Contents
Index 🔎︎

# Find & Replace

Finds or replaces text or formats in the current document.

To access this command...

Choose Edit - Find & Replace.

CommandCtrl+H

On the Standard bar, click

Find & Replace

## Find

Enter the text that you want to find, or select a previous search from the list.

Search options are listed under the Find box and in the Other options area of the dialogue box.

### Match case

Matches the exact character provided in the Find box without considering any alternative case matches.

Disable this option to consider all possible case matches. For example, entering "a" in the Find box matches both "a" and "A".

Beware that some characters may have more than one match when Match case is disabled. For instance, "s" matches "s", "S" and "ß" (sharp S used in the German language).

### Formatted display

Includes number formatting characters in the search.

### Entire Cells Whole words only

Searches for whole words or cells that are identical to the search text.

### All sheets

Searches through all of the sheets in the current spreadsheet file.

## Replace

Enter the replacement text, or select a recent replacement text or style from the list.

Replacement options are listed under the Find box and in the Other options area of the dialogue box.

## Find All

Finds and selects all instances of the text or the format that you are searching for in the document (only in Writer and Calc documents).

## Find Previous

Finds and selects the previous occurrence of the text or format that you are searching for in the document.

## Find Next

Finds and selects the next occurrence of the text or format that you are searching for in the document.

## Replace

Replaces the selected text or format that you searched for, and then searches for the next occurrence.

## Replace All

Replaces all of the occurrences of the text or format that you want to replace. Repeat this command until all replacements on your slide have been made.

## Other options

Shows more or fewer search options. Click this label again to hide the extended search options.

### Current selection only

Searches only the selected text or cells.

### Replace backwards

Search starts at the current cursor position and goes backwards to the beginning of the file.

### Comments

In Writer, you can select to include the comment text strings in your searches.

### Regular expressions

Allows you to use regular expressions in your search.

List of Regular Expressions

### Paragraph Styles / Including Styles Cell Styles

Searches for text formatted with the style that you specify. Select this check box, and then select a style from the Find list. To specify a replacement style, select a style from the Replace list.

## Similarity Search

Find terms that are similar to the Find text. Select this check box, and then click the Similarities button to define the similarity options.

### Match character width (only if Asian languages are enabled)

Distinguishes between half-width and full-width character forms.

### Sounds like (Japanese) (only if Asian languages are enabled)

Lets you specify the search options for similar notation used in Japanese text. Select this checkbox, and then click the Sounds button to specify the search options.

Searching in Japanese

### Diacritic-sensitive

Searches exact match, does not include Unicode combining marks in search. For example, searching for كتب will not match كَتَبَ or كُتُب or كتِب and so on.

### Kashida-sensitive

Searches exact match, does not include Arabic Tatweel mark U+0640 (also known as Kashida) in search. For example, searching for كتاب will not match كـتاب or كتــــاب and so on.

## Attributes

Choose the text attributes that you want to search for. For example, if you select the Outline attribute, then all characters formatted manually with an Outline effect are found. If you also want to find characters with an Outline effect as part of a style, then select Including styles in the Other Options section, before searching.

Searching for Attributes

## Format

Finds specific text formatting features, such as font types, font effects, and text flow characteristics.

After you select format and attributes that you want to search for, the Paragraph Styles checkbox in the Other options area changes to Including Styles. Select this checkbox if you want to include search for formatting and attributes set by styles.

## No Format

Click in the Find or the Replace box, and then click this button to remove the search criteria based on formats.

The search and replace criteria selected for Format and Attributes are displayed under the Find and Replace boxes.

## Direction

Determines the order for searching the cells.

### Rows

Searches from left to right across the rows.

### Columns

Searches from top to bottom through the columns.

## Search in

### Formulas

Searches for the characters that you specify in formulas and in fixed (not calculated) values. For example, you could look for formulas that contain 'SUM'.

### Values

Searches for the characters that you specify in values and in the results of formulas.

### Comments

Searches for the characters that you specify in the comments that are attached to the cells.

### Close

Closes the dialogue box and saves all changes.

After you close the Find & Replace dialog, you can still search using the last search criteria that you entered, by pressing Shift+CommandCtrl+F.

Related Topics

Using Regular Expressions in Text Searches

List of Regular Expressions

Finding and Replacing in Writer