How do I change two letters closest to a string and one letter immediately after a string using Notepad++?

I have a list of emails, and I want to change the two letters before "@" and the first letter after "@" using Notepad++.

For example:

[email protected]

becomes

userna**@*ourdomain.com

Solution 1:

I want to change the two letters before "@" and the first letter after "@"

• Menu "Search" > "Replace" (or Ctrl + H)

• Set "Find what" to ..@.

• Set "Replace with" to **@*

• Enable "Regular expression"

• Click "Replace All"

  

Before:

[email protected]

After:

userna**@*ourdomain.com

Further reading

• How to use regular expressions in Notepad++ (tutorial)
• Notepad++: A guide to using regular expressions and extended search mode
• Regular Expressions Tutorial
• RegExr: Learn, Build, & Test RegEx
• regex101: Online regex tester and debugger
• RegExper: Regular Expression Visualiser

Solution 2:

You can do this by using a regex search/replace.

At the bottom, select Regular Expression.

In the Search for entry, you type in: ..@. In the Replace with, you type in **@*

Then press the button Replace All

This works because Regex searches will only replace if its search criteria matches exactly. The match is explained as follows:

..@. There are 3 dots and an @:

• @ has no special meaning in regex so it means a literal @.
• . means any character, exactly once. By writing .. it means 2 characters of any kind, as long as there are 2 characters.