Find & Replace

Swap text inside a column. Fix one spelling, or fix ten in the same step.

What it does

Find & Replace looks for text in one column. It writes your replacement in place of it. The column keeps its name and its position in the grid.

The column list shows text columns only. Convert a number or date column first if you need to edit it here.

Replace a value

The example below cleans a country field in a survey export.

  1. Type find in the Search transforms box, in the Pipeline panel.
  2. Select Find & Replace in the results.
  3. Open Select column and pick your column. Type in the Search text columns... box to shorten the list.
  4. Type the old text in Find value. For example, type U.S.A..
  5. Type the new text in Replace with. For example, type United States.
  6. Click Apply.

Fix several values at once

Click Add pair to get another row of boxes. Fill in one pair per correction. Click the small cross on a row to drop it. One Apply runs every pair.

Pairs run from top to bottom. A later pair can act on text that an earlier pair produced. Put the most specific pair first when two pairs overlap.

The two checkboxes

CheckboxDefaultWhat it does
Case sensitiveOnMatches the exact letter case only. Clear it to match usa, USA and Usa together.
Entire cellOffReplaces only when the whole cell equals your find text. Leave it off to replace text inside longer values.

Leave both boxes clear to replace part of a value, in any letter case.

Good to know

  • An empty Replace with box deletes the found text. Use this to strip a prefix.
  • Clearing Case sensitive is still safe with punctuation. The step escapes characters such as ., * and ( before it searches. Your text matches as text.
  • Rows that hold no match stay as they are.
  • Click Add Condition to limit the change. Only rows that pass the condition get the new text.

For SQL users

A single case-sensitive pair on a text column runs as:

SELECT "respondent_id", REPLACE("country", 'U.S.A.', 'United States') AS "country", "score" FROM data
Try Find & Replace with sample data →

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