<p>I have hit a classic problem of needing to do a string replace on a text field in an sql 2000 database. This could either be an update over a whole column or a single field I'm not fussy.</p>

<p>I have found a few examples of how to use updatetext to achieve it but they tend to be in stored procedures, does anyone know of a similar thing that is wrapped into a function so I can use it like I would usually use Replace(). The problem with the Replace() function for anyone who isn't aware is that it doesn't support text fields.</p>

<p>Edit: I realised I could probably get away with varchar(8000) so have swapped the fields to this type which fixes the issue. I never found a true solution.</p>

I am afraid you cannot do it within a function
When you try to declare a function like:
```
```
create function dbo.textReplace(
@inText as text)
returns text
as 
begin
    return 'a' -- just dummy code
end
```
```
You will get the following error:
```
```
The text data type is invalid for return values.
```
```
In other words you could not write a simple equivalent of REPLACE function for the text data type