Getting Started

Here are simple instructions to get you started with Multi Find & Replace.
I will show you:

See other pages on this website for further information:

Entering find/replace phrase lists...

Store named lists of find and replace phrases.

NOTE: The number of lists stored by Multi Find & Replace has been capped at 100.

The first time you start Multi Find & Replace, an empty list is created.
You activate 'Edit' mode by clicking the 'Edit list' button: 

In the editor, you enter the find and replace phrases in the edit box.
If you only want to find things, but not replace anything, then you can simply enter the list of 'find' phrases, one per line.

To enter both find and replace phrases, you enter one find/replace pair on each line.

You separate find and replace phrases with any character that is not in any of the 'find' phrases. This is a comma: ',' by default. 

If any 'find' phrase contains a comma, you will need to change the separator character.

NOTE: If there is no 'replace phrase', but the separator character is included, 

eg:  mouse,

then the 'Find and replace' command will simply delete the word 'mouse'.

But without the separator character

eg:  mouse

 it defaults to a 'Find' command only. 

Find phrases can be 'regular expressions', or 'regex'. If you start any find phrases with the special character ('=' by defult) it will be interpreted as a regular expression.

If you are not using regular expressions, then you may delete this character.

Click the coloured rectangle to change the highlight colour for this list:

Type a unique name for this list in the edit box:

Click 'Save' to save your list. 

'Cancel' closes the editor without saving the changes.

'Reset' resets the editor to its default settings, but does not change the actual list and its settings unless you then click 'Save'. If you 'Reset' and then 'Cancel' then no changes are saved.

The ORDER of replacing

When applying a list of find/replace phrases, Multi Find & Replace works from top to bottom.

This means that the order of the phrases in the list can produce different results. (See examples below)

Selections ...

If you only want to find / replace in part of your document, then select that part first:

😀Now Find and Replace!!!😀

Finds all of the 'find' phrases from the selected list in the current document.
If there is a selection, then only selected text will be searched. If the 'Select found text' option is on, then the found text is selected in the document. Otherwise the found text is highlighted.

2. The 'FIND & REPLACE' button

Finds all of the 'find' phrases from the selected list in the current document, then replaces them with the corresponding 'replace' phrases.
If there is a selection, find and replace will only work on the selected text.

HINT: Because Multi Find & Replace does not allow you to step from one found phrase to the next (like you can when using the 'Find & replace' feature built into Google Docs), it is helpful to first do a simple 'Find' operation to highlight the found text, and then select the parts you actually want to replace before clicking 'Find & Replace'.

3. The 'CLEAR' button

Clears highlights from the document text.
If there is a selection, then highlights will only be cleared from the selected text.