With this launch, you can now use “regular expressions” to more quickly and easily find what you’re looking for in Google Docs on the web, much like you can in Google Sheets. With regular expressions, you can search for patterns of text, lists of words, and more, instead of single words or phrases.

For instance, imagine you need to find all the US zip codes referenced in a lengthy document. To do so, you can simply search for [0-9]{5}(-[0-9]{4})?. This will identify any zip code in your document consisting of five numbers with an optional hyphen and four-digit add-on.

To use regular expressions in the Find and Replace function, type the expression into the Find box and check the “Match using regular expressions” box.

For more details, including info on those expressions that are supported in Docs, check out the Help Center.