Search and replace text in any document — supports regex, case-sensitive mode, and match highlighting
Our Find and Replace tool is a powerful, free online utility for searching and replacing text in any document. Whether you need to update names across a document, fix typos throughout an article, reformat data using regular expressions, or simply find how many times a word appears, this tool provides instant visual feedback with match highlighting. All processing happens in your browser — your text never leaves your device, ensuring complete privacy.
The tool features a live preview that highlights all matching text directly in the document view. As you type in the "Find" field, matching portions are highlighted in purple, making it easy to see exactly what will be replaced. The match counter updates in real time, showing you the exact number of occurrences. You can optionally enable case-sensitive search to distinguish between "Apple" and "apple", or enable regex mode for advanced pattern matching.
Find and replace is one of the most frequently used text editing operations, and having a reliable, private, browser-based tool is essential for anyone who works with text. Our tool is designed to be simple enough for everyday use — fixing a misspelled name across a long article — while powerful enough for advanced tasks like reformatting data with regex capture groups. The highlighted preview ensures you always know exactly what will be changed before you commit to the replacement.
Most operating systems and text editors include basic find and replace functionality, but browser-based tools offer unique advantages. First, there's no software to install — open the page and start working immediately. Second, the live highlighting preview gives you instant visual confirmation of what will be replaced, unlike many desktop editors that require you to click through each match. Third, the regex mode supports advanced pattern matching that goes far beyond simple text replacement.
Regular expression support is particularly powerful. With regex mode enabled, you can search for patterns like \d+ to find all numbers, \b\w{4}\b to find all 4-letter words, or ^(.+)@(.+)\.(.+)$ to capture parts of email addresses. You can then use captured groups in your replacement text with $1, $2, $3 references. This makes the tool suitable for data cleaning, log file analysis, code refactoring, and text transformation tasks that would be tedious or impossible with simple text search.
The case sensitivity toggle gives you fine-grained control over matching behavior. When case sensitivity is off (default), the tool matches regardless of capitalization — useful for catching variations like "textools", "Textools", and "TEXTOOLS". When case sensitivity is on, only exact matches are highlighted and replaced — essential when you need to distinguish between words that differ only in capitalization.
Content editing and proofreading: Fix typos, update names, or replace outdated terms across long articles, blog posts, or documentation. The live highlighting lets you verify every change before applying it, reducing the risk of unintended modifications.
Data cleaning and normalization: Clean up CSV exports, database dumps, or user-generated content by replacing inconsistent formatting. Use regex to standardize phone numbers, email addresses, dates, or any structured text pattern across large datasets.
Code refactoring: Rename variables, update function names, or change import paths across code snippets. The case-sensitive mode ensures you only match exact identifiers, avoiding accidental replacements of similar-looking variable names.
Log file analysis: Search through server logs, error reports, or application logs for specific patterns. Use regex to find all IP addresses, timestamps, error codes, or user IDs in a log file, then optionally replace or extract them for reporting.
Can I undo a replacement? The tool performs replacement on a copy of your text. Your original text remains unchanged in the input text area. If you make a mistake, you can simply copy your original text back from the input area and start over.
Does this work with large documents? Yes. Since all processing happens in your browser, performance depends on your browser's JavaScript engine. Modern browsers can handle documents with tens of thousands of words without issue. For extremely large documents (hundreds of thousands of words), you may experience slight lag in the live highlighting.
What regex syntax is supported? The tool uses JavaScript's built-in RegExp engine, which supports most common regex features including character classes (\d, \w, \s), quantifiers (+, *, ?, {n,m}), anchors (^, $), groups and capturing, alternation (|), and flags like 'i' (case-insensitive — use our toggle instead) and 'g' (global — always enabled).