Actual Search & Replace

Actual Search & Replace is an advanced software tool that gives you the possibility to search and replace text across multiple files at the same time.

It's backed by many search filters and lets you generate reports as well as save projects to resume them later.

The installation procedure is a swift and simple task that shouldn't impose any difficulties. As far as the interface goes, it's obvious that Actual Search & Replace hasn't been updated for a long time, since it adopts a classical-looking window with a plain and simple structure that doesn't put emphasis on appearance.

You can indicate the drive or directory to include in the scan scope, narrow down files by specifying names and formats to take into account, as well as ask the program to look for a phrase, one or more words, search engine, multiline or regular expression.

What's more, you can include or exclude subfolders, use modification intervals for the listed files, ignore leading and trailing spaces, ignore whitespaces in regular expressions, create backups in case you accidentally delete or edit something, as well as specify the size and date range.

Apart from replacing text, you can just search for occurrences, insert new text before or after the target, delete it, or clear everything. The utility implements a function for replacing text in batch mode. You can save lists and lines, compile reports with the search results, as well as save the project to file and resume it at a more convenient time.

We haven't encountered any unpleasant surprises in our tests as far as stability goes, thanks to the fact that Actual Search & Replace didn't hang, crash or prompt error messages. It conducted search operations in reasonable time while remaining light on the system resources.

Unfortunately, the app doesn't implement options for simultaneously scanning multiple directories from different locations on the disk. On top of that, the interface needs some major improvements. Nevertheless, Actual Search & Replace comes bundled with powerful and advanced text search features for experienced users.