Google Docs will tell you it replaced 47 things. It will not tell you which 47. This add-on
shows you the list first, and will not replace anything that is not on it.
What it is
A sidebar for Google Docs that adds the two things the built-in find and replace does not have:
a list of what it is about to change, and search by formatting.
It runs entirely inside the document — there is no server and nothing is uploaded.
One panel, in the order you read it — what to find, then what to change it to.
Opening it
Extensions → Find & Replace with Preview → Open. The panel opens on the right
and stays with the document you are in.
The loop
Say what you are looking for — text, formatting, or both.
Press Find. Nothing in your document changes. You get a count and a list, each
row showing the match with the words around it.
Replace — everything at once, or one row at a time.
If you change the search conditions, the selection, or the document after pressing Find, the list
is marked out of date and replacing is blocked until you search again. The list and the replacement
can never disagree.
Ten matches, each shown in context — including the ones in the header, the table and the footer. Nothing has changed yet.
Finding by text
Type what you are looking for. Press Enter to search, Shift+Enter for a line break.
Match case — Draft stops matching draft.
Regular expression — for patterns rather than literal text.
See the support page for the two limits Google's engine has.
Ignore whitespace — treats runs of spaces as one, so text copied out of a PDF
still matches.
Special characters — a menu for the ones that are hard to type: tab, paragraph
break, non-breaking space, curly quotes, two-or-more spaces. Picking one turns on the regular
expression option for you, because that is what these are.
Finding by formatting
This is the part Google's own find does not have. Switch to Formatting or
Both and you can search for how text looks.
B / I / U / S cycle through three states. Click once for
only this, twice for not this, a third time to ignore it. The summary line
above them always says what the current condition is, in words.
Font, size, colour, highlight — each has its own tick box, so a value can sit
in the box without being part of the search. Unticked boxes are greyed out, so you can see at a
glance what is actually a condition.
Pick up formatting from the selection — select some text in the document and
press the button; the conditions fill themselves in. If the selection has mixed formatting it
says so instead of guessing.
Both means the text and the formatting have to match — useful for
"every bold occurrence of Figure, but not the plain ones".
Left of each row is a tick box: a value can sit in the box without being part of the search. Unticked rows are greyed out.
Replacing
Text — leave the replacement empty to delete the matches instead.
Formatting — bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, font, size, colour and
highlight. You can change formatting without changing the text: leave the replacement
text empty and set formatting only.
Existing formatting survives. Replacing a word inside a bold blue heading
leaves the new word bold and blue. Only what you asked to change, changes.
Replace all does the whole list. Replace on a single row does
just that one, then rebuilds the list, because the positions after it have moved.
A replace is one undo step — Ctrl+Z once in the document
puts everything back, however many matches it changed.
Change the search after pressing Find and the list is marked stale. Replacing is blocked until you search again — the list and the replacement can never disagree.
Where it searches
Scope
What it covers
Whole document
Body text, tables, footnotes, headers and footers — the parts most tools quietly skip.
Selection
Only what you have selected in the document right now.
Tables only
Every table cell, nothing outside them.
Footnotes only
Headers & footers only
Saved searches
Press Save to keep a search under a name — every condition is stored, not just the
text, and comes back exactly as you left it. Saved searches live in your Google account, so they
follow you to any document. The free version keeps three; the count never runs down however often
you use them.
Export and Import move them between accounts as plain text.
Saved searches keep every condition, not just the text.
