Find & Replace in Excel Files Online
Find and replace text values in Excel files directly in your browser. Supports plain text and regex patterns across any column — no upload required.
How to find & Replace in Excel files
- Drop your file onto the upload area. The tool shows the row count, how many text columns it found, and the first 200 rows.
- In Apply to column, keep All text columns or pick one column. Number, date and boolean columns are never changed.
- Type the text to find and the replacement. Leave Replace with empty to delete every match.
- Tick Use regular expression if the Find box holds a pattern rather than literal text, then click Find & Replace.
- Check the result preview and download the file in the same format.
Your file is processed locally in your browser and is never uploaded. The free limit is 50 MB per file; larger files work if your device has the memory for them.
Worked example
A contractor list was typed in by hand, so phone numbers mix brackets, spaces, dashes and a country prefix. The SMS gateway wants digits only.
Input (Excel)
Excel workbook, first sheet (Sheet1)
| name | phone | city |
|---|---|---|
| Aroha Ngata | (021) 555-0143 | Auckland |
| Liam Park | 021 555 0198 | Hamilton |
| Mele Tupou | +64 21 555 0112 | Auckland |
| Sam Reid | NULL | Tauranga |
Settings
- Apply to column: phone
- Find: [^0-9]
- Replace with: (empty)
- Use regular expression: ticked
Result
| name | phone | city |
|---|---|---|
| Aroha Ngata | 0215550143 | Auckland |
| Liam Park | 0215550198 | Hamilton |
| Mele Tupou | 64215550112 | Auckland |
| Sam Reid | NULL | Tauranga |
The pattern [^0-9] matches any character that is not a digit, and every match in the cell is replaced, not just the first. Brackets, spaces, dashes and the plus sign are removed. The phone column stays text, so the leading zero survives. Sam's empty phone stays empty. Limiting the run to the phone column keeps the other columns untouched.
Working with Excel files
The first sheet is read as Excel displays it, so the tool searches the displayed text. A cell formatted to show 1,250.00 is loaded as that text and can be matched with "," or ".00". A plain number in General format is loaded as a number, and number columns are not searched. Formulas are read as their last calculated result, so you are replacing values, not editing the formula text. Cells that load as plain numbers are skipped entirely.
Common Excel clean-up jobs work well here. Examples are removing non-breaking spaces pasted in from web pages, stripping "N/A" placeholders, or standardising "Ltd." and "Limited". Non-breaking spaces are not the same character as normal spaces, and the regex class \s does not match them either. Use the pattern [\s\x{00A0}]+ to catch both. The result is written to Sheet1 of a new .xlsx file. Cell formatting, colours and other sheets are not carried over.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this the same as Excel's Find and Replace dialog?
It is similar, but it works on one column or all text columns of the first sheet, and it supports full regular expressions. Matching is always case-sensitive unless you add (?i) at the start of a regex pattern.
Why does replacing a space not clean my Excel cells?
The cells may contain non-breaking spaces, often pasted from web pages. Tick Use regular expression and search for [\s\x{00A0}]+ to match normal and non-breaking spaces together.
Is the search case-sensitive?
Yes, in both modes. With Use regular expression ticked, you can start the pattern with (?i) to ignore case, for example (?i)limited.
Can I use capture groups in the replacement?
Yes. In regex mode, write \1, \2 and so on in Replace with. For example, find (\d{4})-(\d{2}) and replace with \2/\1 to turn 2026-04 into 04/2026. The syntax is RE2, so lookaheads and lookbehinds are not supported.
Does it replace every match or only the first one in each cell?
Every match. Both plain text and regex mode replace all occurrences in each cell of the targeted columns.
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