Google Sheets are known for their dynamic workbooks which keep track of all the numerical calculations carried out by either a single user or by multiple users in the application. But once the data starts to get accumulated over some time, it becomes difficult to find specific values or even make changes to a particular value that was created long back. Most times, enterprises run into such problems, and the Find and Replace feature of Google Sheets acts savior in such difficult instances.
The Find and Replace feature of Google Sheets enable the user or users to get off the burden of searching through the entire set of workbooks to find a small detail. Instead, it let the users get hold of the required information in just a matter of seconds. It not only just finds the portion, but also provides the option to replace the part with any other appropriate part.
It is an extremely user-friendly feature as it let the users search using expressions, cells, formulae, wildcards, etc. along with the regular text. The following section applies the use of this feature in multiple instances.
How to use Find and Replace in Google Sheets?
Method 1.
Step 1. Click open the Google Sheets application on your device.
Step 2. Open the sheet in which you want to find any particular value or number.
Step 3. Click on the Edit option present at the top menu bar.
Step 4. From the drop-down menu that appears, click on the Find and Replace option.
Step 5. On clicking the Find and Replace option, a Find and Replace dialog box appears.
Step 6. Enter the text that you want to find at the prescribed slot or space in the dialog box.
Step 7. Enter the replacement text, if any, in the dedicated space.
Step 8. Customize the search according to whether the entire sheets have to be searched or not.
Step 9. Also, optimize the searching process by choosing the required checkboxes in the bottom part of the dialog box.
Step 10. Click Find, if you don’t want to replace anything. If you have entered any search optimizations, click on the Done option at the bottom right corner of the dialog box.
Step 11. The searched text will now be highlighted in the sheet to get noticed easily.
Method 2
The second method to find and replace a part of the Google Sheet involves a keyboard shortcut.
Step 1. Open the Google Sheets application on the concerned device.
Step 2. Click open the document in which the search and replacement have to be conducted.
Step 3. Using the keyboard, click CTRL+H. The Find and Replace dialog box appears instantly.
Step 4. Fill in the particulars in the dialog box and press Done.
Step 5. The searched content is now available as highlighted in the Google Sheet.
Method 3.
The third method also involves a keyboard shortcut. But the difference lies in the fact that this shortcut does not take the user to the Find and Replace dialog box.
Step1. Open the Google Sheets application on the device.
Step 2. Open the sheet in which the work has to be done.
Step 3. On the keyboard, press CTRL+F. A generic Find box appears on the top right side of the sheet. The user can type anything that has to be searched into this Find box.
Step 4. Type in the word that has to be searched. When you start typing itself the number of similarly spelled words present in the sheet is shown at the right end of the Find box. Once you finish typing, the total number of the spelled word is shown at the right end of the Find box.
Step 5. All the instances of the word that you have searched presently in the sheet are now highlighted and are easily findable.
Step 6. The user can now scroll up and down the sheet to find the instances of the searched word occurring and choose which one that you were intending to act. The only difference that this method has from the other two methods is that there is no instant replacement option available for this method. The user will have to manually scroll up to the target word and change it. Also, as the searching cannot be optimized and narrowed down like the other two, most times, this method picks out a greater number of results.
