Search for a target within a file

Find the search string in a file

1. Open your file in the editor.

2. Press Ctrl+F or select Edit | Find | Find from the main menu.

3. In the search field that opens, enter your search string. WebStorm highlights the results of your search in the file.

   

   Vice versa, when you highlight a string in the editor and press Ctrl+F, WebStorm places the highlighted string into the search field.

   Alternatively, just place the caret at the string to search and press Ctrl+F or select Edit | Find | Next Occurrence of the Word at Caret from the main menu.

Find in selection

You can search for a text string inside a multi-line selection.

1. Press Ctrl+F and select a multi-line fragment.

2. Click , set a tick next to Search In Selection and type your search string. WebStorm will search for the target inside the selected fragment first.

   If you remove the tick next to Search In Selection, WebStorm will switch the search process back to the whole file.

   

   If you want to search for the multi-line fragment itself, select it and press Ctrl+F.

   

Manage your search

• To see the list of previous searches, press ⌥+↓ or click in the search field.

  

• To enter a multi-line string, click the icon in the search field for a new line.

• With selected, WebStorm automatically escapes special regex symbols with backslash \ when you search for a text string that contains them.

  For more information about regex, refer to the search with regex documentation.

• To navigate to the previous or to the next occurrence, use the and arrows.

• Work with the list of occurrences Alt+F7 in the Find tool window, where you have other options, for example, to group your results or to open them in a separate window.

  

• To add a selection of the next occurrence or deselect the previous occurrence, click or Alt+J or Alt+Shift+J.

• To quickly replace the target of your search in the whole file, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+J and type the replacement string.

  

• To narrow your search, select the Words or Match case checkbox on the search pane, or click filter and select a scope for your search.

• To quickly select or clear the Regex checkbox, press ⌥X (previously known as ⌥G). Use regular expressions for more challenging searches.

Replace the search string in a file

1. Press Ctrl+R or select Edit | Find | Replace from the main menu to open the Replace in File window.

2. In the top field, enter your search string. In the bottom field, enter your replacement string. If you need to preserve the case, click located in the replace field.

   

   Click for a multi-line replace. For example, if you want to replace a comma with a comma and a new line, enter a comma in the search field and a comma and the new line in the replace field.

3. Click Replace to replace items one by one, Replace all to replace all items in your file, and Exclude to omit some items from replacing.

The options that appear in the Replace window, are similar to the Find window and you can refer to the manage the search results section.