How to use regular expressions in Google Sheets?

Regular expressions (also known as regex) are a powerful tool for searching and manipulating text. Google Sheets supports the use of regular expressions to search and replace text, extract specific substrings, and validate data input.

To use regular expressions in Google Sheets, you need to start by opening the Find and Replace tool. You can do this by pressing Ctrl + H on Windows or Cmd + H on Mac. Then, in the Find and Replace dialog box, click the Search using regular expressions option.

From there, you can enter your regular expression in the Find field and the replacement text (if desired) in the Replace with field. You can also use various regular expression metacharacters to specify the pattern you're looking for, such as the period (.) to match any single character and the asterisk (*) to match zero or more instances of the preceding character.

Using regular expressions in Google Sheets can help you quickly and easily perform complex data analysis tasks, such as finding and replacing specific substrings in large datasets, validating data input for a specific format, and extracting specific information from a larger body of text.