4votes

How can I Search & Replace?

Asked Jun 14, 2022

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I am bringing our existing wiki into Notion. One problem I have is that there are some things I need to rename, and it is more than one or two instances. Quick Find shows all instances but I can't see a way to change them. This is a basic editing requirement and I can't believe it isn't there somewhere?

Any idea?

asked Jun 14, 2022 by Lizat (1.1k points)

0vote

ldionnet commented Apr 14, 2023

Same here, I hear it's complicated nevertheless this is a critical need. I use Notion to organize my thoughts and it's "block" organization is really excellent for that, but not being able to replace a text string with another text string once my thoughts get clarified with discoveries made along the time defeats the purpose.

Similarly I use Notion to organize my product backlog with a large set of stakeholder involved and necessarily some information come along with the project execution. Not being able to rename a product or a feature based on the results of research or client feedback is just a big problem.

Hope this is going to come soon, and if you don't trust it's largely expected, please just take a minute to search the web "how to replace text strings in notion"

commented Apr 14, 2023 by ldionnet (120 points)

1 Answer

-3votes

polle Points88780

Keep in mind that you are not using Notion with a single document and the search works that way as expected, you can search hundred of pages and content, not a single one as a simple text editor does.

The search option in the sidebar is a global search and the top search is in page search, but as I said, in a single page you can have views of other 50 pages, so it makes no sense to replace that way.

Because of this, your best approach is to prepare your information before moving it into Notion pages.

answered Jun 14, 2022 by polle (88.8k points)

3votes

Lizat commented Jun 14, 2022

Whilst this is possible at this point in the journey for me I can see that over time some key bit of information may need to change everywhere or in some Space.

Most wiki products have this in some form and working across pages.

For example, perhaps an app changes its name and this app is referred to in many places. So as a team tool it would be useful to have this, another one for the list of suggestions!

commented Jun 14, 2022 by Lizat (1.1k points)

-3votes

polle commented Jun 18, 2022

Yes, but the difference here is that you can have 100 different Wikis + other 200 pages + other 60 databases.

Notion is not for editing documents with search and replace. I hope that makes sense.

commented Jun 18, 2022 by polle (88.8k points)

1vote

badasstronaut commented Jul 13, 2022

I'm shocked that Notion doesn't have the capacity, at least for a single page.

commented Jul 13, 2022 by badasstronaut (120 points)

2votes

steelejoe commented Jul 15, 2022

When I am within a single Notion page and search -- I am not seeing results from other pages. I am not sure I understand why adding replace does not make sense. Is there at least an outstanding feature request for this?

I regularly search large codebases (1000s of files) and perform search and replace on dozens of files at a time. It definitely can be a dangerous operation, but limiting it to a single page seems feasible and would add a lot of value for large pages.

And as a sidenote -- I just switched from Evernote to Notion and Evernote definitely has this feature

commented Jul 15, 2022 by steelejoe (110 points)

1vote

polle commented Jul 16, 2022

Hey @steelejoe!

The problem is that Notion pages act as containers and you can show 100 pages inside a single page.

If you have a page with some content and also content from another 100 pages showing in that page, search and replace will be a problem instead of a solution. Makes sense?

It is like having multiple embedded documents inside a single one. That is the basic problem, that Notion pages are not single documents as you can have in text or code editors.

Time will tell and we may see a search and replace that only affects text blocks inside a single page in the future.

commented Jul 16, 2022 by polle (88.8k points)

0vote

suraniadi commented Jul 31, 2022

LE. Didn't work anymore (tried Chrome extension)

commented Jul 31, 2022 by suraniadi (100 points)

edited Jul 31, 2022 by suraniadi

2votes

Lizat commented Sep 25, 2022

I revisted to see if anyone had added anything useful. Sadly not.

Polle, whilst I understand what you are saying from the point of view of maintainability and usability not having a facility to do this seems very limiting. I am moving a large wiki from Dokuwiki to Notion and expected at least as good functionality. In this respect Dokuwiki wins, it has a facility for bulk replace, and you can use regular expressions; it lists every instance of finding the search criteria and then you can decide which to apply.

Granted to implement this might be tricky and will need to allow for searching a Page only, a Page & its sub pages, possibly exclude pages meeting some criteria but this would be a great addition to the Notion toolset.

I live in hope!

commented Sep 25, 2022 by Lizat (1.1k points)

0vote

polle commented Mar 30, 2023

I understand, but as I said in my first answer, it is not possible at the moment.

Sending your comments as feedback never hurts and if more Notion users do the same, Notion will pay more attention to this.

Question mark > contact support > send feedback.

commented Mar 30, 2023 by polle (88.8k points)

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