Coding Tutorial: How to Find and Replace in Multiple Files using Notepad++

Yan Sheng Huang explains how to find and replace in multiple files within any version of Windows using Notepad++. This alleviates having to deal with complicated methods such as connecting to a Linux server using SSH and using commands such as grep. This method of find and replace across multiple files will work if the files are all within one directory as well as if they are spread out into sub directories, sub sub directories, etc.

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Closed Caption:

so in this tutorial I'm going to walk
you through how to do a fine replace
across multiple files and you can do it
through multiple files within the same
directory or if you want to across the
art of the sub directories and sub sub
directories and so forth
you'll be able to as well so basically
what you need this you need first
notepad plus plus which is completely
free so you can actually go to google
type in notepad notepad plus plus and
then go to the first page here and click
on download and this multiple options
but just go ahead and click on the first
option here are basically this one says
take this one if you have no idea which
one you should take so go ahead and take
this one
download it install it and then you
should be able to i open it which looks
something like this
so what we're going to do in this
demonstration is I have a a website here
and if I right click select all right
click and go to properties
there's over 8,000 files so if I want to
do a final place across all those files
it will be quite tedious to do so and if
it happens to be in every single file
I it also in addition to be tedious it's
being insane
so what I'll do is I'm going to open the
right-click other with no purpose plus
and then scroll down and i'm going to
maybe change the copyright across off
the different pages on this HTML website
so
just thrown down okay here we go
so basically let's say I want to change
this instep 2014 copyright I wanted a
copyright 2014
so what i can do is our size selected
that copy and now go to edit or search
fine and then i can paste that here and
then and then what I want to do is I
want to swap that around is I can then
cut this and here we go so now I want
what this basically does is it was fine
this in this document and replace it
with this in this document and click on
replace then you should replace that but
this is only for this document so how do
you do that for all the other foot files
within that I yeah that folder so the
way you would do is go to find files and
then now basically I have the fine field
and replace with field so for filters
just put you can leave it alone or put
armed Astrix dot Astrix and basically
that says that that doesn't matter what
the file name is it doesn't matter
whether the file extension is now if you
want to be restricted to only H
telepaths then you do that or likewise
with text box you do that i'm just going
to leave that alone and you can check if
you want to do the replacing all the
subfolders or if you just want to in
main folder i'm not going to check that
is because to go through all eight
thousand of files and whatnot it's
probably gonna make this video last very
long so I'm going to abort it doing that
for search mode you can leave as normal
or extend I just choose extended because
actually use some of these options here
and normally I leave it as match case
and match whole world only just I mean
it really doesn't matter for most cases
but that's the options that i have set
so now what you want to do with the
directories go to the directory you want
to do the massive fireplace with right
click copy and
pace which is in there too so that ipad
before so now if i doing replacing files
you should go through all the files
there and and just to make sure that
they actually does work if i go to let's
say the our services page right now and
i scroll down see how right now it says
2014 copyright so if this works which
you know it will happen then it will
replace that once I open that file again
so go ahead and click on replacing files
ok and now we basically it's done
already replaced files 26 occurrences
replace great so now i can a if i go
back to that file and open it and I
scroll way down
yep copyright 2014 so so basically
that's how you would do a massive fine
replace a using notepad plus plus which
really powerful and you don't have to
deal with command line using the grab
feature which is a similar to a lot of
the capabilities of this but linux and
its command line so it's a lot more work
sometimes then it needs to be and also
it's a lot more technical anyways so
hopefully you found this video helpful
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