Replace text automatically

You can set Numbers to automatically replace certain text with text that you specify. For example, replace “teh” with “the” or “(c)” with ©.

Use text replacement

Choose Edit > Substitutions > Show Substitutions (from the Edit menu at the top of your computer screen).
In the Substitutions window, select the Text Replacement checkbox, then click Text Preferences.
The Text pane of Keyboard preferences opens in your computer’s System Preferences.
Click , then type the text you want to replace (such as “teh”) in the Replace column.
Type the word you want to replace it with (such as “the”) in the With column.
Click outside the text fields before closing the window.
Click a button to replace all occurrences of the replacement text in the spreadsheet, or only in the selected text.

When Text Replacement is turned on for the spreadsheet, a checkmark appears next to Text Replacement in the Substitutions menu. You can deselect it to turn it off, but existing text won’t change unless you select the text that contains it, then follow the steps above.

Note: Your text replacement settings apply to other applications on your computer, such as TextEdit, that also use substitutions. If you don’t want to use a text replacement, you can turn off text replacement for the selected text in the Substitutions window.