How to Replace Text in Selected Cells in Excel: 4 Simple Methods

Method 1 – Replace the Text in Selected Cells Using Find and Replace

Steps:

• Select the range of cells we want to perform find and replace it.
• Go to Editing > Find or Replace.

• A dialog box will pop up like the image below.

• Type Jonny in the Find what box and click Find All.

3 results are found.

• Type Johnson in the Replace with box and click Replace All. Select the range again to perform Replace with. Otherwise, it will replace throughout the sheet.

•  Click OK in the confirmation box.

• All 3 findings will be replaced, as you can see in the image below. Since the last text Jonny was not in the selected cells, it remained intact.

Method 2 – Use a Keyboard Shortcut to Replace Text from Selected Cells

Steps:

• Select the cells we want to Find and Replace within.

• Press CTRL+H and a Find and Replace dialog box will appear.

• Continue as in Method 1. In the box, we will type Jonny in Find what and Johnson in Replace with box and click Replace All.

• Our dataset will look like the following image.

• Jonny in cell B14 was not in our selected cell range, so it is not replaced.

Method 3 – Replace the Text by a Wildcard Character

The wildcard is a unique character that helps us to match texts in Excel. Excel has three characters as wildcards to use in formulas: Asterisk (*), Question mark (?), and Tilde(~).

See the use of Asterisk (*) to find and replace text in selected cells.

Steps:

• Select the cell range you want to check for replacing the text.

• Press CTRL + H to open the Find and Replace dialog box.
• In the Find what box, type *Jon.

• If we use Asterisk (*) at the start and type a specific text, it will find all the text that ends with that text.
• If we want to find the text by the first few characters, use the following.

• We want to find text that contains some specific characters in the middle, the follow the technique below.

• Type Johnson in the Replace with box and click Replace All.

• Our final result will be as follows.

Method 4 – Replace the Text in Selected Cells for the Entire Workbook

Steps:

• Open the workbook and press Ctrl + H, which will open the Find and Replace dialog box.
• Type Jonny and click Find All.

• We have four instances of Jonny in each sheet, so it gets 20 matches.

• Type Johnson in Replace with box and click Replace All.

Click on the sheets and we will find Jonny is Replaced with Johnson.

Practice Workbook

Related Article

• Excel VBA: Replace Character in String by Position

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