Skip to main content

Purple box with white magnifying glass and pencil. Find Replace Tool

One Tool Example

Find Replace has a One Tool Example. Go to Sample Workflows to learn how to access this and many other examples directly in Alteryx Designer.

Use Find Replace to find a string in one column of a dataset and look up and replace it with the specified value from another dataset. You can also use Find Replace to append columns to a row.

Tool Components

Thumbnail

The Find Replace tool has 3 anchors:

  • Input anchors:

    • F input anchor: This input is the initial input table ("F" for "Find"). This is the table that is updated in the tool's results.

    • R input anchor: This input is the lookup table ("R" for "Replace"). This is the table that contains data used to replace data in (or append data to) the initial input.

  • Output anchor: The output anchor displays the results of the Find Replace tool.

Configure the Tool

The Find Replace tool configuration is comprised of 2 sections: Find and Replace.

Find Section

  1. Choose the radio button that best describes the part of the field that contains the value to find:

    • Beginning of Field: Searches for the instance of the field value at the beginning of the field. The entire field does not have to only contain what is being searched for.

    • Any Part of Field: Searches for the instance of the field value in any part of the field. The entire field does not have to only contain what is being searched for.

    • Entire Field: Searches for the instance of the field value contained within the entire field. The instance MUST be there in its entirety to be replaced with the new value.

  2. Find Within Field: Select the field in the table with data to be replaced (F input anchor) by data in the reference table (R input anchor).

  3. Find Value: Select the field from the reference table (R input anchor) that contains the same values as the Find within Field field in the original table (F input anchor).

  4. Select optional search conditions:

    • Case Insensitive Find: This option will ignore the case in the search.

    • Match Whole Word Only: Strings are only matched if there are leading and trailing spaces. For strings at the beginning or end of a cell, there must be a space at the other end.

Replace Section

You can choose to replace or append data in the table using these radio buttons:

  • Replace Found Text With Value:

    1. Choose the field from the reference table (R input anchor) to use to update the original table (F input anchor) Find Within Field.

    2. Optionally select Replace Multiple Found Items (Find Any Part of Field only). This should only be used if you selected Any Part of Field from the first radio button.

  • Append Field(s) to Record:

    1. Choose this option to append a column populated with the reference table (R input anchor) data whenever the selected Find Value field data is found within the selected Find Within Field.

    2. Select the fields to append.

In this section: