Skip to content
Supervertaler Docs
Searching: All docs

Start typing to search the docs.

Find & Replace

Supervertaler’s Find & Replace feature helps you quickly find text and make consistent changes across your translation.

Opening Find & Replace

  • Press Ctrl+F or Ctrl+H
  • Or go to Edit → Find & Replace

Dialog layout

The action buttons are grouped to make destructive actions visually distinct from non-destructive ones. Reading left to right:

  • Find next | Find all | Highlight all | Clear highlights – non-destructive: searching and highlighting only, no edits made.
  • A vertical separator marks the boundary.
  • Replace this | Replace all – destructive: these modify your translation. They appear with an amber background as a visual cue that clicking them changes the document.

The Close button sits at the far right.

Keyboard shortcuts inside the dialog

KeyWhereAction
Enterin the Find fieldTriggers Find next
Enterin the Replace fieldTriggers Replace all (the existing confirmation prompt still appears first)
EscapeanywhereCloses the dialog

The Enter-in-Replace shortcut is intentional: the Replace all confirmation dialog catches accidental presses, so pressing Enter never silently overwrites your translation.

Basic Usage

Finding Text

  1. Type your search term in the Find field
  2. Click Find all to see all matches, or press Enter for Find next
  3. Matches are highlighted in yellow in the grid
  4. The results counter shows how many matches were found

Replacing Text

  1. Type your search term in the Find field
  2. Type your replacement in the Replace field
  3. Click the amber Replace all button, or press Enter while the Replace field has focus
  4. Confirm the replacement count when the dialog asks
  5. A confirmation shows how many replacements were made

Search Options

Match

Three mutually exclusive modes (radio buttons):

ModeDescription
AnythingMatches the search term anywhere in the text (the default)
Whole wordsMatches the search term only as a complete word
Entire segmentMatches only when the whole segment equals the search term

Case sensitive

  • ✅ On: “Hello” won’t match “hello”
  • ❌ Off (default): “Hello” matches “hello”, “HELLO”, etc.

Auto-adjust case

When replacing, adjusts the replacement to match the case pattern of each match — ALL CAPS → uppercased, all lower → lowercased, Title Case → title-cased. It has no effect when Case sensitive is on, and is ignored in Regex mode.

Search in

ScopeDescription
SourceSearch the source column
Target (default)Search the translations
BothTick both boxes to search source and target

Reset edited to Draft

When a replacement changes a target segment that was Confirmed, Proofread or Approved, that segment is reset to Draft, so the segments Find & Replace touched are easy to spot and re-check afterwards.

  • ✅ On (default): edited finished segments drop back to Draft.
  • ❌ Off: segments keep their existing status.

This applies to Replace this, Replace all and F&R Sets batch runs. Only segments whose text actually changes are affected, and replacing in the source column never changes a status. The setting is remembered between sessions, and Ctrl+Z restores the original text and status together.

Regular expressions

Tick Regex to treat the Find field as a regular expression (Python re syntax).

  • Backreferences in Replace: capture groups in the pattern can be reused in the Replace field as \1, \2, … (or \g<name> for named groups). For example, Find "([^"]+)" and Replace «\1» turns "events" into «events».
  • Case sensitive still applies (off = the whole pattern matches case-insensitively).
  • While Regex is on, the Match modes and Auto-adjust case don’t apply and are greyed out.
  • Invalid patterns are caught: an unbalanced pattern (e.g. () or a bad backreference (e.g. \9 with no matching group) shows a clear error and changes nothing — it never crashes or partially replaces.

History Dropdowns

Both the Find and Replace fields remember your recent searches:

  • Click the dropdown arrow to see your last 20 entries
  • Start typing to filter the history
  • History persists between sessions

F&R Sets (Batch Operations)

Save and reuse multiple find/replace operations as a set.

Creating a Set

  1. Expand the 📁 F&R Sets panel
  2. Click ➕ New Set
  3. Give your set a name (e.g., “Client Style Guide”)
  4. The set appears in the dropdown

Adding Operations to a Set

  1. Enter your Find and Replace terms
  2. Set your options (Match mode, Case sensitive, Regex, Search in) — these are all saved with the operation
  3. Click ➕ Add Current to Set
  4. The operation is saved to the active set

Managing Operations

In the F&R Sets panel:

  • ✓ (Enabled) column – tick to include an operation when you click Run All; untick to skip it. (Hover for a reminder.)
  • Edit – double-click an operation to load it back into the Find/Replace fields.
  • 🗑 Delete Operation – removes the selected operation from the set.
  • 🗑 Delete Set – removes the selected set entirely.

The Match column shows each operation’s mode, or Regex when the operation is a regular expression.

Running a Batch

  1. Select your set
  2. Click ▶ Run All
  3. Each enabled operation runs in turn; regex operations (shown as “Regex” in the Match column) run with backreferences
  4. See how many replacements were made

Importing & exporting sets

Share sets with colleagues:

  • 📤 Export – save the selected set as a .svfr file
  • 📥 Import – load a shared .svfr file

Use Cases

Terminology Consistency

Create a set for client-specific terms:

  • “colour” → “color” (US spelling)
  • “organisation” → “organization”
  • “programme” → “program”

Style Guide Rules

Enforce style guidelines:

  • Double spaces → Single space
  • “e.g.” → “for example”
  • Straight quotes → Curly quotes

Post-Translation Cleanup

Clean up common MT artifacts:

  • Remove unwanted spaces before punctuation
  • Fix capitalization issues
  • Normalize formatting

Tips