Find and Replace Text Online: Speed Up Any Text Editing Task

Find and replace is deceptively simple — yet it's one of the highest-leverage text editing operations. With the right techniques, a single find-replace operation can transform thousands of lines of text in seconds.

Basic Find and Replace

The basics: find exact text, replace with something else. Case-sensitive vs insensitive matters — "API" and "api" are different strings. Most tools default to case-insensitive.

Regex Find and Replace

Regular expressions unlock powerful pattern-based replacement:

# Replace all numbers with [NUM]
Find: \d+
Replace: [NUM]

# Swap first and last name
Find: (\w+) (\w+)
Replace: $2, $1
# "John Doe" → "Doe, John"

# Remove all blank lines
Find: ^\s*$\n
Replace: (nothing)

# Wrap all URLs in <a> tags
Find: (https?://\S+)
Replace: <a href="$1">$1</a>

Capture Groups

Capture groups (pattern) let you reference matched text in the replacement string using $1, $2, etc. This is how you can rearrange matched components, not just find/delete them.

Common Real-World Uses

• Update a company name across a 50-page document
• Reformat dates from MM/DD/YYYY to YYYY-MM-DD
• Remove all HTML tags from pasted content
• Convert CSV comma-separated data to tab-separated
• Capitalize the first letter of every sentence in a block of text

Use our Find and Replace tool for quick text transformations in the browser.