Orpheus

Find and Replace Text

Across a whole document, with a count of what changed.

Options
Ignore case
Whole words only
Treat "Find" as a regular expression
Result

Everything is processed in this tab. Nothing you paste is sent anywhere.

Every tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server.

Find and replace scans the text for every occurrence of a term and substitutes another. Whole-word matching stops "cat" changing inside "category", and case sensitivity decides whether "The" and "the" both match.

How to use Find and Replace

  1. Paste your text. A paragraph or a whole document.
  2. Enter what to find and what to replace it with. Leave the replacement empty to delete the term.
  3. Set the options. Whole words, case, and regular expressions if you need a pattern.

About finding and replacing text

Find and replace is one of those operations that seems too simple to get wrong and routinely is. The classic failure is substring matching: replacing a short word without word boundaries changes it everywhere it appears inside longer words, and the damage is scattered through the document rather than concentrated where you would notice it. Turning on whole-word matching solves it by requiring a word boundary either side, though the option is only meaningful when the search term itself starts and ends with a word character — a boundary next to punctuation matches in places that surprise people. Case sensitivity is the second decision worth making deliberately. Ignoring case catches every variant, which is usually what you want when correcting a term, and it also means the replacement is applied with whatever capitalisation you typed rather than preserving what was there. Replacing "the" case-insensitively will turn sentence-initial "The" into lowercase, which is rarely intended and easy to miss. Regular expressions turn the tool into something considerably more capable. Matching a pattern rather than a literal lets you find every number, every date in a particular format, or everything between two markers, and referencing captured groups in the replacement lets you reorder rather than merely substitute — swapping a date from one format to another is a single expression. The cost is that a small mistake in a pattern can match far more than intended, which is why seeing the count of replacements before accepting the result is worth more than it looks.

Frequently asked questions

Why did my replacement change part of another word?
Because plain matching finds the term anywhere, including inside longer words — replacing "cat" turns "category" into something unintended. Turn on whole words, which requires a word boundary either side of the match.
How do I delete a term rather than replace it?
Leave the replacement field empty. Every match is removed. Be careful with surrounding spaces: deleting a word usually leaves a double space behind, which is worth a second pass to tidy up.
What can I do with the regular expression option?
Match patterns rather than fixed text — all numbers, all email addresses, anything between two markers. You can also reference captured groups in the replacement as $1, $2 and so on, which is how you reorder or reformat rather than merely substitute.
Is my text uploaded?
No. Everything runs in your browser, so a contract, a draft or a configuration file can be edited without being sent anywhere. That is the practical difference from most online editors.
Why does whole-word matching not work on my term?
Word boundaries only apply where the term begins and ends with a word character. A search for "-ing" or "end." has punctuation at the edge, so the boundary would match in unexpected places — the option is skipped rather than applied wrongly in those cases.

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