Finding and replacing text and formatting

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Writer has a Find and Replace feature that automates the process of searching for text inside a document.

In addition to finding and replacing words and phrases, you can:

  • Use wildcards and regular expressions to fine-tune a search.
  • Find and replace specific formatting.
  • Find and replace paragraph styles.

See Chapter 3 in the Writer Guide for more information.

To display the Find & Replace dialog box, use the keyboard shortcut Control+F or select Edit > Find & Replace.

  1. Type the text you want to find in the Search for box.
  2. To replace the text with different text, type the new text in the Replace with box.
  3. You can select various options, such as matching the case, matching whole words only, or doing a search for similar words. (See below for some other choices.)
  4. When you have set up your search, click Find. To replace text, click Replace instead.
The Find & Replace dialog.
Tip.png If you click Find All, Writer selects all instances of the search text in the document. Similarly, if you click Replace All button, Writer will replace all matches.


Documentation caution.png Use Replace All with caution; otherwise, you may end up with some hilarious (and highly embarrassing) mistakes. A mistake with Replace All might require a manual, word-by-word search to fix.
Content on this page is licensed under the Creative Common Attribution 3.0 license (CC-BY).
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