Advanced Find & Replace in Google Docs™
Search a selection, one tab, or every tab of a Google Doc, review each occurrence in context, then replace up to 500 at a time with a 30-minute undo.
Advanced Find & Replace searches the parts of a Google Doc that the built-in find box leaves out: other tabs, table cells, headers, footers, and footnotes. Every match is listed with its location and surrounding text before anything changes.
Review the list, clear the occurrences you want to keep, give individual matches their own replacement text, and apply the rest as one batch you can undo.
Get the Add-On - Free
Text To Table Converter
Install Text To Table Converter free to review and replace text across tabs, tables, headers, footers, and footnotes in Google Docs™.
Google Docs™ only
Advanced Find & Replace works in Google Docs. To search and replace cell values in a spreadsheet, use Find and Replace Values in Google Sheets™ instead.
On this pageOpen Advanced Find & Replace
Open Advanced Find & Replace
- 1Open the Google Doc you want to search.
- 2Open the Text To Table Converter add-on.
- 3In the sidebar, go to Document Tools and click Advanced Find & Replace under Edit. You can also choose Extensions > Text To Table Converter > Document Tools > Advanced Find & Replace.
- 4Type the text or pattern you are looking for in Find, and what should take its place in Replace with.
Delete instead of replace
Leave Replace with empty to remove every occurrence you select. Use the swap button between the two fields to reverse a search you entered backwards.
Choose where to search
Search in sets how much of the document is covered, and Document regions decides which parts of it are read.
- Body and tables covers ordinary paragraphs, list items, and text inside table cells.
- Headers, Footers, and Footnotes are searched only when you tick them, so recurring boilerplate stays untouched by default.
Swipe sideways to see all columns
| Search in | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Current selection | Only the text you highlighted in the document body before opening the modal. |
| Current tab | The tab you are working in, including its tables, headers, footers, and footnotes. |
| Selected tabs | The tabs you tick in the tab list, for documents split across several tabs. |
| All tabs | Every tab in the document. |
Selection searches are body-only
Current selection needs text highlighted in the document body and keeps Body and tables as its only region. Select text before opening the modal, or the option stays unavailable.
Set the match options
Swipe sideways to see all columns
| Option | Effect |
|---|---|
| Match case | Distinguishes uppercase from lowercase, so Draft no longer matches draft. |
| Whole words only | Skips matches inside longer words. Available for plain-text searches. |
| Regular expression | Treats the Find field as a pattern instead of literal text. |
| Preserve capitalization | Copies the shape of each match onto its replacement: PROJECT becomes INITIATIVE and Project becomes Initiative. Available for plain-text searches with Match case off. |
Review every occurrence before replacing
Each result shows where the match sits — body paragraph, table row and cell, header, footer, or footnote — with the text around it and a preview of the replacement.
- Clear the checkbox on any occurrence you want to leave alone.
- Click Customize to give one occurrence different replacement text, and Use default to hand it back to the Replace with value.
- Click Show in doc to jump to that occurrence in the document, switching tabs when the match sits in another one.
- Narrow a long list with the Tab and Region filters, then use Select filtered to select only what those filters show.
- Select all, Clear, and the selected count in the footer tell you exactly how many changes the next click will make.
Mixed formatting
A Mixed formatting badge means the matched text uses more than one style. Its replacement takes the style found at the start of the match.
Replace the reviewed occurrences and undo if needed
- 1Click Replace selected to change only the ticked occurrences, or Replace all to change every occurrence in the list.
- 2Check the summary in the confirmation dialog: the find text, the replacement, the scope, and how many occurrences will change.
- 3Confirm to apply the batch. The modal reports how many occurrences were replaced.
- 4Click Undo in the modal to restore the batch while it is still available.
Undo lasts 30 minutes
Undo covers the most recent batch for 30 minutes and only while the replaced text has not been edited again. Editing that text yourself, or closing the modal and letting the window pass, makes the batch permanent.
Refresh after the document changes
Results describe the document as it was when you searched. Change the search settings or edit the document and the modal asks you to refresh the results before replacing.
Search with regular expressions
Tick Regular expression to use Google Docs pattern syntax. Capture groups are available in the replacement as $1, $2, and so on.
- Lookarounds such as (?=…) and backreferences such as \1 are not supported by Google Docs search.
- Inline flags such as (?i) are rejected — use the Match case option instead.
- Patterns with nested repetition such as (a+)+ are blocked because they can hang the search.
- Patterns that match an empty position are not supported, so anchor the pattern on real characters.
Find: (\d{4})/(\d{2})/(\d{2})
Replace with: $3.$2.$1Limits and troubleshooting
- The search pattern holds up to 300 characters; replacement text holds up to 5,000.
- Replacement text cannot contain a line break.
- A search lists up to 1,000 occurrences. Narrow the scope, regions, or pattern when the modal reports that the list was cut short.
- One batch replaces up to 500 occurrences. Run the search again for the remainder.
- Only one document change runs at a time — wait a moment if the modal reports that it is busy.
- Text in drawings, images, charts, or comments is not searched.