Find and replace not saving changes in Databricks Notebook problem

[milan2]

In Databricks notebooks, the find and replace functionality doesn't appear to be saving the replaced text. 

When I use find and replace text, it does initially appear to work correctly (I see that the highlighted texts are replaced).

However, when I scroll around a bit or even refresh the page, the changes aren't actually applied. The found text still remains.

This behavior is consistent across browsers (Chrome and Edge), and it doesn't matter if I use "Replace" or "Replace All".

Wondering if anyone else is experiencing this behavior.

[Sumit_7]

@milan2 Not really - been using Notebooks actively for past couple of days. Been using the Find & Replace quite often to replace empty lines/comments and it works absolutely fine.

[milan2]

Thanks for checking, it was working for me too yesterday, seems like it randomly stopped working for me today.

[Ashwin_DSA]

Hi @milan2,

Thanks for raising this. What you are describing sounds like the text is being visually replaced in the editor, but the change is not actually being persisted.

We have also seen a recent report of similar behaviour where using the browser’s Find and Replace in notebook SQL cells changed the visible text, but execution still used the original text, and the cell sometimes reverted afterwards. I believe the team is already working on the fix. 

Databricks Notebooks have a native find-and-replace tool, and the documented behaviour is that Cmd/Ctrl+F opens the notebook find dialog box, with Cmd/Ctrl+F again switching to the browser’s built-in search. The native notebook tool is the supported path for Replace and Replace All in notebooks.

If this keeps happening, and especially if it is happening on a paid workspace, I would recommend opening a Databricks support ticket so the team can investigate with workspace-specific details. For reference, the public notebook editor documentation is here: Databricks notebook editor.

If this answer resolves your question, could you mark it as “Accept as Solution”? That helps other users quickly find the correct fix.