How to find and replace text across SharePoint sites in bulk

Video chapters

1. 0:20 The problem: old names, numbers and people everywhere
2. 0:50 Bulk edit > Perform a search & replace of text
3. 1:03 Pick sites and narrow to specific lists
4. 1:27 Summary and job name
5. 1:40 Add a find & replace rule
6. 1:53 Import rules from Excel
7. 2:07 Options: Preserve Author, case sensitive, file names, version state
8. 2:23 Preview with Flag only
9. 2:42 Report: 48 matches, original and new text
10. 2:53 Turn Flag only off and run
11. 3:12 48 replaced, modified dates preserved
12. 3:21 Result in SharePoint: pages, list items, files
13. 3:53 Second site updated too

Full transcript

0:00 Thanks for joining. Before we begin, just a disclaimer: this video was written by the Cognillo team, and this voice-over was AI-generated. In this video, we'll find and replace text across several SharePoint sites at once: inside Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, on pages, and in list columns.

0:20 When a company merges, is acquired, renames a product, or a person or phone number changes, the old text is everywhere. Here, our design partner Bluewater Design Studio is now Meridian Design Group. The Contact Us page still has the old name, phone number, email domain, account manager, and the old portal name, BlueTrack. The same text is in list columns, like this Client Directory, and in documents on other sites. Fixing it by hand means opening every page, item, and file.

0:50 In SharePoint Essentials Toolkit, go to Tasks, and pick the Bulk edit area. Then choose Perform a search and replace of text. It finds matching text and replaces it, within one or more sites.

1:03 Tick the sites to search. We'll use two, ACME and the Architecture knowledge base, but you can pick as many as you need. Narrowing to specific lists is optional. Here we keep it to the five that matter: the documents and site pages, the Client Services library, and the Client Directory list. That takes the scope from about eleven thousand items to about seventy.

1:27 Click Next. The summary spells out what the job will do, and warns that Flag only is off, so this job makes changes. Give it a name: Rebrand Bluewater to Meridian.

1:40 On Settings, add the first rule. Find Bluewater Design Studio, and replace it with Meridian Design Group. Contains replaces the matched part, wherever it appears in the text.

1:53 For a longer list, import it from Excel, with the old text in column A, and the new text in column B. This file adds the email domain, the phone number, the account manager, and the portal name. Rules run in order, from top to bottom.

2:07 Then the options. Case sensitive matching is off. Preserve Author is on, so the modified date and modified by stay as they were. You can also include digitally signed documents, stop at the first match, rename files that match, and choose the version state.

2:23 Before changing anything, turn on Flag only. It's a preview: it reports every match, and changes nothing. Click Run now. The toolkit searches inside the documents, on the pages, and in every list column, across both sites.

2:42 Forty-eight matches. Each row shows where the text was found, the original text, and what it would become. Is text replaced is unticked, because this was only a preview.

2:53 Happy with it? Click Edit options, and turn Flag only off. The summary changes to say this job makes changes. Run it again. This time, every match is replaced in place, in under two minutes.

3:12 The same forty-eight rows, now ticked as replaced. And because Preserve Author was on, the last modified dates and names are unchanged.

3:21 Back in SharePoint, the Contact Us page now reads Meridian Design Group, with the new phone number, email, account manager, and portal. The Client Directory is updated too. Only the rows that matched were changed. The other clients are untouched. In the Client Services library, the Word, PowerPoint and Excel files were all updated, and they still show their original modified time and author. Open the Word document, and the text inside it has been replaced as well.

3:53 And on the second site, ACME's partner page is updated too. One job, two sites: files, pages, and list items.

4:05 Thanks for watching. Whether it's a merger, an acquisition, a product rename, or a new phone number, you can find it and replace it across SharePoint in one pass. And if you have any questions, email hello at cognillo dot com.

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