Find and Replace

[LindaCK]

I've made a copy of my file before attempting this: In 'advanced find' I found everyone who has DEC in the date of death field. This is an old legacy way I had to indicate that someone was deceased when I had no date. I want to change them to "?" (so as not to confuse other people viewing my data).

I got 362 hits and marked them (perfect...). Now I go to 'Find and Replace'. Death is an event field, so I have no choice but to check "all fields'. Neither the 'whole words' nor 'whole fields' options result in any changes. Any ideas?

[theKiwi]

I did something like this using a List - create a List of everyone who has DEC in the death date field.

Make sure you have Death Date visible as one of the columns in the report

Now you can change them all from the same screen, taking only a few seconds each to click in the field, highlight the DEC and type (or patse) a ?

It won't take long to do this for 362 entries - probably less time than waiting for any other answers here ;-)

Roger

[LindaCK]

Thanks, Roger! I hadn't tried that.

[LindaCK]

Very time-consuming. Any other suggestions? Explanation as to why this doesn't work? Thanks-

[David Walton]

Quicker but not without issues:
Do a familyfile backup.
Export your Reunion Family File - No people + No Sources + No media and call it, say, Preferences i.e. an empty prefs only file.
Export your Reunion Family File - to a ged inc. All people + Sources + Media. Rename it e.g. Test.ged
Use a text editor with Test.ged loaded e.g. the free version of BBEdit - find DEC and replace with ? in the relevant fields. Consider a regular expression to do that.
Double click your Preferences file and import the ged.
Say 5 minutes to complete
I have no idea of the data in your death date fields so a RegEx expression, Find = 1 DATE (.+)DEC(.+) for a Replace = 1 DATE \1?\2
Tick boxes Case sensitive - Grep - Show matches

CONS - the import will reset media to preferred, rebuild thumbnails and take time to complete...lots of time...

Dave

[LindaCK]

Thanks Dave- very much appreciate the reply! I'll test this out. Interested to see what the media reset to preferred implication is - don't want to mess up which images I have set to preferred. Hopefully there are more options to find and replace in the future, or perhaps a check box to indicate which people are deceased.

[theKiwi]

Thanks Dave- very much appreciate the reply! I'll test this out. Interested to see what the media reset to preferred implication is - don't want to mess up which images I have set to preferred. Hopefully there are more options to find and replace in the future, or perhaps a check box to indicate which people are deceased.

I would just add that in the time this thread has been running, you could have done them manually one at a time, and certainly done them by the method I outlined in way less time. If it was 3,600, maybe not...

And I don't know what Default Media reset means either, but it surely is NOT worth finding out.

Roger

[LindaCK]

Yes, Roger! I'm always seeking to learn and understand the capabilties of the software - there are usually multiple ways of doing everything. Thanks for to everyone for your help.

[David Walton]

Yes, Roger! I'm always seeking to learn and understand the capabilties of the software - there are usually multiple ways of doing everything. Thanks for to everyone for your help.

In that spirit - there are tools available with MacOS that tend to be forgotten. You can build a macro to do the edits set up in a loop using Automator and the familyfile.

Dave

[LindaCK]

Ah, great suggestion!

[DrJJWMac]

Some thoughts not tested ...

* Using Find + Replace: Use How - Any match + Case sensitive rather than whole words or whole fields (e.g. to match DEC not Dec or dec or ...)
* Rather than using Find + Replace: Use Change->Set Flags to set a flag "UNKNOWN DoD" (date of death) on marked records, and clean up DEC later as need arises

Otherwise, it would be great when Advanced Find would include options to Replace what is found. Perhaps a Feature Request is in order in this regard.