Global (Mass / Vault-wise) search & replace

Feature requests
21

Ok, thanks for your clarification. So now, we will just wait for it, no problem.

1 Like
22

@ViaAhmed: yes. It is on the so-called roadmap, it was even moved from long term to short term, but then Obsidian mobile came up and was given priority.

So, I don’t know how short/long is “short term”.

2 Likes
23

On Mac OS or Linux, or using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), the sed command makes an excellent workaround that allows for regular expressions.

I recommend anyone with a need to batch edit files learn some of sed. Most of us will run into use cases that go beyond anything we could reasonably expect an application, or even a plugin, to cover. sed is a great Swiss Army knife for text manipulation with tons of support online.

Originally I planned to share a command that I recently ran to delete one of my metadata categories. Decided against this:

  • Running terminal commands from random people online like me is an exceptionally bad idea. You would have to learn some sed anyhow to make sure I am not trolling you by wrecking your computer.
  • Knowing even a little bit of what you’re doing with command-line tools is going to give you grand and terrible ideas for your notes, how to manage them, and how to make use of them.
  • You’ll better appreciate the Obsidian team’s decision to store your notes in a common, plain text format. It’s not just about “owning” you notes but about making them available to other tools.
6 Likes
24

How do you do the automatic backlinking feature? I would like to use that for a particular project I’m working on. Is that in Obsidian or Atom.io?

1 Like
25

I think this is one of the strengths of plain text, there are already plenty of tools that handle this really well without needing to bake the complexity into Obsidian. sed and Sublime Text come to mind first.

2 Likes
26

+1 for this feature.

Is there any specific reason why this fundamental feature was not implemented from the beginning ?

4 Likes
27

+1
Considering the dynamic nature of your notes and links this will be a really useful feature

1 Like
28

Appreciate your saying about “not owning but to make them available to other tools”, think that’s the core value of Obsidian

2 Likes
29

+100500. Of course I can always open the folder in VS Code and replace there, but it would be way nicer to do it in Obsidian.

2 Likes
30

+1000

Any updates on this?

2 Likes
31

My Method to Change an Obsidian link in all notes

(MOC=Map of Content, or index of notes)
Let’s suppose I used MOC Alpha to refer to in many other notes. But now, I want to change these links to another existing note, MOC Beta. I make the following:

  • I rename MOC Beta temporally (e. g. to MOC Beta X).
  • I Rename MOC Alpha to MOC Beta. So all referring links will be changed.
  • I move the content of the (actual) MOC Beta, or make a copy of it with other name, as desired.
  • I delete the actual MOC Beta file (the ex MOC Alpha).
  • I rename MOC Beta X to MOC Beta again. All notes that referred to MOC Alpha before, are pointing to MOC Beta now.
  • Done. (I may edit the content of the new MOC Beta. I can also reinstall MOC Alpha from the copy if necessary.)
4 Likes
32

Any news on this feature ? Thanks !

3 Likes
33

Along these same lines, it’d be great to be able to run a search and apply the find/replace for only the notes in those search results.

5 Likes
34

+1

I’m a writer, note a coder. This must be a simple operation. I spent hours today trying to find a solution. Tried to learn sed, VS Code, echo… But it should be built into Obsidian. To write a tag should be a simple operation: you grab the files and drop in the tag.

3 Likes
35

Any news on this fundamental feature ?

Current workaround : use bulk find&replace of Sublime Text, VSCode, etc…

3 Likes
37

It’s not this.

38

…ping +1 please.

1 Like
39

+1 Would also be useful in changing fieldnames for Dataview globally. I was able to do it with VS Code, however.

1 Like
40

+1, please!

1 Like
41

+1, Please.

1 Like