Finding and Replacing in Calc

In spreadsheet documents you can find words, formulas, and styles. You can navigate from one result to the next, or you can highlight all matching cells at once, then apply another format or replace the cell content by other content.

The Find & Replace dialog

Cells can contain text or numbers that were entered directly as in a text document. But cells can also contain text or numbers as the result of a calculation. For example, if a cell contains the formula =1+2 it displays the result 3. You must decide whether to search for the 1 respective 2, or to search the 3.

To find formulas or values

You can specify in the Find & Replace dialog either to find the parts of a formula or the results of a calculation.

  1. Choose Edit - Find & Replace to open the Find & Replace dialog.

  2. Click More Options to expand the dialog.

  3. Select "Formulas" or "Values" in the Search in list box.

With "Formulas" you will find all parts of the formulas.

With "Values" you will find the results of the calculations.

Note Icon

Cell contents can be formatted in different ways. For example, a number can be formatted as a currency, to be displayed with a currency symbol. You see the currency symbol in the cell, but you cannot search for it.


Finding text

  1. Choose Edit - Find & Replace to open the Find & Replace dialog.

  2. Enter the text to find in the Find text box.

  3. Either click Find Next or Find All.

When you click Find Next, Calc will select the next cell that contains your text. You can watch and edit the text, then click Find Next again to advance to the next found cell.

  1. If you closed the dialog, you can press a key combination (+Shift+F) to find the next cell without opening the dialog.

  2. By default, Calc searches the current sheet. Check the All sheets box to search through all sheets of the document.

When you click Find All, Calc selects all cells that contain your entry. Now you can for example set all found cells to bold, or apply a Cell Style to all at once.

The Navigator

  1. Choose View - Navigator to open the Navigator window.

The Navigator is the main tool for finding and selecting objects.

Use the Navigator for inserting objects and links within the same document or from other open documents.

Please support us!