Title: Search and replace
Last modified: August 21, 2016
---
# Search and replace
* Resolved [Jenxi Seow](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jenxi/)
* (@jenxi)
* [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/)
* Is there a way to perform a search and replace for a particular term across the
tables? I want to convert some of the text into links and it is not practical
to edit the tables one by one.
* [http://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress/](http://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress/)
Viewing 13 replies - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
* Plugin Author [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
* (@tobiasbg)
* [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4447881)
* Hi,
* thanks for your question, and sorry for the trouble.
* No, sorry, there’s no such option directly in TablePress. My suggestion here
is to use a plugin that can search/replace directly in the database. There, all
tables are stored as the Custom Post Type “tablepress_table” in the “wp_posts”
table. Thus, you should limit the search/replace to those mySQL table rows.
Then, as you would be working directly on the database, don’t forget to create
a backup first!
* Regards,
Tobias
* Thread Starter [Jenxi Seow](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jenxi/)
* (@jenxi)
* [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4447928)
* Hi Tobias,
* Thanks for the quick reply. You just confirmed my fears. I guess I’ll just have
to bite the bullet and give it a go.
* Plugin Author [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
* (@tobiasbg)
* [12 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4447929)
* Hi,
* no worries, it’s not that hard 🙂 Just be sure to have a backup so that you have
a way to restore the data, if something goes wrong.
* In fact, you could also try a different way: You could export all your tables
to CSV files and then use a “Search/Replace” over all of those files, which most
text editor programs make possible. Then, just re-import the tables into TablePress.
* Regards,
Tobias
* Thread Starter [Jenxi Seow](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jenxi/)
* (@jenxi)
* [12 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4448019)
* Hi Tobias,
* I don’t think exporting to CSV works because some table contents content HTML.
That’s why I have been importing using HTML instead of CSV. Unless there is a
way around this that I’m not aware of.
* Plugin Author [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
* (@tobiasbg)
* [12 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4448020)
* Hi,
* don’t worry, exporting to CSV here will work fine, as the HTML code will simply
be treated as text and it will be kept.
* Regards,
Tobias
* Thread Starter [Jenxi Seow](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jenxi/)
* (@jenxi)
* [12 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4448021)
* Hi Tobias,
* Would I be able to re-import via CSV with the HTML?
* Plugin Author [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
* (@tobiasbg)
* [12 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4448022)
* Hi,
* yes, of course. After the re-import, the HTML will be treated as HTML again.
* Regards,
Tobias
* Thread Starter [Jenxi Seow](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jenxi/)
* (@jenxi)
* [12 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4448023)
* Hi Tobias,
* Thank you so much! It works now! I previously tried to import CSV with HTML but
it threw an error, hence the confusion regarding how to import/export CSV with
HTML. Now I know I need to had quotation marks to escape the HTML.
* Yes, this is definitely going to be very helpful going forward. It is a much
safer way to do this without having to muck around with the database. And I can
do a simple search and replace across all the CSV files.
* Plugin Author [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
* (@tobiasbg)
* [12 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4448024)
* Hi,
* no problem, you are very welcome! 🙂 Good to hear that this helped!
* Yes, quotation marks are the only problematic thing here, as they are used for
wrapping the cell content. Therefore, all quotation marks in the HTML needs to
be escaped with a second quotation mark. During the export, this happens automatically.
* Best wishes,
Tobias
* P.S.: In case you haven’t, please [rate TablePress](http://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/tablepress)
here in the plugin directory. Thanks!
* Thread Starter [Jenxi Seow](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jenxi/)
* (@jenxi)
* [12 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4448025)
* Hi Tobias,
* Yes, I hope this will be useful to others who are trying to do the same thing
as me. Being able to use CSV makes it a lot easier to create the tables. And
preserving HTML makes it easier to style and present the data.
* It might be useful to add the bit about CSV importing to the FAQ or documentation.
I looked around for help on that but gave up when nothing turned up. Or perhaps
I missed it completely.
* Another point to add it that quotation marks need to be escaped too.
* So if people who want to output:
`` will have to use `"
”`
* I hope this helps others who come across this post.
* Thanks once again, Tobias. I will definitely rate the plugin because this is
the best table plugin for WordPress. =)
* Plugin Author [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
* (@tobiasbg)
* [12 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4448026)
* Hi,
* yes, that’s what I meant above 🙂 Quotation marks have to be escaped with a second
one, as that seems to be the most common handling of the escaping issue in CSV(
see e.g. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values))
* And thanks for the rating, I really appreciate it!
* Best wishes,
Tobias
* [yellowlover](https://wordpress.org/support/users/yellowlover/)
* (@yellowlover)
* [12 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4448068)
* What plugin do you recommend that does a search and replace directly in the database?
I need to replace about 500 fields in Tablepress. I usually use Velvet Blues
to update URLs on a site, but that doesn’t seem to work for Tablepress.
* Thank you,
Laura
* Plugin Author [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
* (@tobiasbg)
* [12 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4448069)
* Hi Laura,
* I’m not really familiar with such plugins, unfortunately, as I usually just do
it directly with a SQL in the database (using a tool like phpMyAdmin on the server).
Thus, I can’t really recommend one, sorry 🙁
* Regards,
Tobias
Viewing 13 replies - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
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* 13 replies
* 3 participants
* Last reply from: [Tobias Bäthge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobiasbg/)
* Last activity: [12 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/search-and-replace-5/#post-4448069)
* Status: resolved