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252
Can I find and replace text in an Excel spreadsheet?


Excel 2013 and Excel 2016

Yes. First select the column(s) or row(s) to be searched, unless you need to search through the whole sheet. Then : 

  1. From the the Home tab, Editing group, click Find & Select.
  2. Select Find... or Replace... from the dropdown menu
  3. Fill in the Find What: box and/or the Replace With: box.

The search text will be found as a whole or as part of a cell entry and is not case sensitive.

You can use wildcards, for example, Find What: Y* to find entries like Y, Yes, YES, or y in a Yes or No column. You cannot use wildcards in the Replace box.

Click Options button to further define your search e.g. Match entire cell contents and match case

 To find dates, specify the date you are looking for in the format dd/mm/yyyy  

eg  02/11/2012

 even if the date is displayed in a different format on the spreadsheet.

There is also the option to search the entire workbook using the Within: dropdown

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This is question number 252, which appears in the following categories:

Created by Jason Bailey on 27 July 2001 and last updated by Paul Ryan on 6 September 2016