what to Replace with (leave it empty to delete every match).
3. Tick options: Match case, Whole words only, Use a regular expression ($1 works in Replace). The result updates as you type.

It changed parts of other words

Replacing “cat” also changes “category” and “education”. Tick Whole words only.

It found nothing

• Match case is on and the capitals differ.
• The text has a different apostrophe or dash (’ vs ', – vs -). Copy the word straight from your text into Find.
• With regular expressions on, symbols like . ? ( ) + have special meanings. Turn it off for plain text, or put \ before them.

Regular expression examples

• Remove all numbers: find \d+, replace with nothing.
• Swap “Last, First” to “First Last”: find (\w+), (\w+), replace with $2 $1.
• Join broken lines: find \n, replace with a space.

Is my text uploaded?

No. Everything happens inside your browser. Your text is kept in this browser only so it is still there if you reload, and Clear removes it.

Errors and how to fix them

• Nothing changes: check Match case, spelling, and different apostrophes or dashes.
• Regex error or odd results: turn off regular expressions for plain text, or escape special characters.
• Too many replacements: tick Whole words only.

Open the tool: Find and Replace

Still stuck?

Contact support. Tell us which tool or page you were using, what you tapped, what you saw, and your phone or computer and browser (for example: Android phone, Chrome). We reply by email.