Search for a target within 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. PyCharm highlights the results of your search in the file. Alternatively, in the editor, highlight the string you want to find and press Ctrl+F. PyCharm places the highlighted string into the search field.

   

Find in selection

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

1. Select a multi-line fragment and press Ctrl+F.

2. Enter your search string. PyCharm will search for the target inside the selected fragment first.

   If you press Ctrl+F again, PyCharm 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 twice.

Manage your search

PyCharm lets you adjust your search process and perform various actions with the displayed search results.

• If you want to see the list of previous searches, press ⌥↓ in the search field.

  

• If you want to enter a multi-line string, click the icon in the search field for a new line.

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

  For more details on regex, refer to the search with regex documentation.

• Use the and arrows to navigate to the previous or the next occurrence.

• 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.

  

• Click the or icon to add a selection of the next occurrence or deselect the previous occurrence Alt+J or Shift+Alt+J.

• If you want to quickly replace the target of your search in the whole file, press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+J and type a new string.

  

• You can narrow your search when you select the Words, Match case checkboxes on the search pane, or click the filter icon to select a scope for your search.

• You can press ⌥X (previously known as ⌥G) to quickly select or clear the Regex checkbox. You can use regular expressions to opt for more challenging searches.

• Press Ctrl+F7 to see usages of any element in the opened file.

  If you don't want PyCharm to highlight all found usages in the file, open the Settings/Preferences dialog Ctrl+Alt+S and on the Editor | General page clear the Highlight usages of element at caret option.

  Press Alt+F7 to search for usages beyond the current file or Ctrl+Alt+F7 to open the search results in a separate popup. If you need to configure some options before the search, press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F7 to open the Find Usages dialog.

Refer to Finding and replacing text in project to learn how to replace all discovered occurrences in the entire project.

Replace the search string in a file

1. Press Ctrl+R to open the Replace in File window.

2. In the top field, enter your search string. In the bottom field, enter your replacement string.

   

   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.