Hi - Dave here.

Happy Friday!

There is no built-in function to perform a series of find and replace operations in Excel, but you can create a formula that does the same thing.

You can see the basic concept in the worksheet below, where the goal is to replace multiple ("find") values with corresponding ("replace") values in a single "replace all" operation. The formula in cell D5 looks like this:

=LET(
    range,B5:B16,
    find,F5:F9,
    replace,G5:G9,
    ix,SEQUENCE(ROWS(find)),
    result,REDUCE(range,ix,LAMBDA(a,i,
        SUBSTITUTE(a,INDEX(find,i),INDEX(replace,i))
    )),
    TRIM(result)
)



[Download the workbook and read the full explanation]

This is a tricky formula! In a nutshell, it runs through the values in B5:B16 one at a time. Then, for each value, it loops over the five find/replace pairs in G5:G9 and performs a "replace all" with each. The final modified values in column D are returned with a single formula. See the article for a full teardown. I also explain how to adapt the formula to use regex and how to define it as a custom function you can call like a regular Excel function.

Note: The formula above requires Excel 365 or 2024. I also include a more limited formula that will work in older versions of Excel. 

Excel formulas

We maintain a list of over 1000 working formulas here.

If you need more structure, we also offer video training.

Have a great weekend!

Dave

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