Title: [Plugin: Search and Replace] Misses code in text widgets??
Last modified: August 20, 2016

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# [Plugin: Search and Replace] Misses code in text widgets??

 *  Resolved [adambundy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/adambundy/)
 * (@adambundy)
 * [14 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-search-and-replace-misses-code-in-text-widgets/)
 * Awesome plugin- thank you! Why does this miss code in text widgets most of the
   time??
 * Thanks!
 * [http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search-and-replace/](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search-and-replace/)

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

 *  Plugin Contributor [Frank Bueltge](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bueltge/)
 * (@bueltge)
 * [14 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-search-and-replace-misses-code-in-text-widgets/#post-2526088)
 * text of widgets are in options of this widget; als serialized data; not easy 
   to replace in database; you can test this about the “about all” search, but i
   think, its not possible and you destroy the option of this widget.
 *  [Evan Mullins](https://wordpress.org/support/users/circlecube/)
 * (@circlecube)
 * [13 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-search-and-replace-misses-code-in-text-widgets/#post-2526524)
 * Meaning that text widgets are stored in the database as a serialized data. Serialized
   data needs to know how many characters are in the text (or any data), so if you
   replace a string with a different length string the length of the value in the
   serilaized data changes and unless you update the length value as well the serialized
   data becomes corrupt. It’d sure be nice if the plugin supported this, but it’d
   get pretty complex to read and write serialized data, but I’d hope a workaround
   would be to have a setting to omit text widgets from the replace Frank?
 * Moral of the story, don’t use this to replace text in your text widgets because
   it will break them.
 * Frank refers to the “All – only search!” field to test your search first and 
   see if the search is found in your text widget(s). Once you see if it is, then
   I’d recommend updating the text widgets manually first and then continue with
   the search and replace.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

The topic ‘[Plugin: Search and Replace] Misses code in text widgets??’ is closed
to new replies.

 * ![](https://ps.w.org/search-and-replace/assets/icon-256x256.png?rev=1776844)
 * [Search & Replace](https://wordpress.org/plugins/search-and-replace/)
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 * 2 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [Evan Mullins](https://wordpress.org/support/users/circlecube/)
 * Last activity: [13 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-search-and-replace-misses-code-in-text-widgets/#post-2526524)
 * Status: resolved