Dr. Sheets Blog

The Find and Replace You've Been Missing Google Sheets' built-in "Find and Replace" tool is handy for swapping one specific word for another. But what if your needs are more complex? How do you remove all numbers from a string, reformat a date, or swap the order of first and last names? For tasks like these, you need a more intelligent tool: the Google Sheets REGEXREPLACE function. This function completes the powerful regex trio, alongside REGEXMATCH and REGEXEXTRACT. It allows you to find text that matches a specific pattern and then replace it with something else—or even with a rearranged version of the text it found. It's the ultimate weapon for advanced data cleaning and transformation. Understanding the REGEXREPLACE Syntax The function works by taking three arguments: the original text, the pattern to search for, and the text you want to put in its place. This allows for a dynamic regex find and replace google sheets workflow, all within a single form...

From Matching to Extracting While REGEXMATCH is great for confirming if a pattern exists (returning TRUE or FALSE), its sibling function, Google Sheets REGEXEXTRACT , takes it a step further. This powerful tool doesn't just find a pattern; it pulls out and returns the specific text that matches it. This moves you from simple data validation to sophisticated data extraction. If you've ever needed to pull a specific piece of information, like an order number, a domain name, or a username from a block of unstructured text, REGEXEXTRACT is the surgical instrument you've been looking for. It offers a level of precision that functions like LEFT, MID, and SPLIT simply cannot match. The Key Concept: The Capturing Group () To use REGEXEXTRACT effectively, you must understand one crucial concept: the "capturing group." In a regular expression, any part of the pattern that you enclose in parentheses () becomes a capturing group. REGEXEXTRACT will only return the text ...

Beyond FIND: Advanced Pattern Matching Simple text functions like FIND or SEARCH are great for locating a specific, static piece of text. But what if you need to check for a pattern? For example, how do you verify if a cell contains a valid email address, a product code that starts with "SKU-", or any 5-digit number? This is where the Google Sheets REGEXMATCH function comes in. REGEXMATCH is your gateway into the world of "regular expressions," a powerful language for describing search patterns. It's a logic function that doesn't return text, but rather a simple TRUE or FALSE , making it the perfect tool for data validation and conditional logic. What is a Regular Expression (Regex)? A regular expression (or regex) is a special sequence of characters that defines a search pattern. Instead of searching for a literal word like "apple", you can create a pattern that searches for "any word that starts with 'a' and is five letters l...