How to Find and Replace Data in Excel

Excel is a powerful and versatile spreadsheet application that allows you to store, analyze, and manipulate data. One of the features that can help you work with data more efficiently is the Find and Replace tool. This tool lets you search for specific text or numbers in your worksheet or workbook, and replace them with something else if you want. In this article, we will show you how to use the Find and Replace tool in Excel in the most efficient way.

How to Open the Find and Replace Dialog Box

There are two ways to open the Find and Replace dialog box in Excel:

Press the Ctrl + F keyboard shortcut to open the Find tab, or press Ctrl + H to open the Replace tab.
Go to the Home tab, click the Find & Select button in the Editing group, and choose Find or Replace from the drop-down menu.

The Find and Replace dialog box has two tabs: Find and Replace. The Find tab allows you to search for text or numbers in your worksheet or workbook, while the Replace tab allows you to replace them with something else.

How to Use the Find Tab

To use the Find tab, follow these steps:

In the Find what box, type the text or number you want to search for, or select a recent search item from the drop-down list.
Click Options to expand the dialog box and see more options, such as Within, Search, Look in, Match case, Match entire cell contents, and Format.
Choose the options that suit your needs. For example, you can search for data in a specific worksheet or in the entire workbook, by rows or by columns, in formulas, values, notes, or comments, with exact case or cell content match, or with specific formatting.
Click Find Next to locate the first occurrence of the value in the search area; click Find Next again to find the next occurrence, and so on.
Click Find All to list all occurrences of the value in a separate window. You can see information such as the book, sheet, cell address, and value of each occurrence. You can also sort the results by clicking on a column heading. To go to a specific cell in the list, click on it.

How to Use the Replace Tab

To use the Replace tab, follow these steps:

In the Find what box, type the text or number you want to replace, or select a recent search item from the drop-down list.
In the Replace with box, type the text or number you want to use as a replacement value.
Click Options to expand the dialog box and see more options. You can use the same options as in the Find tab, except for Look in, which is always set to Formulas.
Click Replace to replace each occurrence one at a time; click Replace All to replace all occurrences of that value in the selected range.

How to Use Wildcard Characters

You can use wildcard characters to find and replace data that match a certain pattern. There are three wildcard characters that you can use in Excel:

Question mark (?): This matches any single character. For example, s?t finds “sat” and “set”.
Asterisk (): This matches any number of characters. For example, sd finds “sad” and “started”.
Tilde (~): This is used to find literal question marks, asterisks, or tildes. For example, fy91~? finds “fy91?”.

To use wildcard characters, follow these steps:

In the Find what box or Replace with box, type the text or number with wildcard characters as needed.
Click Options and make sure that Look in is set to Formulas.
Click Find Next, Find All, Replace, or Replace All as desired.

How to Change the Formatting of Values

You can also find and replace data based on their formatting. For example, you can change all cells with red font color to blue font color. To do this, follow these steps:

Select the range of cells you want to find and replace in or click any cell to search the entire active worksheet.
Click Home > Find & Select > Replace to open the Find and Replace dialog box.
Click Options to expand the dialog box.
You do not need to enter text or numbers that you want to find and replace unless required.
Click Format next to either Find what or Replace with (or both) depending on what you want to do.
In the Find Format dialog box or Replace Format dialog box that appears, choose the formatting options that you want. You can also select a cell that has the formatting that you want as an example by clicking Choose Format From Cell and then clicking on that cell.
Click OK to close the format dialog box.
Click Find Next, Find All, Replace, or Replace All as desired.

Conclusion

The Find and Replace tool is a useful feature of Excel that can help you work with data more efficiently. You can use it to search for specific text or numbers in your worksheet or workbook, and replace them with something else if you want. You can also use advanced options such as wildcard characters and formatting to find and replace data that match a certain pattern or style. By using the Find and Replace tool in Excel, you can save time and avoid errors in your data analysis.

How to Find and Replace Data in Excel