Find and Replace Places

[sgtbob]

Is there a method to find and replace all 'places' state - e.g., Tennessee - with a shorter version - e.g., TN? I have a mixture of state entries in Places - Tennessee, TN, tenn, TENN, etc., - and would like to standardize them without the laborious one for one replacement.

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Find and Replace Places

Is there a method to find and replace all 'places' state - e.g., Tennessee - with a shorter version - e.g., TN? I have a mixture of state entries in Places - Tennessee, TN, tenn, TENN, etc., - and would like to standardize them without the laborious one for one replacement.

See the attached picture. You want to replace "whole words only" in "places". Do this on a copy of your file, as it's not "undo"-able, as far as I know.

[sgtbob]

Re: Find and Replace Places

See the attached picture. You want to replace "whole words only" in "places". Do this on a copy of your file, as it's not "undo"-able, as far as I know.

I replied to you off site. Your suggestion was almost exactly as I have been trying, but I can not get it to respond. Everything is set up as suggested, but th e'spinning ball' never spins, so there must be something I am not doing.

Bob

[Paul Luning]

Re: Find and Replace Places

Just a word of caution. State names can be used for things other than places. Is Tennessee Ernie Ford in your tree? Seriously, lots of kids were given state names. There are other examples which don't come to mind, but I did a replace like that years ago, and strange things showed up.

Paul

[Bill]

Re: Find and Replace Places

I also have a problem with find and replace not working and get the same response as sgtbob is getting. Clicking anywhere out of Reunion brings back the cursor.

This seems to be a problem for me when "All Fields" are selected. If I narrow the search a bit to something else in the drop-down menu, like "Notes", it seems to work fine.

[sgtbob]

Re: Find and Replace Places

I also have a problem with find and replace not working and get the same response as sgtbob is getting. Clicking anywhere out of Reunion brings back the cursor.

This seems to be a problem for me when "All Fields" are selected. If I narrow the search a bit to something else in the drop-down menu, like "Notes", it seems to work fine.

My trial and error actions in trying to resolve this issue show that all of the 'where' options (memo, names, notes, etc) work with the find and replace feature with the exception of 'Places' and 'All Items'. Has anyone attempted this 'find and replace' with 'Places' and if so, does it work? Mine does not in spite of many-faceted attempts. Once I click on the 'replace' button, the 'spinning ball' does not do anything in 'places' or 'all items' and eventually 'times out'.

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Find and Replace Places

Has anyone attempted this 'find and replace' with 'Places' and if so, does it work?

Just to affirm it works for me. In a file of 400,000 individuals and 40,000 places, Reunion finds and replaces 364 instances of "Tennessee" with "TN" in less than a minute.

[sgtbob]

Re: Find and Replace Places

Just to affirm it works for me. In a file of 400,000 individuals and 40,000 places, Reunion finds and replaces 364 instances of "Tennessee" with "TN" in less than a minute.

Thanks Dennis - I only have about 25,000 individuals but have no idea how many places - surely not 40,000, but will work with the support staff on this issue.

Bob

[Bob White]

Re: Find and Replace Places

.........replace all 'places' state - e.g., Tennessee - with a shorter version - e.g., TN?..........

For the sake of those who come after you and relatives in other countries that you might share with, I recommend that you do not do this. Let's say your currently unborn great nephew, born and raised in another country and not knowing a lick of English, is given a copy of your work 70 years from now. AND the current state abbreviations are long ago history. (We've only been using these since the 1950's and it could change again in our lifetime.)

Long ago, I thought about this and then went through all of my work and spelled out all --- and not just place names. If I were you, I'd at least give this some thought like I did.

[Terry Medlar]

Re: Find and Replace Places

For the sake of those who come after you and relatives in other countries that you might share with, I recommend that you do not do this. Let's say your currently unborn great nephew, born and raised in another country and not knowing a lick of English, is given a copy of your work 70 years from now. AND the current state abbreviations are long ago history. (We've only been using these since the 1950's and it could change again in our lifetime.)

Long ago, I thought about this and then went through all of my work and spelled out all --- and not just place names. If I were you, I'd at least give this some thought like I did.

I agree! This has been discussed in another thread and the arguments made there convinced me.

[sgtbob]

Re: Find and Replace Places

On reconsideration it sounds like good advice.

I do seem to have problems with the 'places' cleanup. The find and replace seems to work only partially on smaller selections but not when addressing the issue on my main family file, plus, the system does not recognize some changes I wanted to make from USA to United States. Some of the state designations are not recognized when I try to change them. I've requested help from the support folks at Leicester.

[Howard Fink]

Re: Find and Replace Places

Thanks Dennis - I only have about 25,000 individuals but have no idea how many places - surely not 40,000, but will work with the support staff on this issue.

Bob

Since what you want to change is Place names I would recommend that you go another route than Find & Replace. Use the Places sidebar and edit the state name there. The advantages of this are that you will see each similar entry before you change it, and hopefully you won't run into a problem because it is a more focused operation. The disadvantage is that you will have to edit each place individually, but there may not be that many of them. Editing one place name here it will change it everywhere it is used in a place field in your file.

By the way, I also recommend spelling out the state names in full; never assume that other people will know what each abbreviation is. Avoid something that might introduce confusion by spelling out everything. You can use Paste for the state name, so you won't even have to retype it each time.

[AE Palmer]

Re: Find and Replace Places

Is there a method to find and replace all 'places' state - e.g., Tennessee - with a shorter version - e.g., TN? I have a mixture of state entries in Places - Tennessee, TN, tenn, TENN, etc., - and would like to standardize them without the laborious one for one replacement.

While the FIND / REPLACE function may work for this problem, there is a much better way of massaging PLACE NAME data. And that is within the PLACE NAME menu.

Simply bring up the list of PLACES and then search for a "problem" name. Once found, double click on the offending place name and correct the "problem" and then press RETURN. This will correct the text whether there is one record or a thousand attached to that specific place name! It also avoids the problem of modifying other parts of a record because it deals ONLY with place names!

HTH.

Also, I concur that using abbreviations is to be discouraged. Reunion is perfectly happy using long place names. True, the text may be "cut off" on the screen, but it will always show up in complete form whenever you print or chart the data. IOW, its "all there" even if it does not show everything.

[Reeds Family]

Re: Find and Replace Places

Thanks a bunch for this advice Arnold, it's just what I was looking for giving me more control over what is being changed system wide.

Yvonne

[theKiwi]

Re: Find and Replace Places

While the FIND / REPLACE function may work for this problem, there is a much better way of massaging PLACE NAME data. And that is within the PLACE NAME menu.

The places list is very useful and should be used to fine tune the end result, but there's nothing like the power of Find and Replace to in one hit change all occurrences of for example

", TN, "

to

", Tennessee, "

or

", Tenn, "

to

", Tennessee, "

(assuming you have USA after that last comma).

Then once the changes that are likely to be found in multiple/many places are all taken care of, then use the Place list to fine tune it down to the County, Township/Parish, City etc level.

Roger