About the TSV Column Replacer
Replacing text across a whole file can damage columns you meant to leave alone. This tool limits the change to a single column of a tab-separated table. Give the column by number or heading, type what to find and what to put instead, and only that column is rewritten. Options let you match whole cells or parts of cells, ignore capital letters, or use a regular expression. The heading row can be skipped. A note tells you how many cells changed. It runs in your browser, and your table is not uploaded anywhere.
Updated October 2026
How to use the TSV Column Replacer
- 1Paste your TSV into the left box.
- 2Enter the column by number or heading.
- 3Type the text to find and the text to put in its place.
- 4Choose whole-cell matching, ignoring capitals or a pattern if you need them.
- 5Check how many cells changed, then copy or download the table.
Column-limited find and replace
Standardising a status word, a country name or a code is a common clean-up job. If the same word occurs in a notes column, a global replace would alter it too. Limiting the change to one column avoids that, and the count of changed cells is a quick check that the replacement did what you expected.
For several different replacements, run them one after another, feeding each result into the next.
Whole cell or part of a cell
Whole-cell matching is right for labels and codes, because it will not touch similar words. Part-of-cell matching is right for removing a prefix or fixing a typo inside longer text. Ignore capital letters when the source is inconsistent.
- Whole cell: UK only
- Part of a cell: UK inside any text
- Pattern: ^0+ for leading zeros
Be careful with patterns
Characters such as the dot, the plus sign and the brackets have special meaning in patterns. If you only want to replace plain text, leave the pattern option off.
Examples
In a country column holding UK, UK and US, replacing UK with United Kingdom changes two cells and leaves the US row alone. Replacing a dollar sign with nothing strips the symbol from an amount column. Replacing the pattern ^0+ with nothing removes leading zeros from a code column.
The count of changed cells appears under the result, so a zero tells you at once that nothing matched, perhaps because of a spelling or capital-letter difference.
Phone and computer
On a phone, paste into the box, adjust the column and the find and replace boxes, and tap Copy to carry the result into another app. On a computer you can also download it as a file. The two boxes sit side by side on a wide screen and one above the other on a narrow one, so you can compare input and result without zooming. Nothing you paste is uploaded or stored. CSV Column Replacer works on comma-separated files, TSV Column Extractor lets you check one column before you replace values, and Find and Replace Text is better for edits to a whole file.
Features
- Changes one column only
- Whole-cell or part-of-cell matching
- Optional case-insensitive search
- Optional regular expressions
- Heading row can be left unchanged
- Counts the cells changed
Frequently asked questions
How do I replace values in one column of a TSV file?
Paste the table, enter the column, the text to find and the replacement. Only that column is searched.
What does match the whole cell do?
The cell changes only when all of its text equals the text to find. Without it, the text is replaced wherever it appears inside the cell.
Can I leave the replacement empty?
Yes. An empty replacement deletes the matching text, which strips prefixes, suffixes and stray characters.
Can I use a pattern?
Yes. Tick the regular expression option and the Find box is read as a pattern. An invalid pattern gives an error and nothing changes.
Will the heading row change?
Not while the header option is ticked.
Is my table uploaded?
No. The replacement runs in your browser.