# Find and replace for "whole words"

**URL:** <https://community.parabola.io/t/find-and-replace-for-whole-words/1170>\
**Category:** Ask a question\
**Created:** [October 13, 2020, 3:48pm UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/find-and-replace-for-whole-words/1170 "2020-10-13T15:48:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![NigelG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ea5d25/32.png) [@NigelG](https://community.parabola.io/u/NigelG)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2020, 3:48pm UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/find-and-replace-for-whole-words/1170/1 "2020-10-13T15:48:05Z")

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Hi there.

Seems like I may be missing something in the F&R function.

If I replace “0” with “0-3 months” and “10” with “10-18 months” I end up double changing the “10” as it matches both.

Ended up doing a regex to replace “0” with “zero” and “10” with ten but am thinking I may be missing an easier way ? Can I do a whole word search ?

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**Author:** ![anon36387498](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@anon36387498](https://community.parabola.io/u/anon36387498)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 1:07am UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/find-and-replace-for-whole-words/1170/2 "2020-10-14T01:07:30Z")

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Hi @NigelG,

That would be due to the functionality of our step `Find and replace`, where the “find the value” entered will be picked up each time it occurs in a cell. For example, if in this step you entered find “0” to be replaced with “0-3 months”, then if a row contained “20” it would be replaced with “20-3 months”.

If you have the step `Use regex` in your flow, I’d suggest using it to accomplish this instead so you can remove any latter redundant `Find and replace` steps. With this `Use regex` step, you can enter the expression value **^0$** or **\b(0)\b** to capture the single integer 0 value and the replace value of “0-3 months”. Through this step, even if 0 appears in a row with a cell value of 20, the `Use regex` step won’t replace it with “20-3 months” as the `Find and replace` step would due to their differing step functionality.

Let me know how that works out for you or if you’d like further clarification on the above.

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**Author:** ![NigelG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ea5d25/32.png) [@NigelG](https://community.parabola.io/u/NigelG)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 7:41am UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/find-and-replace-for-whole-words/1170/3 "2020-10-14T07:41:32Z")

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Thanks, just wanted to check I wasn’t missing a “Match Whole Word” checkbox somewhere 🙂