# .replaceAll()

Categories: Manipulation > DOM Replacement

## .replaceAll( target ) Returns: jQuery

Description: Replace each target element with the set of matched elements.

- #### version added: 1.2.replaceAll( target )

  targetA selector expression indicating which element(s) to replace.

The `.replaceAll()` method is corollary to `.replaceWith()`, but with the source and target reversed. Consider this DOM structure:

    <div class="container">
      <div class="inner first">Hello</div>
      <div class="inner second">And</div>
      <div class="inner third">Goodbye</div>
    </div>

We can create an element, then replace other elements with it:

    $('<h2>New heading</h2>').replaceAll('.inner');

This causes all of them to be replaced:

    <div class="container">
      <h2>New heading</h2>
      <h2>New heading</h2>
      <h2>New heading</h2>
    </div>

Or, we could select an element to use as the replacement:

    $('.first').replaceAll('.third');

This results in the DOM structure:

    <div class="container">
      <div class="inner second">And</div>
      <div class="inner first">Hello</div>
    </div>

From this example, we can see that the selected element replaces the target by being moved from its old location, not by being cloned.

### Example:

#### Replace all the paragraphs with bold words.

    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
    <head>
      <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7rc2.js"></script>
    </head>
    <body>
      <p>Hello</p>
      <p>cruel</p>
      <p>World</p>
    <script>$("<b>Paragraph. </b>").replaceAll("p"); // check replaceWith() examples</script>

    </body>
    </html>

#### Demo: