We ran sixty regexes from Google Sheets tutorials. All sixty work.

REGEXEXTRACT: this(.*)that

Published at https://www.statology.org/google-sheets-extract-text-between-two-characters/ — "Extract text between two literal string delimiters"

REGEXEXTRACT: ran(.*)miles

Published at https://www.statology.org/google-sheets-extract-text-between-two-characters/ — "Capture content between two specific words"

REGEXEXTRACT: \((.*)\)

Published at https://www.statology.org/google-sheets-extract-text-between-two-characters/ — "Extract text enclosed within parentheses"

REGEXEXTRACT: \*(.*)\*

Published at https://www.statology.org/google-sheets-extract-text-between-two-characters/ — "Extract text between asterisk characters"

REGEXEXTRACT: (\w*)\s(\d+)

Published at https://officewheel.com/google-sheets-regexextract-between-two-characters/ — "Return both a word and the following digits as two capture groups"

REGEXEXTRACT: (\w*)

Published at https://officewheel.com/google-sheets-regexextract-between-two-characters/ — "Pull out the first word"

REGEXEXTRACT: (.+)

Published at https://officewheel.com/google-sheets-regexextract-between-two-characters/ — "Match and capture all content of a cell"

REGEXEXTRACT: [0-9]+

Published at https://officewheel.com/google-sheets-regexextract-between-two-characters/ — "Extract one or more digits"

REGEXEXTRACT: [A-Z]

Published at https://officewheel.com/google-sheets-regexextract-between-two-characters/ — "Find the first capital letter"

REGEXEXTRACT: [a-z]

Published at https://officewheel.com/google-sheets-regexextract-between-two-characters/ — "Find the first lowercase letter"

REGEXMATCH: ^[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}$

Published at https://www.finoptimal.com/resources/regex-extract-in-google-sheets-a-power-users-guide-to-string-manipulation — "Validate that a string is a well-formed email address"

REGEXMATCH: ^\(\d{3}\) \d{3}-\d{4}$

Published at https://www.finoptimal.com/resources/regex-extract-in-google-sheets-a-power-users-guide-to-string-manipulation — "Validate a US phone number in (XXX) XXX-XXXX format"

REGEXEXTRACT: [A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,}

Published at https://www.sheetfx.net/blog/clean-names-and-emails-regexextract-split-google-sheets — "Extract a standard email address from within a text string"

REGEXEXTRACT: ([^@]+)

Published at https://www.formulabot.com/google-sheets/regexextract-function — "Extract the username portion (before @) from an email address"

REGEXEXTRACT: (.+)@

Published at https://productivityspot.com/regexextract-google-sheets/ — "Extract the content before the @ symbol (email username)"

REGEXEXTRACT: @(.+)

Published at https://productivityspot.com/regexextract-google-sheets/ — "Extract the domain part (after @) from an email address"

REGEXEXTRACT: @(.+)$

Published at https://www.owox.com/blog/articles/regex-functions-google-sheets — "Extract the domain name after @ from an email address"

REGEXEXTRACT: >(.+)<

Published at https://productivityspot.com/regexextract-google-sheets/ — "Extract the text enclosed between a > and a < character"

REGEXEXTRACT: (http|https)://[a-zA-Z0-9./?=_-]+

Published at https://www.bardeen.ai/answers/how-to-extract-urls-and-links-from-google-sheets — "Extract an HTTP/HTTPS URL from a cell of text"

REGEXREPLACE: (\w+)(?:, )(\w+)

Published at https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/google-sheets-regex-formulas/ — "Reorder 'Surname, First' to 'First Surname' by swapping two capture groups"

REGEXREPLACE: \d+

Published at https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/google-sheets-regex-formulas/ — "Replace every run of digits with the literal 2021"

REGEXREPLACE: (\d{2})-(\d{2})-(\d{4})

Published at https://www.thebricks.com/resources/how-to-use-regexreplace-in-google-sheets-a-step-by-step-guide — "Reformat MM-DD-YYYY date to YYYY-MM-DD by rearranging capture groups"

REGEXREPLACE: dog

Published at https://www.thebricks.com/resources/how-to-use-regexreplace-in-google-sheets-a-step-by-step-guide — "Replace the word dog with cat"

REGEXREPLACE: [^0-9]

Published at https://www.thebricks.com/resources/how-to-use-regexreplace-in-google-sheets-a-step-by-step-guide — "Strip all non-digit characters from a phone number"

REGEXREPLACE: .*

Published at https://www.thebricks.com/resources/how-to-use-regexreplace-in-google-sheets-a-step-by-step-guide — "Keep only the first name by deleting everything from the first space onward"

REGEXREPLACE: ^https?:\/\/

Published at https://www.thebricks.com/resources/how-to-use-regexreplace-in-google-sheets-a-step-by-step-guide — "Remove the http:// or https:// protocol prefix from a URL"

REGEXREPLACE: S.*d

Published at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3098245?hl=en — "Replace the substring from S to the last d with the literal Bed"

REGEXREPLACE: [^\d]

Published at https://smoothsheet.com/blog/how-to/google-sheets-regex/ — "Remove all non-digit characters from a phone number"

REGEXREPLACE: (\d{2})/(\d{2})/(\d{4})

Published at https://smoothsheet.com/blog/how-to/google-sheets-regex/ — "Convert MM/DD/YYYY date to YYYY-MM-DD via capture-group rearrangement"

REGEXREPLACE: <[^>]+>

Published at https://smoothsheet.com/blog/how-to/google-sheets-regex/ — "Strip all HTML tags from text"

REGEXREPLACE: ^(\w+)\s(\w+)$

Published at https://unlimitedsheets.com/blog/regex — "Reorder 'First Last' into 'Last, First' by swapping capture groups"

REGEXREPLACE: (?i)([a-z0-9._%+\-]+)@

Published at https://unlimitedsheets.com/blog/regex — "Mask the local part of an email address before the @ sign"

REGEXREPLACE: colour

Published at https://unlimitedsheets.com/blog/regex — "Nest REGEXREPLACE to normalize British spellings colour/favour to American"

REGEXEXTRACT: \d[\d,.]*

Published at https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/google-sheets-regex-formulas/ — "Extract a number that may contain commas or decimals and convert to numeric"

REGEXMATCH: \b\d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4}\b

Published at https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/google-sheets-regex-formulas/ — "Validate a US phone number in XXX-XXX-XXXX format"

REGEXMATCH: \b[0-9]{4}\b

Published at https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/google-sheets-regex-formulas/ — "Validate a 4-digit number (e.g. a year/vintage) with word boundaries"

REGEXMATCH: ^[a-zA-Z0-9._%+\-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.\-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}$

Published at https://unlimitedsheets.com/blog/regex — "Validate whether a cell looks like a valid email address"

REGEXMATCH: ^\d{10}$

Published at https://unlimitedsheets.com/blog/regex — "Validate a phone number as exactly 10 digits"

REGEXMATCH: ^https?://[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}(/.*)?$

Published at https://unlimitedsheets.com/blog/regex — "Validate that a URL starts with http/https, has a valid domain and optional path"

REGEXMATCH: \d{4}-\d{3}-\d{4}

Published at https://blog.bettersheets.co/philippines-phone-number-validation-use-of-regexmatch-in-google-sheets/ — "Validate a Philippine phone number in the XXXX-XXX-XXXX format"

REGEXEXTRACT: [0-9]{5}

Published at https://www.coursera.org/articles/regex-match-google-sheets — "Extract/match text of exactly five digits (ZIP code)"

REGEXMATCH: ^[a-z]+$

Published at https://www.usemage.com/google-sheets-how-to/how-to-use-regular-expressions-in-google-sheets — "Check if a value contains only lowercase letters"

REGEXREPLACE: [^\x00-\x7F]

Published at https://sheetsformarketers.com/1text-formatting-in-google-sheets/ — "Remove all non-ASCII (non-English/accented/foreign) characters from a string"

REGEXREPLACE: [^0-9A-Za-z]

Published at https://sheetsformarketers.com/1text-formatting-in-google-sheets/ — "Remove everything that is not an English letter or digit"

REGEXREPLACE: [^\x20-\x7E]

Published at https://sheetsformarketers.com/1text-formatting-in-google-sheets/ — "Strip emojis and non-printable/non-ASCII characters, keeping printable ASCII"

REGEXREPLACE: [^A-Za-z]+

Published at https://scales.arabpsychology.com/stats/how-to-remove-special-characters-in-google-sheets/ — "Keep only English alphabet letters, removing numbers, symbols and non-English characters"

REGEXREPLACE: [^0-9a-zA-Z]

Published at https://scales.arabpsychology.com/stats/how-to-remove-special-characters-in-google-sheets/ — "Keep English letters and digits, remove all special/non-English characters"

REGEXREPLACE: [!$%]

Published at https://scales.arabpsychology.com/stats/how-to-remove-special-characters-in-google-sheets/ — "Remove only the specific symbols exclamation point, dollar sign and percent sign"

REGEXREPLACE: [áàâäãå]

Published at https://en.digitalmalayali.in/remove-accents-in-google-sheets-functions-regex-script/ — "Replace accented a-vowels with plain 'a'"

REGEXREPLACE: [éèêë]

Published at https://en.digitalmalayali.in/remove-accents-in-google-sheets-functions-regex-script/ — "Replace accented e-vowels with plain 'e'"

REGEXMATCH: [0-9]

Published at https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/google-sheets-regex-formulas/ — "Return TRUE if the string contains any digit"

REGEXEXTRACT: \d+

Published at https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/google-sheets-regex-formulas/ — "Extract the first sequence of digits from a string"

REGEXEXTRACT: [\d,.]+

Published at https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/google-sheets-regex-formulas/ — "Extract numbers that may include thousand separators or decimals"

REGEXMATCH: \d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4}

Published at https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/google-sheets-regex-formulas/ — "Validate a phone number in ###-###-#### form using quantifiers"

REGEXEXTRACT: fun|terrifying

Published at https://sheets-pratique.com/en/functions/regexextract — "Extract whichever of two alternative words appears first"

REGEXEXTRACT: [A-Z]\d{2}

Published at https://sheets-pratique.com/en/functions/regexextract — "Extract a reference code of one uppercase letter followed by two digits"

REGEXEXTRACT: \d*

Published at https://sheets-pratique.com/en/functions/regexextract — "Extract leading digits until a non-digit character is reached"

REGEXEXTRACT: \d*$

Published at https://sheets-pratique.com/en/functions/regexextract — "Extract the digits at the end of the text"

REGEXEXTRACT: (\d*)-?(\d*)-?(\d*)-?(\d*)

Published at https://sheets-pratique.com/en/functions/regexextract — "Split a hyphen-separated string into separate digit groups"

REGEXEXTRACT: \d*-(\d*)

Published at https://sheets-pratique.com/en/functions/regexextract — "Capture the second group of digits after a hyphen"

published verbatim: backslashes stripped by the page

Exactly as printed at https://coefficient.io/google-sheets-tutorials/regexmatch-in-google-sheets-2

the same pattern with the backslashes the author meant

What a reader would have to reconstruct to make the published advice work.

transmission: a formula printed with typographic quotes

Exactly what lands in the cell when you copy a formula from a page that curls its quotes.

transmission: the same formula with straight quotes

The control. Identical in every way a person can see.

transmission: email pattern as published, backslash gone, against a bad address

The dot lost its backslash and now matches any character. domainXcom has no dot in it.

transmission: email pattern with the backslash restored, against the same bad address

What the author wrote before the page ate it.

transmission: email pattern as published, against a real address

It works here, which is why nobody notices.

transmission: a JavaScript regex pasted into Sheets, slashes and all

Verbatim from a reader comment dated 2022-07-27: "Not working… What am I missing?"

transmission: the same pattern with the JavaScript slashes removed

Removing the delimiters does not save it. The lookaheads are the problem.

transmission: what he wanted, written for RE2

Keep the first character, replace the rest of the local part. No lookaround required.

curly inside the pattern: does it match the plain text

What happens when a reader copies the quote marks along with the pattern into a tester.

curly inside the pattern: does it match text that has the curly quotes too

It is a literal character, not a delimiter. It matches itself.

curly inside the pattern: the straight-quoted control

The pattern the reader meant.

baseline: REGEXMATCH finds digits

Sanity check. If this fails, the harness itself is broken.

baseline: REGEXEXTRACT pulls the first match

baseline: REGEXREPLACE swaps groups with $1 / $2

Dollar-sign backreferences are the Sheets replacement syntax.

RE2 limit: positive lookahead (?=...)

Works on regex101. Here it is not #ERROR! — it is #REF!, the error people associate with a deleted cell reference. That is why they hunt for a typo that does not exist.

RE2 limit: negative lookahead (?!...)

RE2 limit: lookbehind (?<=...)

RE2 limit: backreference inside the pattern

Backreferences exist in the REPLACEMENT string of REGEXREPLACE, but never in the pattern.

Sheets limit: Unicode character class \p{L}

RE2 supports this. Google Sheets is the exception Google names in its own docs. This one catches people who already know RE2.

unbalanced parenthesis is also #REF!, not #ERROR!

A malformed regex and an unsupported one produce the same error. The cell tells you nothing about which.

cross-check: ERROR.TYPE of an unsupported pattern

Independent confirmation of the error type. ERROR.TYPE returns 4 for #REF!, 3 for #VALUE!, 7 for #N/A, 8 for #ERROR!. We do not take one measurement's word for it.

cross-check: ERROR.TYPE of REGEXEXTRACT with no match

an unsupported pattern is catchable with IFERROR

If IFERROR swallows it, a broken pattern can hide inside a working-looking spreadsheet forever.

REGEXEXTRACT with no match

A different error from an invalid pattern. People wrap both in IFERROR without noticing.

supported: word boundary \b

supported: lazy quantifier +?

supported: inline case-insensitive flag (?i)

supported: RE2 named capture group (?P<name>...)

RE2's own spelling.

supported: JavaScript named group syntax (?<name>...) also works

Measured, not assumed. Sheets accepts both spellings, and ignores the name either way — REGEXEXTRACT returns groups in order.

trap: backslash backreference in the replacement string

No error. The backslashes vanish and you are left with the literal digits. Worse than an error, because an error tells you to stop.

trap: $0 is the whole match in the replacement string

trap: $1 when the pattern has no capture group

It is an error, not a silent empty string. We did not know, so we measured.