is thier any posibilities to find and replace multiple words at once ?

neeraj10786

is thier any posibilities to find and replace multiple words at once ?
i have to find and replace 20-30 different words at one time without working one by one

PeterJones

@neeraj10786 said in is thier any posibilities to find and replace multiple words at once ?:

is thier any posibilities to find and replace multiple words at once ?
i have to find and replace 20-30 different words at one time without working one by one

20-30? Easily. 200-300: less likely to work.

It depends on your use case:

If you want all 20-30 words to be replaced by a single word:

FIND WHAT: apple|banana|cantaloupe|xyz
REPLACE WITH: fruit
SEARCH MODE = Regular Expression
REPLACE ALL

It’s more fancy regex if you want to replace each of the 20-30 original words with a different word:

FIND WHAT: (apple)|(banana)|(cantaloupe)|(date)|(elderberry)|(fig)|(grape)|(honeydew)|(imbe)|(jackfruit)|(kiwi)|(lime)|(mango)|(nectarine)|(orange)|(peach)|(quince)|(raspberry)|(strawberry)|(tangerine)|(ugli-fruit)|(xigua)|(yangmei)|(zinfandel)
REPLACE WITH: (?{1}armadillo)(?{2}bat)(?{3}camel)(?{4}dolphin)(?{5}elephant)(?{6}frog)(?{7}grasshopper)(?{8}hedgehog)(?{9}iguana)(?{10}jellyfish)(?{11}kangaroo)(?{12}lion)(?{13}meerkat)(?{14}newt)(?{15}ostrich)(?{16}penguin)(?{17}quail)(?{18}racoon)(?{19}snail)(?{20}turtle)(?{21}uakari)(?{22}vulture)(?{23}walrus)(?{24}xysticus)(?{25}yak)(?{26}zebra)
SEARCH MODE = Regular Expression
REPLACE ALL

If you want to do more words that, understand that there are limits to the number of characters allowed in search/replace operations: if it’s more than a few hundred characters, I don’t recommend it (though it can technically go around 2000, IIRC). But for large numbers of words, even if it technically fits, it’s unweildy (even the 26 words, I used multiple regex and the Column Editor in Notepad++ to generate the regex FIND and REPLACE, because doing all the parenthesis and numbering is not something I’d want to do by hand). Thus, I highly recommend using the PythonScript plugin and a translation script, like the one I shared here – it shows translating from English into another language, but it could be used for any translation table of A,B,C into X,Y,Z. You just add more entries to the translation map if you want more pairs. (That post has instructions in it, but we now also have a FAQ which was derived from those instructions, and might be more up-to-date.)

(thank you to wikijunior:fruit alphabet and animal alphabet for the word lists)

guy038

Hello, @neeraj10786 and All,

You can, indeed, search and replace multiple words, in one go, using the Regular expression search mode

You must use the below syntax for, both, the search of these exact words and for the replace fields

FIND \b(?-i:(Word_1)|(Word_2)|(Word_3)|.........|(Word_n))\b
REPLACE (?{1}New_1)(?{2}New_2)(?{3}New_3).........(?{n}New_n)

If you prefer an insensitive search of each word ( so, whatever the case ), simply change the beginning of the search regex to \b(?i:

Unlike in the @peterjones’s post, I supposed that you intend to search for true words and not strings which may be embedded in bigger expressions. However the syntax are quite similar !

One example :

Giving this INPUT text :

--- Word_1 --- Word_2 --- Word_3 --- Word_4 --- Word_5 --- Word_6 --- Word_7 --- Word_8 --- Word_9 --- Word_10 --- Word_11 --- Word_12 ---

Open the Replace dialog ( Ctrl+ H )
Uncheck all the box options
FIND \b(?-i:(Word_1)|(Word_2)|(Word_3)|(Word_4)|(Word_5)|(Word_6)|(Word_7)|(Word_8)|(Word_9)|(Word_10)|(Word_11)|(Word_12))\b
REPLACE (?{1}New_1)(?{2}New_2)(?{3}New_3)(?{4}New_4)(?{5}New_5)(?{6}New_6)(?{7}New_7)(?{8}New_8)(?{9}New_9)(?{10}New_10)(?{11}New_11)(?{12}New_12)
If necessary, check the Wrap around OR the In selection option
Click, once only, on the Replace All button

You should get this OUTPUT text, below :

--- New_1 --- New_2 --- New_3 --- New_4 --- New_5 --- New_6 --- New_7 --- New_8 --- New_9 --- New_10 --- New_11 --- New_12 ---

Simple, isn’t !

Best Regards,

guy038

Coises

@neeraj10786:

While I don’t use it myself (and so can’t give detailed advice), it seems like the MultiReplace plugin by @Thomas-Knoefel would be easier to use than built-in methods. If this is a single-time problem, then the built-in methods others have given make sense; but if it is something you’ll need to do repeatedly, I’d check out that plugin.