Find and Replace: Correct Text on Multiple Products at Once

Have you switched suppliers, changed a brand name, or discovered the same spelling error in 300 product descriptions? Shoporama has a built-in "find and replace" feature that replaces the same text snippet in all the products you've selected. A correction that would otherwise take half a workday takes less than a minute.

The feature is fast, but it’s also unforgiving. It saves immediately, shows no preview, and has no undo button. Here’s the full picture: where to find it, what it affects, and how to use it without getting burned.

How to Find Search and Replace

Find and Replace doesn’t have its own menu item on the left side. It’s available exclusively as an action on the products you’ve selected in the product overview, along with the other bulk tools. Here’s how to get there:

1. Go to Products and then All Products in the left-hand menu.
2. Check the boxes next to the products you want to edit. The checkbox at the top or bottom of the list selects all products on the page you’re on.
3. At the bottom of the screen is the Bulk Edit bar. If it’s collapsed, click the arrow to expand it.
4. Click “With the selected items” and choose “Find and Replace” from the menu that appears.

This opens the Find and Replace page. At the top, the selected products are listed under the “Selected Products” heading, so you can verify that they are the correct ones. If you’re unsure how to filter and select items, you can read more in the article about the product overview. Note that this option isn’t visible to supplier users, and the bar doesn’t appear on very small screens, so use a computer or a widescreen tablet.

If you’d rather enter the address directly

You can also open the page by typing the address into your browser. After the part of the address that ends with your shop’s number, type /product/replace?products= followed by the product ID numbers separated by commas:

.../product/replace?products=1234,1235,1236

You can display the product ID numbers as a column in the product overview: click “Customize View ” in the bulk edit bar and check the box next to “Product ID.” Note that you won’t be redirected afterward if you start from the address bar. The change will still be applied, but the page will simply reload. If you open the page with no products at all, the list will be empty, and nothing will happen no matter what you type.

Which fields are edited

Find and Replace checks five text fields for each of the selected products:

• Name, i.e., the product name itself
• List description, the short text used on product cards and lists
• Description, the long product text from the text editor
• Title under the heading “Google title and description,” i.e., the meta title
• "Description " in the same section—that is, the meta description

Everything else remains unchanged. This includes, among other things:

• Prices, sale prices, and cost prices
• SKU, GTIN, and MPN
• Inventory, categories, brands, and suppliers
• The product’s URL—that is, the URL by which customers and Google identify the product
• Google Shopping title
• Open Graph title and Open Graph description, which are used when sharing on social media
• Additional fields, product attributes, and variant-specific fields

It’s usually an advantage if the URL doesn’t change. You can rename 500 products without a single link or Google listing being affected. If the URL does need to reflect the new name, the “Reset URL” option is available in the same menu. It generates a new URL based on the product name and automatically sets up a redirect from the old URL to the new one, so no one ends up on an error page.

Step by step: how to run the replacement

1. In the “Replace” field, enter the text you want to find.
2. In the “With” field, enter the text it should be replaced with.
3. Click the “Search and Replace” button.

The change is saved immediately for all selected products, and you’ll be redirected back to the product overview. There is no confirmation message, and no count of how many products were changed. If you want to make sure it worked, you’ll need to open a few of the products and check for yourself.

Uppercase and Lowercase Letters

The search does not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters for the standard letters a through z. If you type “sommer,” it will also match “SOMMER” and “Sommer.” All three will be replaced with exactly the text you entered in the “Replace with” field, so the original capitalization will not be preserved.

This does not apply to the Danish letters æ, ø, and å, or to letters with accents. If you type “øko,” it will only match “øko” with a lowercase “ø,” while “ØKO” and “Øko” will remain unchanged. Therefore, run the search once for each spelling.

The page also includes a checkbox labeled “Distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters.” In practice, this has no effect: the result will be the same regardless of whether you check the box or not. If you need a replacement that truly distinguishes between capital and lowercase letters, please email support@shoporama.dk.

This cannot be undone

This is the most important sentence in the article: there is no preview, no confirmation, and no undo option. The moment you click “Search and Replace,” the text is changed on all selected products, and the old text is gone. No copy is saved. That’s why there are three habits that are well worth the effort:

1. Try it on one product first. Select a single product, run the replacement, and check the result. If it looks right, repeat the process for the rest.
2. Make a backup. Select “Export Selected Products” from the same menu. You’ll get a CSV file containing, among other things, the name, description, list description, meta title, and meta description as they appear right now.
3. Be as precise as possible. The longer and more specific the search text is, the lower the risk of hitting something you hadn’t thought of.

Be careful with parts of words

Search and Replace finds the text snippet no matter where it appears and does not distinguish between whole words and parts of words. If you replace “yellow” with “green,” “carrot” will also become “green-rot.” The solution is to make the search text longer and more precise, preferably with spaces around it. “Free shipping on orders over 499 kr.” is a much safer search text than “shipping.”

How to delete text

If you leave the “With” field blank, the found text will be deleted instead of being replaced. This is the easiest way to remove an expired campaign line, an old delivery promise, or an outdated phrase from many product descriptions at once. Conversely, if you leave the “Replace” field blank, nothing happens.

When the change doesn’t take effect immediately

The text in your product data is updated immediately, but your online store may continue to display the old version for a short while because rendered pages are stored in a cache to improve loading speed. Search and Replace does not clear the cache itself. If you want to speed up the process, you can open any product and click Save. Read more in the article about caching in Shoporama.

The search function on your own online store uses a search index that is updated when a product is saved in the normal way, and the “Find and Replace” feature does not update the index. If you’ve corrected words that customers search for, you should open the affected products and save them afterward.

When to Use an Alternative

• If each product needs to have its own value, bulk editing and table editing are spreadsheet-like alternatives.
• If you need to change prices, use “Price Changes” in the bulk edit bar or a CSV import.
• If text needs to update automatically—for example, with the current price or stock status— dynamic tags in product descriptions are the way to go.
• If the text needs to be unique for each product, the AI assistant is a better choice.

For the tech-savvy

The description field is rewritten with HTML codes converted to the characters they represent.   and & become a space and an ampersand, and if you’ve intentionally written HTML as visible text, it becomes actual HTML. This happens every time you run a search and replace, even if your search text isn’t in the text at all.

The description is HTML, so you can also search and replace within the code itself—for example, to change a domain in all links. Be careful, though: even half an HTML tag in the search text can break the markup in all the selected products at once.

"Find and Replace" updates the fields directly and does not perform the post-processing that a regular "Save Product" action does. This means that updates to the search index, product feeds to Google Shopping and Klaviyo, and webhooks for your integrations will not be triggered. If you want these to be updated, the products must be saved in the usual way.

Frequently Asked Questions

I can’t find “Search and Replace” in the menu. Where is it?

It doesn’t have its own menu item. First, select some products under Products > All Products. Then the Bulk Edit bar will appear at the bottom of the screen, and under “With the selected items,” you’ll find “Search and Replace.”

Can I undo it if I mess up my text?

No. There is no undo button and no copy of the old text. Therefore, always test it on a single product first, and make a backup using “Export Selected Products” before applying the changes to multiple products.

Can I see what’s being changed before I click?

No, there is neither a preview nor a list of found instances. The page only shows which products you’ve selected. The closest you can get is to run the replacement on a single product and check the result.

How do I know if it worked? I don’t get any confirmation.

You’ll be redirected to the product overview without any notification. Check by opening a few of the products or by searching for the old text in the product overview. If you can’t find it anymore, it’s been replaced.

How many products can I select at a time?

There’s no set limit, but you can only select products on the page you’re currently viewing. Set “Show” at the bottom of the product list to up to 250 per page, select all, run the replacement, and repeat on the next page.

Can I also replace prices, item numbers, or stock levels?

No. Only the name, list description, description, meta title, and meta description are affected. Prices, SKU, GTIN, MPN, stock, categories, and attributes remain unchanged. For numbers and SKUs, use table editing or a CSV import.

We don’t spell “Organic” the same way everywhere. Does the search match all spellings?

Not when the word begins with æ, ø, or å. Uppercase and lowercase letters are treated the same only for a through z, so “Sommer” and “sommer” are matched by the same search, while “Øko” and “øko” must be run separately.

Can I replace HTML and links within the description?

Yes. The search runs directly on the HTML code in the description, so you can, for example, replace an old domain in all links at once. Always test on a single product first. An incomplete HTML tag in the search text can break the markup in all products.

Do the fields support wildcards or regular expressions?

No. It’s a standard text replacement, character by character. Asterisks, question marks, and other wildcards are searched for literally.

Will this change the product’s address and cause my Google rankings to drop?

No. The address remains exactly the same, even if you change the name. If you want it updated, simply select “Reset Address” in the “With Selected” menu, and a redirect will automatically be created from the old address to the new one. If you’re unsure, please email support@shoporama.dk before clicking the button.