Blogger Find & Replace

Posted Friday, July 20, 2012 10:07:04 AM

This tool will search all posts made on a blogger blog for a specific string and replace it with another string.

*WARNING: There is NO WAY to undo this once you've performed it.* Be sure you are 100% positive you want to do this before proceeding.

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There are 199 comments on this article

Manoj Kumar (9 years ago)

Thanks for the great post. You have a well written and informative blog especially for us. More Info <a href="http://www.festivalsbook.com">Festivals Book</a>

David Thomson (9 years ago)

The word is your to be changed & also Love You, changed

David Thomson (9 years ago)

The word is your to be changed & also Love You, changed

Arsh (10 years ago)

This is what called a SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Oscar (10 years ago)

@Lori 'Failed to Save' is because the post is published by another Admin (email)... Try to change to another email account.

abbb (10 years ago)

nic

Lori (10 years ago)

Is there a reason it replaces so many and then the rest "Failed to Save"? This is an amazing tool, thank you! Hope the failing to save remedies soon.

Rucio (10 years ago)

Don't escape anything in the replace string, though!

Rucio (10 years ago)

Seems html code can be found by escaping the open and close angles with a backslash. Is there a limit to the length of the string?

Rucio (10 years ago)

This is an amazing tool, but I would like to delete all the Technorati-linked tags that I've always added at the bottom of posts, and this tool doesn't seem to work for that. Presumably, it doesn't find the text because of the hyperlink coding, but then it doesn't seem to find the raw coding either. Any suggestions?

Seth (10 years ago)

Failed to save.. been like this a while now :(

Oscar (10 years ago)

Failed to save too

Mike White (10 years ago)

I also get the "Failed to save" message.

Dayan Perera (10 years ago)

Please find and replace

Karen Cargill (10 years ago)

Thanks!

Jennifer Phillips (10 years ago)

You are AWESOME - what a golden star you are. I just had to make global changes to http://oldyellowmoon.blogspot.com.au/ and your tool SAVED me big time. Best regards. So kind of you THANKS HEAPS!! May all good come to you!

manfai (10 years ago)

Amazing tool you've got!
You really save my time. thx a lot.

Erin A. Thomas (10 years ago)

Wow this is fantastic. I just realized there was a better way to reword a sentence that is used in several dozen posts that now redirect to another location and I was able to fix the entire sentence in each of the 50 or so posts in one shot. Fabulous!

NoName (10 years ago)

Hello Adam Lewis!

Today i would use your great script again, but it does not work.

There is always an error message: Failed to save

What is the problem?

MTW (10 years ago)

Brilliant tool. No fuss, no mess, just does the job.

Cole (10 years ago)

This is a wonderful tool. I only recently realized that I've been spelling a word wrong, and I keep doing it out of habit. I use this tool once a week to fix the mistakes. It's so much quicker than doing it manually. Thank you.

willowsprite (10 years ago)

Thanks for this super handy tool! It seems to go back to a certain point in my blog, then it fails. I wonder why...

Mark Hutcherson (10 years ago)

Adam, thank you so much for this service. I used it last night and after a few tries I got it to work, great. You saved me a bunch of time. Have a nice weekend.

Arul Selva Perarasan (10 years ago)

Splending job Mr. Adam, I have tried this in my tamil blog before hand. But it was not fruitful. Now, today I tried again. It was successful. Thank you for your effort. It was a painstaking job for me. And now I have found this one. Really I am feeling free. Thank you once more.

My blog is a translation project of "The Mahabharatha" in tamil language. http://mahabharatham.arasan.info

ashif (11 years ago)

find and replace in blogger

Adam W. Lewis (11 years ago)

Send me an email with what you're trying to replace and I'll see if I can help guide you.

Hax (11 years ago)

I can't replace the titles...

Adam Lewis (11 years ago)

I'm glad you got the tool working and it saved you so much time Steve!

SteveTheWargamer (11 years ago)

You're a life saver... 600+ posts to update, and done in less than 10 minutes.... superb!!

Parah (11 years ago)

Hi,
I like this useful tool. Can I have one? How can I have this tool for my self. Can you teach me step by step how to create tool like this? Or you are selling this script? I will like to buy it.

Regards

Peter Payne (11 years ago)

Currently at 8:14 pm on Wednesday California time, the tool is refusing to show anything but "Transfer me to Google so I can authorize this tool" even though it was working before. Does that mean the API is down temporarily?

Also the tool searched 330+ instances of some text in my blog but it mysteriously stopped, with some text yet to change. (I am changing directories.) If the API is working, there's no reason why it would only change some instances but leave others, right, like a max number of records it can search?

toshiya240 (11 years ago)

Great!
But it seems to update published datetime...
I think published datetime should be kept.

Nishant Agrawal (11 years ago)

Very Very Helpful tool.
Thanks a ton.

Adam W. Lewis (11 years ago)

This tool looks at the raw post, so it will replace HTML just fine. If you can't get it to work email me and I will help you out.

Nishant Agrawal (11 years ago)

Hi, Thats perfectly working.
But i need to replace some html code from each post instead of normal text. Can you help me please.

My Blog is- www.csengineersbooks.blogspot.com

Edwin (11 years ago)

thanks, this app is very helpful

Adam W. Lewis (11 years ago)

Glad to help! :)

Vivian (11 years ago)

You saved my life!!!!

Adam W. Lewis (11 years ago)

Shaun,

I did some thorough testing on Tuesday and found that the Blogger API was down. Try running your find and replace again and it should work just fine. Let me know!

Adam W. Lewis (11 years ago)

Shaun,

Let me experiment and look into this and get back with you. My tools just may need some tweaking to get it to do what you want.

Shaun (11 years ago)

This is not working on my test blog. I'm wondering if that is because I am trying to change the one-word string from Capitalized to ALL CAPS.

How would you recommend I make this change?

More info- The word appears several times in the blogpost, and is being changed for styling purposes. Thanks!

Irene (11 years ago)

Amazing! Fast & Easy! Thank you Adam! :)

Adam W Lewis (11 years ago)

Not sure what you mean "safe." It will do exactly what you tell it to, so be careful using it. But other than that, yes it's safe. I don't record your password or anything when you use it.

Irene (11 years ago)

is this safe?

Graham Jackson (11 years ago)

Once again you have save me literally HOURS of fiddling around. Just awesome to use. Thank you so much again.

Lingeswaran (11 years ago)

Awesome...Works great

Stacy (11 years ago)

This is amazing and saved me a ton of time. Thanks so much for creating and sharing this tool!

Frank Barnard (11 years ago)

Brilliant tool. Only works on published posts--so just do mass publish & then run the tool.

Frank Barnard (11 years ago)

Adam, fantastic utility. Thanks. Does the search work on draft posts (unpublished?) Or just published items?

Valter (11 years ago)

Adam, you're THE MAN! :-D
I changed domain name, and this page saved me one hour at least!
Thank you very much! This is the true Internet spirit of sharing and helping.

prathvi (11 years ago)

extremely useful tool

bhu (11 years ago)

good

Adam W Lewis (11 years ago)

Glad you liked this tool Meggy!

Meggy Besecke (11 years ago)

BEST Blogger Find AND Replace TOOL! BIG LIKE

Graham Jackson (12 years ago)

Fantastic tool - save me HOURS of work - thanks very much indeed

Howard (12 years ago)

Thanks - worked perfectly!

Adam Lewis (12 years ago)

Larry,

I'm glad the tool worked well for you! Many times in my life I found a need for it and would always just end up either leaving the posts incorrect or doing it by hand. Finally one day I thought, "This is ridiculous! Just make a tool for this goofy thing."

I'm glad lots of people are finding it helpful.

Larry (12 years ago)

Adam, thanks so much for such a great tool. This is truly the greatest thing since sliced bread. (At least for me today.)

I'm moving my website and had to change the domain in over 150 posts across two blogs.

I was not looking forward to doing it manually. In 10 minutes you had it done.

Thanks

Adam Lewis (12 years ago)

Hey TJ, glad the tool is working well for you. As for the Kindle Fire Giveaway, that did end last week and we've been dragging our feet launching our next Giveaway :(

By the end of today though we're going to launch the Halloween Nexus 7 Giveaway, so if you come back this evening be sure to register for it!

TJ (12 years ago)

Hey Adam, I used the tool again with success, thank you so much for this awesome free tool. Also FYI I tried to go sign up for the Kindle giveaway found under "My Comapny Giveaways" hoping this might somehow benefit you. However the page says this sweepstakes has now ended.

Thanks again,

TJ.

Adam Lewis (12 years ago)

Wonderful! I'm glad you were able to get it to work! Let me know if you need any more help

TJ (12 years ago)

Hi Adam,

Just wanted to let you know I got things to work using regular expressions. I just wanted to say THANK YOU! You are the man!

TJ.

TJ (12 years ago)

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your reply. I had not considered the idea of making a test blog to run the tool against until it works, that is what I will try to do.

Thanks again,

TJ.

Adam Lewis (12 years ago)

TJ,

Yes, you can use regular expressions and that might be the way to handle this problem. Unfortunately I didn't have any time today to test this out for you. However, another commenter on my blog made a test blog and used it to find the regular expression that worked best for his needs, then ran it on his real blog. If you have time, that's what I'd do. Just make a new blog and copy 3 or 4 posts to it from your real blog then try different things.

As far as your regular expression goes, to match any character you simply need to type a period (.). And to match any character zero or more times you need a asterisk (*). So you could do something like:

<a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/.*<\/a>

Notice the closing a tag I've escaped the forward slash.

Hope that helps, if you can't get it working write me and I'll help you on Monday.

Adam Lewis (12 years ago)

Wonderful! I'm glad you were able to make it work for you!

NoName (12 years ago)

OK, i created a test blog and my code works. Only the \1 must be changed to $1.

Thank you for this wonderful tool!

NoName (12 years ago)

Hello Adam!

Thanks for your answer. It is very risky to work with regular expressions... I have prepared the code: http://pastebin.com/wSFBf61F

That will do work? My embed code is always the same structure.

Thank you for your help!

Best regards!

TJ (12 years ago)

Hey Adam,

I noticed that you can use regular expressions with your tool. I was wondering if that might be the answer for my issue. Say I tried to match this string instead:
<a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/*.*></a></p>

Would that work? Is there a better way than *.* to match any character between the start and end of the string? This might actually be the best solution for me as the same ad servers are used over and over but the rest of the string can vary.

TJ.

TJ (12 years ago)

Hi Adam,

If you can make this work you will be like a GOD to me! I have around 400 posts on blogger with these text links in them and now they change the affiliate program, making them all invalid!

Thanks again,

TJ.

Adam Lewis (12 years ago)

I will do some testing tomorrow morning and get back to you.

I don't mind providing some support, just glad people find the tool useful.

TJ (12 years ago)

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your reply! Here is one string I was trying to find and replace:<p>Brain Games: Improve memory with scientifically designed games. <a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/3566tenkem179423341327438B4" target="_blank">Free Trial.</a><img border="0" src="http://www.ftjcfx.com/e381elpdjh28A534452438549C5" width="1" height="1"><a href="http://www.dpbolvw.net/7h104xdmjdl06831223021634A96" target="_blank"><img style="display: inline; float: right" border="0" alt="Brain Games - Lumosity" align="right" src="http://www.lduhtrp.net/dr65o26v0zKQSNLMMNKMLQNOUTQ"></a></p>

I know people should not expect your support for a free tool, so any advice you can provide is great!

TJ.

Adam Lewis (12 years ago)

TJ,

Email me the string you're searching for and I'll do some tests for you.

In regards to future access, no I will not still have access. I do not store the authentication token from Google so therefore I cannot still access your blog, however, if I were to keep that authentication token I could still gain access. If you want to make sure that I cannot access it I believe Google has a way to revoke permissions though I'm not sure where.

TJ (12 years ago)

I have a blogspot blog and included some affiliate text links at the bottom of my posts. Now the affiliate program changed it't terms and I need to change many of these ads. I tried to use your tool to find and replace the ads, but it did not seem to work. I am wondering if the strings were too long, or if there is another reason you can think of. Also, one more question. After I am done will you still have access to my blog? Is there a way to change this once I'm done?

Adam Lewis (12 years ago)

NoName:

Yes, you can use a regular expression. Do NOT encapsulate it in slashes though, as the program will do this automatically. Just type the string literal of the regularly expression

NoName (12 years ago)

Hello!
Can i use regular expression? I must repleace the old youtube embed code with the new iframe code.

Diane (12 years ago)

You are a star. Thanks so much for this ace tool. I just needed to change my phone number on 50 odd posts, and it did it in less than a couple of minutes, including authorizing it via Google. Thanks!

Adam Lewis (12 years ago)

James,

Thanks for using the tool. I have fixed it so that it will not replace all instances of a match and you won't have to do multiple searches.

Thanks for finding that bug!

James (12 years ago)

Very cool, thanks! But only seems to replace one instance per blog post? I have to run the tool multiple times to make all changes in blog posts with multiple instances of search string.

Nas (12 years ago)

Thank you for sharing this tool for free. I found this tool is very useful for my blogger blog.

joe (12 years ago)

Wow! That was amazing! This would have taken me hours to do by hand! Thanks!