Free Find and Replace in Word, PowerPoint & Excel

Worked example

Press "Try a sample". It adds sample-agreement.docx, a short contract that says "ACME Ltd" three times and "2025" three times. Type ACME Ltd in "Find" and Globex GmbH in "Replace with". Press "+ Add another pair" and type 2025 and 2026. The big button now reads "Replace in 1 file"; press it. The page says "6 replacements in 1 file.", and each pair shows "3 replacements" beneath it. The file row offers "Download (6 changes)", and the bar at the bottom offers "Download the changed file" and "Change the words". One "ACME Ltd" is stored as a bold "ACME" followed by a plain " Ltd", and it is still found. Because the match starts in the bold run, "Globex GmbH" comes out bold. The download keeps the name sample-agreement.docx.

Which settings to use, and the limits

• Know which files and which text it covers. It opens .docx, .docm, .dotx, .pptx, .pptm, .ppsx, .potx, .xlsx, .xlsm and .xltx files. In Word it searches the main text, headers, footers, footnotes, endnotes and comments. In PowerPoint it searches slides and speaker notes. In Excel it searches text cells. Chart text, slide layouts and masters, document properties, sheet names, formulas and the targets of hyperlinks are not searched. Numbers typed into Excel cells are stored as numbers, not text, so they are not found either.
• Choose the matching options before you press the button. The three boxes apply to every pair. By default capitals are ignored, so "acme" finds "ACME"; tick "Match capitals" to make it exact. The replacement is inserted exactly as you typed it and does not copy the capitals of the old text. "Whole words only" stops "cat" matching inside "concatenate", and it works for any alphabet, not only English. Without "Regular expression ($1 for groups)", the Find text is plain, so a dot or bracket means itself.
• Use several pairs and mind their order. "+ Add another pair" adds a row, and the ✕ ("Remove") on a row is disabled while only one row is left. The page notes that "Pairs are applied from top to bottom, in every file." So a lower pair can match text that a higher pair has already produced. Leave "Replace with" empty to delete the found text; the box shows "(leave empty to delete)". Rows with an empty "Find" box are ignored. After a run, each pair shows its own count, or "Not found".
• Use regular expressions for patterns. Tick "Regular expression ($1 for groups)" to turn every Find box into a pattern. In "Replace with", $1, $2 and so on stand for bracketed groups, $<name> for a named group, $& for the whole match and $$ for a dollar sign. For example, find (\d+) (March|June) and replace with $2 $1 to turn "1 March" into "March 1". Capitals are still ignored unless you tick "Match capitals". Matches of zero length are skipped. Without the regular expression box, a $ in "Replace with" is a plain dollar sign.
• Do many files in one pass. Drop several files, or use the drop zone, which then reads "Add more files", to add to the list. The button counts them, for example "Replace in 3 files", and every file gets the same pairs. Each file is listed with "Download (N changes)" or "Not found in this file". With more than one changed file, the bottom button reads "Download 3 changed files (ZIP)" and saves replaced-files.zip with only the changed files, under their own names; a second file with the same name gets " (2)" added. Your original files are not changed.
• Check what a match can and cannot cross. Text is matched within one paragraph, so a phrase never matches across a new paragraph, a tab, a line break or a table cell. Within a paragraph it is matched even if Word has split it into pieces with different formatting. The replacement takes the formatting of the piece where the match starts, and the other pieces lose only the matched text. In Excel, a match stays inside one text cell. Fonts, colours, tables, images and layout are not touched, so it is worth opening the result once before you send it.

Common problems and how to fix them

It says "Nothing was found. Check the spelling, or untick "Match capitals" and "Whole words only"."

No pair matched in any file. Matching is exact apart from capitals: it does not treat a curly apostrophe (’) as a straight one ('), or a non-breaking space as a normal space. If you copied the text from the document, paste it into "Find" instead of typing it. A phrase that crosses a tab, a line break or a paragraph also cannot match. With the regular expression box ticked, a dot or bracket in Find is a pattern, so untick it for plain text.

One file says "Not found in this file" while others changed.

That file has no match in the parts that are searched. The text may sit in chart text, a slide layout or master, or an Excel number cell, which is stored as a number and not as text. Text inside a picture is also out of reach. If the words are in an ordinary paragraph or text cell, check the spelling and the "Whole words only" box against that file's wording.

It says "report.doc is a DOC file, which this tool can't open." (with your own file name and type)

Old .doc, .xls and .ppt files are a different format from the ten extensions this tool takes. Open the file in Office and save a copy as .docx, .xlsx or .pptx. A password-protected file is stored in that older container too, so it is refused in the same way, for example "contract.docx is a DOCX file, which this tool can't open."; remove the password first.

A file row says "Could not open this file: it may be password-protected or damaged."

The file has a name the tool accepts, but it could not be read as the zip package that a .docx, .pptx or .xlsx is. A download that stopped early or a damaged file ends up here. Other files in the same run are not affected, and only this row shows the message. Open the file in Office, save a copy, and add the copy.

It says "One of the regular expressions is not valid."

It appears only when "Regular expression ($1 for groups)" is ticked. The pattern did not compile, and the run button stays disabled until it does. Common causes are an unclosed bracket such as ( or [, or an unnecessary backslash such as \- or \'. Patterns are read in Unicode mode, which is strict about backslashes. A literal dot is \. and a literal bracket is \(. If you meant plain text, untick the box instead.

How it compares

Word, PowerPoint and Excel have their own Find and Replace, which is often the better choice for one document: it shows each match and can search by formatting. This tool is for repeating the same list of replacements across many files without opening each one. It handles several find and replace pairs, plain text, whole words or patterns, and gives you the changed copies. It shows counts, not a preview of each match, and cannot replace one match at a time or change formatting, images or hyperlink targets. It does not open old .doc, .xls or .ppt files. Nothing needs installing, and the files are changed in your browser and not uploaded.