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Find and Replace Text: Replace Words and Patterns

Use this free tool to find and replace text in seconds. Replace a word or phrase everywhere, match whole words only, ignore capital letters or switch to regular expressions for advanced patterns.

By Debmedia Technologies LLP · Kolkata, India · Updated

What Does It Mean to Find and Replace Text?

To find and replace text means to search a text for a word, phrase or pattern and change every match to something else. Word processors have the feature built in, but when you work with a plain snippet, a list, an export or a block of code, a quick online tool is faster. This page lets you find and replace text of any length in your browser, with no installation and no signup.

It offers plain searching for everyday jobs and regular expressions for advanced patterns, plus options for case, whole words and the number of replacements.

How to Use This Tool

  1. Paste your text into the large box.
  2. Type what to find, and what to replace it with. Leave the second box empty to delete matches.
  3. Choose the options: plain text or regular expression, match case or not, every match or only the first.
  4. Press Replace, check the count of replacements and copy the result.

The Options Explained

OptionWhat it does
Plain textSearches for exactly what you typed. Symbols such as dots and brackets are treated as ordinary characters.
Regular expressionTreats the search as a pattern, so you can match digits, spaces, word starts and more.
Match caseCat and cat are different. Without it, both match.
Whole words onlyCat matches the word cat but not the start of concatenate. Works with plain text.
First match onlyChanges just the first match and leaves the rest.

Patterns use the standard JavaScript syntax described in the MDN guide to regular expressions.

A Few Useful Patterns

  • \d+ finds every whole number.
  • \s{2,} finds two or more whitespace characters in a row, which you can replace with one space.
  • ^\s+ finds spaces at the start of the text.
  • (\w+)@(\w+) captures the parts of an address, which you can reuse as $1 and $2 in the replacement.

When the pattern is not valid, the tool tells you instead of failing quietly.

Tips to Stay Safe

Run a replacement on a copy of your text. The change cannot be undone once you copy the result over your original. Check the number of replacements: a very high count may mean the pattern is broader than you meant. For code, prefer whole-word matching, so you do not change parts of longer names.

For quick clean-ups without writing patterns, use the whitespace remover or the accent remover. To pull specific data out of the text instead of changing it, try the text extractor. To change letter case, use the case converter. Your text stays on your device throughout.

Frequently Asked Questions

Type the word in the Find box and leave the Replace box empty. Every match is removed.
It stops the tool from changing parts of longer words. Replacing cat with dog then changes the word cat, but leaves concat alone.
In regular expression mode you can put parts of the pattern in brackets and reuse them in the replacement with $1, $2 and so on. For example, (\d+) replaced with <$1> wraps every number in angle brackets.
The pattern is not valid regular expression syntax, for example it has an unclosed bracket. Switch to plain text mode if you only want to search for ordinary characters.

Disclaimer: results are calculated in your browser from the numbers you enter. Check important results before you rely on them for money, health, safety or legal decisions.