Multi-line regular expressions in Visual Studio

Use (.*\n)*? to skip zero or more lines between your expressions.

start(.*\n)*?end

finds

start
two
three
end

? is the non-greedy operator, used to skip as few lines as possible.

If end is not the first word in the line, add .* to match the extra characters. I.e.: start(.*\n)*?.*end finds

start
two
three
four end end

If you only want to replace until the first end, add another non-greedy operator: start(.*\n)*?.*?end.

Historic: In Visual Studio 2017 (and early versions of 2019) you can also use the single line option in the Find and Replace dialog Ctrl-Shift-F like this:

(?s)start.*end

For more see the version history of this answer.

Regular expressions have changed in Visual Studio 2013. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2k3te2cs(v=vs.120).aspx

To match an expression over two lines the code would now be:

StartOfExpression.*\r?\n.*EndOfExpression