How do I do a simple 'Find and Replace" in MsSQL?

Question

Question is pretty self explanitory. I want to do a simple find and replace, like you would in a text editor on the data in a column of my database (which is MsSQL on MS Win

Answer 1

This pointed me in the right direction, but I have a DB that originated in MSSQL 2000 and is still using the ntext data type for the column I was replacing on. When you try to run REPLACE on that type you get this error:

Argument data type ntext is invalid for argument 1 of replace function.

The simplest fix, if your column data fits within nvarchar, is to cast the column during replace. Borrowing the code from the accepted answer:

UPDATE YourTable
SET Column1 = REPLACE(cast(Column1 as nvarchar(max)),'a','b')
WHERE Column1 LIKE '%a%'

This worked perfectly for me. Thanks to this forum post I found for the fix. Hopefully this helps someone else!