---
title: "Find and Replace"
---

# Find and Replace

> <IUCard title="Using Find and Replace" link="https://www.inductiveuniversity.com/video/using-find-and-replace/7.9" />

## Searching Through the Designer

The **Edit** > **Find/Replace** menu command in the Designer is a very handy tool. You can search your entire project for specific components, properties, scripts, Transaction Groups and more. You can then use the replace feature to make mass changes to a project with very little effort.

![" "](find-and-replace.png)

## Search Options

In the Target section, the Find/Replace tool has options for searching through many different parts of a project.

- Pipelines
- SQL Bridge Transaction Groups
- Scripting
- Templates
- Windows
-  Tags - (Includes Tag property values as well as substrings in Tag Event Scripts)

## To Find and Replace

1. In the Designer, go to **Edit** > **Find/Replace** or use the shortcut **Ctrl-F**. The Find/Replace window is displayed.

2. Type what you're searching for in the textbox at the top to search through your project. The wildcard character (*) which will match anything, and the single-character wildcard character (**?**). 

For example, to find all references to a tag that started with the string `Motor`, you could search for `Motor*`. This would match things like `Motor15`, `MotorHOA`. The search query `Valve?Status` would return `Valve1Status`, but not `Valve38Status` because multiple characters are present between `Valve` and `Status`.
 
3. In the **Target** section, narrow down your search by choosing the options you are interested in. It is often useful to specify a narrow search target. Find/Replace searches through many different parts of a project as well as through Tags. The target settings let you specify exactly what Find/Replace should search through. By unchecking boxes in the Target section, you can avoid search results that you aren't interested in.

4. Click the **Find** button at the top right to execute the search. All matching items appear in the **Results** section. Double-click on an item in the Results table to bring that item into editing focus in the Designer. 
 
5. To replace a value, select an entry in the Results section and you'll see the Value of that entry in the **Current** box of the **Replace** section.
 
6. Enter the text you want to use as a replacement in the **Replace** textbox and a preview of the new value is shown in the **Preview** box. 
 
7. Click the **Replace** button to execute the replace.  This will move your selection down in the Results table so that you can rapidly execute multiple replacements.  If you're satisfied and you'd like to make the identical replacement to many items, select them all in the Results table and click the **Replace All** button.