SharePoint find and replace tool

Last week I gave a webinar on SharePoint Finder replace tool from KWizCom. This is a very useful tool,  it will help to find and replace existing URLs with name URLs. This is a very small tool but very much helpful when you want to replace URLs from various SharePoint site collection sites list and libraries etc.

If you missed the webinar and unable to attend that sure I’m also adding the recording of the webinar.

Recording of SharePoint Find and Replace Tool Webinar

Below is the recording of the SharePoint Find and Replace Tool webinar.

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Introduction to SharePoint find and replace tool

First, let me give an example of in which scenarios we can use this SharePoint find and replace tool.

Imagine your business users are using your SharePoint sites for a long time, maybe they are using from SharePoint 2013 or 2016 or maybe they’re using in SharePoint online. Suppose you have migrated from SharePoint on-premises to SharePoint Online.

Now, what will happen in the existing document where there might have been some hard-coded URLs or some of the embedded URLs which are pointing to the old site URLs.

This small tool will help us to find the URLs your existing URLs maybe there will be some broken URLs also and then it will report we can analyze the URLs also we get those URLs to be replaced with the new URLs

Features of SharePoint Find and Replace Tool

Here, are below few features of this SharePoint Find and Replace tool

• it can help us to import or export tokens from Excel
• it will check with SharePoint sites and subsites
• it will help us to discover or find the world URLs only
• it will help us to find and replace the old URLs with new URLs
• it provides various finding options and advanced options Like what are the lists you want to include and what are the lists you want to exclude, and it provides the option to select lists based on wildcard characters.
• It also allows us to find different type of document extensions like .doc, .docx, .xls, .xslx, .txt etc
• Another important thing it provides a proper log file where you can see details of the operations.
• It also helps us to find and replace URLs from embed text.
• Not only URLs it also helps us to find and replace strings
• This will work in both lists and libraries. In the SharePoint list, it can also find and replace strings from various columns or fields.

This tool works in SharePoint Online and SharePoint on-premises versions also like SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016 or SharePoint 2019.

The tool comes in 3 editions:

• Standard edition
• Professional edition
• Enterprise edition

Based on the license more features will be available, in the enterprise edition you will have all the features.

Once you download and install SharePoint Find and replace tool, it asks you to enter the tokens that you want to find and what you want to replace. we can also import and export tokens from the Excel sheet.

You can see the figure below here we have added few tokens and check the checkbox which will ignore the case when looking for this token.

Then click on the Next button.

In the next screen, it will ask you to provide the SharePoint site URLs and you can provide multiple URLs in new lines.

Then it will ask you to provide the username and password and you can verify the access for the SharePoint site. Make sure, you enter the user who will have access to the SharePoint site.

Here you can provide the on-premises username and password if you are trying to connect to your SharePoint on-premises sites and if you are trying to connect to SharePoint online sites then you need to provide your SharePoint online credentials which is your Office 365 credentials.

If the user will not have access, then it will not allow you to go to the next step.

Then, on the next screen, it will ask you if we want to discovery or replace like below in the execution mode tab. if you will select the discovery option then it will just find out wherever the token is presented in an Excel file.

If you will select replace options, then it will find and replace the token wherever it is presented in the SharePoint site or SharePoint list and library.

The find options are very important. Here you can select if you want to find the token in the site title description and logo, in the site navigation or master pages, whether you want to include web parts and layout pages. Then it will also ask you to select list item properties document properties and web part properties.

if you want to find and replace in SharePoint list columns or fields then make sure to check the checkbox include list item properties.

The advanced options are very important, here if you will check to include text or office documents checkbox, File types like doc, docx, PPT, PPTX, TXT, xls, xlsx, log, XML, HTML, etc.

Also, it provides options to include all lists and libraries, if you want to include only these like lists and libraries with some patterns.

It also provides you the option to skip this list and libraries. Then click on the Run Replace button.

It will take some time and finally it will show you how many tokens have been found in the source.

You can click on the open log location which will open the Excel file and you can see the results in the Excel files.

Click on the finish button which will complete the operation and if you see all the wherever the token has been found it is replaced with a new token in all SharePoint lists and libraries wherever you have selected.

You may like following SharePoint tutorials:

• Simple Ways to Enhance Your SharePoint List Forms
• Create and delete subsites under SharePoint site collection programmatically using PnP CSOM
• How to change SharePoint Site Collection Administrator
• Quick links in Modern SharePoint Site
• Customize Modern SharePoint Online Site
• Create Subsite Programmatically using PnP in SharePoint Online
• Change URL of List or document library using SharePoint Designer 2010
• 3 Different ways to Change Site Collection URL in SharePoint 2013/2016 using PowerShell
• Change list or library URL in SharePoint 2013/2016

So, in this SharePoint tutorial, we learn how we can use SharePoint file and replace tool to replace or to find old or broken URLs or strings and replace with new URLs or new strings.

This is really a time saver tool for both SharePoint on-premises environment and SharePoint online environment. Mainly this will be helpful when you are trying to find and replace URLs after migrating to another environment.

If you want to use this tool you can send us an email at hello@sharepointsky.com and you can get an additional 10% discount on the products.