---
title: Find text
description: Extract matching text using a regular expression pattern.
category: Data Transformation
tags: [extract, regex, match, substring]
---

# Find text

## Description

The **Find Text** activity extracts specific portions of text from selected columns based on a user-defined **regex pattern**. It is useful for parsing structured tokens, keywords, codes, or patterns from unstructured text.

> **Use Case**  
> Extract keywords such as product codes, IDs, or tags from a sentence or description field using regular expressions.

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## Input

| Type | Description                           |
| ---- | ------------------------------------- |
| Data | Input dataset containing text columns |

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## Output

| Type             | Description                                      |
| ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------ |
| Transformed Data | New columns with extracted values from patterns. |

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## Configuration Fields

| Field Name                | Required | Description                                                                |
| ------------------------- | -------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Columns To Find**       | Yes      | Column(s) from which the text will be extracted using regex.               |
| **Pattern**               | Yes      | Regular expression used to extract matching portions from the column text. |
| **Output Columns Prefix** | Yes      | Prefix used when creating new output columns for extracted matches.        |
| **Include Original**      | No       | If enabled, original columns will be included in the output.               |

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## Sample Input

| ID  | Description                  |
| --- | ---------------------------- |
| 1   | This contains ABC and XYZ    |
| 2   | Find CODE inside this text   |
| 3   | No pattern matches here      |
| 4   | Extract INFO and DATA points |
| 5   | SAMPLE test for extraction   |

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## Sample Configuration

| Field                 | Value         |
| --------------------- | ------------- |
| Columns To Find       | `Description` |
| Pattern               | `([A-Z]{3,})` |
| Output Columns Prefix | `Column_`     |
| Include Original      | `Enabled`     |

> **Explanation**: This regex extracts all words with 3 or more uppercase letters.

<!-- ![alt text](find-text-img.png) -->

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## Sample Output

| ID  | Description                  | Column_1 | Column_2 |
| --- | ---------------------------- | -------- | -------- |
| 1   | This contains ABC and XYZ    | ABC      | XYZ      |
| 2   | Find CODE inside this text   | CODE     |          |
| 3   | No pattern matches here      |          |          |
| 4   | Extract INFO and DATA points | INFO     | DATA     |
| 5   | SAMPLE test for extraction   | SAMPLE   |          |

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> Use grouping patterns like `(\d{4})` to extract numeric codes, or `#(\w+)` to extract hashtags.