Frequently Asked Questions
What is find and replace?
Find and replace is a fundamental text editing operation that locates all occurrences of a word, phrase, or pattern in a body of text and substitutes them with a different string. It is available in virtually all text editors, word processors (Microsoft Word, Google Docs), code editors (VS Code, Sublime Text), and command-line tools (
sed
,
awk
). This tool brings that capability to any browser, with no installation required.
How do I use regex in find and replace?
Enable the
Regex
toggle, then type a regular expression in the Find field. Examples:
\d+
— matches any sequence of one or more digits
[A-Z]+
— matches one or more uppercase letters
\b\w+@\w+\.\w+\b
— a basic email address pattern
(\w+)\s(\w+)
— captures two words; use
$2 $1
to swap them
In the Replace field, reference capture groups with
$1
,
$2
, etc.
What does "Whole Word" matching mean?
Whole Word matching restricts the search so it matches only the exact word, not substrings. For example, searching for
cat
with Whole Word on matches the word "cat" but not "concatenate", "category", or "scatter". Internally, this wraps the pattern in word boundary anchors (
\b...\b
). This is equivalent to the "Whole Word" checkbox in Microsoft Word's Find & Replace dialog.
What is multi-rule replace and when should I use it?
Multi-rule replace lets you define a list of find→replace pairs and apply all of them in one click. Rules run sequentially — the output of rule 1 becomes the input of rule 2. Use it when you need to apply several different substitutions simultaneously, for example: normalising multiple date formats, renaming several variables at once, or cleaning exported data that has multiple inconsistencies.
How do I delete all occurrences of a word?
Type the word or pattern in the Find field, leave the
Replace With
field completely empty, then click
Delete All Matches
or
Replace All
. Every match is removed from the text and the cleaned result appears in the Result panel.
Does this tool support capture groups?
Yes. Enable Regex mode and use parentheses in the Find pattern to define capture groups. Reference them in the Replace field as
$1
,
$2
,
$3
, etc. Example: find
(\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})
and replace with
$3/$2/$1
to reformat dates from YYYY-MM-DD to DD/MM/YYYY.
Is my text stored or sent to a server?
No.
All processing runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never sent to any server, logged, or stored anywhere. The tool works fully offline once the page has loaded, making it safe for processing sensitive or confidential text.
What is the difference between Replace Next and Replace All?
Replace Next
substitutes only the current match and advances to the next, letting you review each replacement individually and skip ones you want to keep.
Replace All
substitutes every match in the text in a single operation. Use Replace Next for selective replacements and Replace All for bulk substitutions.
What does the Multiline toggle do?
Multiline mode changes how the anchors
^
(start) and
$
(end) behave. With Multiline on (default),
^
matches the start of each line and
$
matches the end of each line. With it off,
^
and
$
match only the very start and very end of the entire text. Use it when you want to match or replace patterns at the beginning or end of specific lines.