Example
Find “colour”, replace with “color”
Our colour guide covers colour theory and colour matching.
Our color guide covers color theory and color matching.
Whole words
With “Whole words only” on, searching for “cat” won’t touch “category” or “concatenate”.
Regular expressions
Turn on “Regular expression” to search with patterns. For example, \d{3}-\d{4} matches phone number endings like 555-0199. In the replacement, $1 inserts whatever the first set of parentheses captured.
Everyday examples
Change British to American spelling (“colour” to “color”), update a product name throughout a document, replace straight quotes with typographic ones, or strip a repeated phrase by leaving the replacement empty. The result updates as you type, so you can see each change before copying.
Regular expression starter kit
Regular expressions use JavaScript syntax. A few useful patterns: \s+ matches any run of spaces and line breaks; {2,} (a space followed by {2,}) matches two or more spaces in a row, so you can replace it with a single space; \d+ matches any number; (\w+)@(\w+) captures the parts of an email address, which you can reorder in the replacement with $2 and $1.
If a pattern is invalid, the tool tells you instead of changing your text.