Don't know if my approach is any better, but I had the same issue many years ago. Had a tab-delimited file that needed to be search and replaced for multiple terms in multiple columns. Instead of running a search and replace in Excel over and over for each item, I wrote a Perl script to read a mapping file (search term \t replace term) and do a "single pass" global search and replce

I've updated over the years to not just do columns. You may find it useful. It's in the Code area:

MSAR.pl

UPDATE:

{C} > more in.txt
the dog chased my cat.

{C} > more mapping.txt
dog     1
cat     2
chased  3
the     4

{C} > msar in.txt mapping.txt
Reading mappings from file:  mapping.txt
----------------------------
4 1 3 my 2.
----------------------------
Mapped 4 entries.

{C} >
[download]

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