Find and replace special characters in Google Sheets: formulas and add-ons for the job

Tired of dealing with unwanted special characters like smart quotes and accented letters in your Google Sheets? This guide offers several efficient methods to find and replace them.

We've covered cell splitting, character manipulation, and case changes. Now, let's master finding and replacing special characters.

- Methods for Finding and Replacing Characters in Google Sheets

• Built-in Find and Replace
• Advanced Find and Replace Add-on
• Replace Symbols Add-on (Power Tools)
• Using Formulas: SUBSTITUTE and REGEXREPLACE

Finding and Replacing Characters: Tools and Techniques

While formulas are useful, dedicated tools offer a more streamlined approach, eliminating the need for extra columns.

Google Sheets' Built-in Find and Replace

This familiar tool is readily accessible:

1. Press Ctrl H (or Cmd H on a Mac).
2. Enter the character(s) to find.
3. Specify the replacement character(s).
4. Select the scope: entire spreadsheet, current sheet, or a specific range.
5. Click "Replace all" or "Replace" to perform the operation.

This method handles text and characters, regardless of case, and allows partial searches (using regular expressions) within cells, formulas, and links. While effective, more powerful options exist.

Advanced Find and Replace Add-on

This add-on significantly enhances your spreadsheet capabilities:

1. Search and replace within values, formulas, notes, hyperlinks, and even errors.
2. Advanced filtering using "Entire cell," "By mask," and wildcards (*) to pinpoint specific instances (e.g., cells containing only hyperlinks).
3. Select multiple spreadsheets for the search.
4. Found records are organized by sheet in a tree view, allowing selective or bulk replacements.
5. Offers additional actions: extract found values (selected or all), extract entire rows (selected or all), or delete rows (selected or all).
6. Preserves formatting during replacements.

This add-on streamlines complex find-and-replace tasks.

Replace Symbols Add-on (Power Tools)

For efficient handling of accented characters and codes, the Replace Symbols add-on (part of Power Tools) is invaluable:

1. Converts accented characters (e.g., á to a, é to e).
2. Replaces codes with symbols and vice-versa (useful for HTML or web-sourced text).
3. Quickly converts smart quotes to straight quotes.

Simply select the range, choose the desired option, and click "Run." A demonstration video is available. [Link to video would go here]

Formulas for Character Replacement

Google Sheets offers built-in functions for character replacement.

The SUBSTITUTE Function

This function directly replaces specific text or characters:

SUBSTITUTE(text_to_search, search_for, replace_with, [occurrence_number])

• text_to_search: The cell or text to modify (required).
• search_for: The character(s) to find (required).
• replace_with: The replacement character(s) (required).
• occurrence_number: (Optional) Specifies which occurrence to replace; omit for all occurrences.

Example: Replacing smart quotes:

The formula =SUBSTITUTE(A2,"“","""") replaces opening smart quotes (“) with straight quotes ("). Nested SUBSTITUTE functions handle multiple characters.

The REGEXREPLACE Function

REGEXREPLACE uses regular expressions for more complex replacements:

REGEXREPLACE(text, regular_expression, replacement)

• text: The text to modify.
• regular_expression: The pattern to search for.
• replacement: The replacement text.

Example: Replacing smart quotes using REGEXREPLACE:

=REGEXREPLACE(A2,"[“”]","""") replaces both opening and closing smart quotes. Nested functions are needed for multiple character types.

Choose the method best suited to your needs. For simple replacements, the built-in tool or SUBSTITUTE works well. For complex scenarios or bulk operations, the add-ons offer superior efficiency.

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