How to find and replace in Confluence, on one page or across many

For one page, open it in the editor and use find and replace (Ctrl+F, or Cmd+F on a Mac, while editing). To change text across many pages at once, such as a renamed product in a whole space, use a bulk find and replace app like Replacewell: enter the text, pick a space, a page tree or a CQL search, review every match, then replace. Each changed page gets one new version, and the whole job can be undone.

On one page

Edit the page and open find and replace from the editor. It searches the page you have open, and you replace matches one at a time or all at once. That is enough for a typo on a single page. It doesn't reach other pages, so a product rename, a moved domain or a changed team name across a space means opening every page by hand.

Across a space, a page tree or a search

1. Open Replacewell. From Apps > Replacewell find and replace, from Find and replace in a space's sidebar (that space is preselected), or from Find and replace in this page tree in a page's "..." menu.
2. Enter what to find and what to replace it with. Leave Replace with empty to delete what you find.
3. Set the options.
   • Match case: "Acme" does not find "acme".
   • Whole words only: "cat" does not find "category".
   • Regular expression: JavaScript-style patterns, with $1, $2 or $<name> for groups in the replacement.
   • Keep capitalization: replacing "cat" with "dog" turns "Cat" into "Dog" and "CAT" into "DOG".
   • Curly and straight quotes match (on by default), so ' and ’ are treated alike.
4. Choose what to search. Page titles and page text are on by default. Turn on Text of links, Link addresses (URLs) or Code and code blocks when you need them.
5. Choose where. A whole space (blog posts optional), a page and everything under it, or a CQL query such as space = DOCS and label = "pricing".
6. Press Preview matches. Every page with a match is listed, and each match shows the words around it and what it becomes. Nothing has changed yet.
7. Untick anything to keep, a single match or a whole page, edit the version message if you like, then press Replace. The job runs in the background, so you can close the page.

What it leaves alone

Macro settings, mentions, emoji, dates, status labels, images and files are never changed. Link text and link addresses are only changed if you turned them on, and code only if you turned code on. A match keeps the formatting of the text where it starts, and text split by formatting, like "Acme Corp", is still found.

After the replace, and Undo

Each changed page gets one new version with your message, written as you. A page someone edited after your preview is skipped so their work isn't overwritten, and a page you can't edit is left alone. Show report (CSV) lists every page with its versions before and after.

To take a job back, open it from My jobs and press Undo this job. Every page goes back to its earlier content and title as a new version. Pages edited since the replace are left alone and listed.

Two common jobs

Rename a product across a space. Find Acme Cloud, replace with Acme Platform, turn on Whole words only and Keep capitalization, choose the space, preview, replace.

Move links to a new domain. Find old.example.com, replace with new.example.com, turn on Link addresses (URLs), choose the space or a CQL search, preview, replace.

Limits and permissions

A search covers up to 2,000 pages unless a Confluence admin changes it (at most 10,000), and each person can run up to 3 jobs at once. Admins can limit Replacewell to certain spaces, and the audit log records every job, who ran it and how many pages it changed. People can never change a page they couldn't edit themselves.

What it costs

Replacewell for Confluence is $9 a month for up to 10 users, or $90 a year. From 11 users it is $0.90 per user a month, with lower rates for larger sites. It is billed by Atlassian, with a 30-day free trial.