Search and Replace?

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BillW
Posts: 27
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2008 10:00 pm

Search and Replace?

Post by BillW » Sun Mar 15, 2009 9:51 pm

Is there a way to do a search and replace rather than having to track down each instance of something I want to change and make each change individually?

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Warwick Wilson
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Posts: 495
Joined: Sat Nov 15, 2008 12:36 am
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Post by Warwick Wilson » Mon Mar 16, 2009 1:10 am

Hi Bill,

There is a menu function Edit -> Find -> Find.. -> Find and Replace that will do this for your current text block. If you are in a comments field, or a notes field, or the story pane this will work, but only for the text block you are currently editing.

For a Global approach to your database the scenario is slightly different.

The easiest in-program way to do this depends on which field your target text is in. If it is the Comments or Notes field you can use the menu items People -> Notes... or People -> Comments... which will present a search dialog that can find every instance of a word in those fields of your database. Replacing is then a matter of working through the list and making the changes.

A typical workflow would be
1. select the menu item People -> Comments...
2. enter the desired text in the Comments Contain: search dialog.
3. Select an item from the list then click in the comments block displayed. Use the command-F combo to enter the search word you are looking for
4. use the command-G and command-shift-G combos to find next and previous then edit the text straight in the text block. (Make sure you have clicked in the text block first to make it active.)

(Please note that the Find dialog buttons are currently greyed out with this method so using the shortcut keys in step 4 is necessary. I will investigate this functionality further and see if I can activate those buttons in the next release. The buttons are not greyed out when you are conducting a find/replace directly from the Notes, Comments of Stories tabs text blocks, only in the meta-search described above.)

The other option to do this kind of work is a slightly more technical but a thorough and robust one. Exporting your family tree to a Gedcom and back will do no harm, iFamily makes use of custom Gedcom tags to ensure that it&#39s data is read back in just the way it left. While your database is in Gedcom format you can use a global find and replace on that Gedcom file with your favourite text editor. In this way you can change every instance of "Banker" to "Thief" and so forth if that is what you are trying to do.

Do be wary of some minor pitfalls though if you are using the "via Gedcom" method. Always keep your original database as a backup in case you inadvertently change a keyword, that can get a little messy.

Thanks,
Warwick.

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