Short answer
Elementor has no find and replace for text. Its only similar tool, Replace URL, accepts full addresses only. To change a phone number, a name or a sentence on every page you have three options: edit page by page, keep the text in one place (the header or footer), or use a find and replace that reads Elementor content. A generic database tool misses any text with accents or quotes.
Why a database search and replace fails
Elementor stores each page as JSON in the _elementor_data field, and that JSON is encoded:
| What you see in the editor | How it’s stored | Searching for it as-is in the database |
|---|---|---|
Café | Caf\u00e9 | Not found |
"Sale" | \"Sale\" | Not found |
https://mysite.com/contact | https:\/\/mysite.com\/contact | Not found |
What it doesn’t find, it doesn’t change, and it doesn’t warn you: the report says zero matches on a site that has the text on every page. The Text Editor widget also holds HTML, so a blind replace of “price” changes a price-table class too, and that element loses its styles.
For a single exported page you can find and replace in Elementor JSON in your browser. For the whole site, one of these three options.
Option 1: by hand, page by page
With a few pages, it’s the quickest. Inside the editor, the Finder (Ctrl + E, or Cmd + E on a Mac) opens any page by name without going back to the dashboard, and every change leaves a revision.
The risk is missing one, because the text isn’t only in pages. Also check the header, the footer, popups, single and archive templates, global widgets and loop items.
Option 2: keep the text in one place
Details that change, like a phone number, opening hours or an address, are best kept in a single place: the header or footer from the Theme Builder (Elementor Pro), or a saved template inserted with the Template widget. Change it once and every page updates.
It doesn’t fix what’s already repeated. For that, option 1 or 3.
Option 3: a find and replace built for Elementor
Smart Search & Replace for Elementor is free and reads pages the way Elementor does:
- Go to Tools › Search & Replace for Elementor.
- In Find, type the text as you see it in the editor, accents and quotes included. In Replace with, the new one.
- Under Search in, pick Text and links or Links only. If needed, tick Match case or Whole words only.
- Click Search. Each match shows its path (page › section › widget › field) with a before and after.
- Tick the ones to change and click Replace selected.
It only touches visible text: never classes, HTML attributes or settings like alignment. It saves through Elementor, so every changed page gets a revision, and Undo last operation reverts the whole run, except pages edited since. It skips pages someone has open in the editor and, when done, clears Elementor’s CSS and the cache of the most common caching plugins.
It searches pages, posts, products, templates, headers, footers, popups and global widgets, published or not.
Mistakes to avoid
- Short words without “whole words”. Searching “art” without Whole words only also matches “start” and “party”.
- The phone number in two formats. The number people see (
(555) 010-0000) and the click-to-call link (tel:+15550100000) are different strings. Run two searches. - An empty replacement. It deletes the matched text. The plugin warns you first.
- Expecting changes outside Elementor. WordPress menus, SEO titles, block editor posts and dynamic tag text stay as they were: dynamic content comes from elsewhere and is skipped.
- Going without a backup. Revisions or not, take a full backup before any bulk change.