Cleaning up Places names

[BLH]

I have well over 6000+ Places of which I am always cleaning up. One of the problems is occasionally there are names with two spaces after the comma before the next name. Is there anyway to create a subsetted list with names that have two spaces or more after a comma?

"Pleasanton, Alameda, California"

-BLH

[John Hill]

Re: Cleaning up Places names

I have well over 6000+ Places of which I am always cleaning up. One of the problems is occasionally there are names with two spaces after the comma before the next name. Is there anyway to create a subsetted list with names that have two spaces or more after a comma?

"Pleasanton, Alameda, California"

-BLH

I'm a mite confused - are you looking for Names or names of Places?

Whichever, you should be able to open the appropriate sidebar and put ,<sp><sp> in the search field at the top. I did this and found some irregularities but oddly enough they were of the form <sp>, so I can't guarantee the result.

[Bob White]

Re: Cleaning up Places names

I also am confused. Your example is grammatically correct. Based on your example, it appears that you are counting the space after Pleasanton plus the space after Alameda as your two spaces.

If I am guessing that correctly, you are good as is and can spend your time on research.

[Tony Knight]

Re: Cleaning up Places names

I also am confused. Your example is grammatically correct. Based on your example, it appears that you are counting the space after Pleasanton plus the space after Alameda as your two spaces.

If I am guessing that correctly, you are good as is and can spend your time on research.

With over 26000 places I have come across this from time to time, along with a space before a comma and no commas at all. I simply deal with them as I encounter them.
I also have double spacing between forenames in some instances.

[BLH]

Re: Cleaning up Places names

I am talking about more than one blank space after a comma
I thought I put multiple spaces after each of those commas in my example.
If I have Places selected on the left side and if I typed "Pleasanton, Alameda" I would get all locations that have "Pleasanton, Alameda" in the name, regardless of the number of spaces between the comma and the county name. What I am after is if there is a way to bring up all the Place names that have two or more spaces after a comma.

"Pleasanton, Alameda, CA, USA"

It isn't a big deal, I just like the idea of cleaning up the names. I currently do it as I run across them but cleaning them all up in one fell swoop would be more satisfactory!

Thanks - BLH

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Cleaning up Places names

I am talking about more than one blank space after a comma
I thought I put multiple spaces after each of those commas in my example.

The spaces you typed are being removed here by the Bulletin Board Software (as are the spaces I've typed). This is usually helpful, here, not so much.

Can't you just do a find and replace, looking for " " (two spaces) and replacing with " " (one space) in Places?

Click "Find" in the Navbar (left side of screen)
Click the "Find and Replace..." button on the resulting screen
Fill in the form in the window that opens:
Replace all occurrences of: (put two spaces here)
With: (put one space here)
Who: All people
Where: Places
How: Any match
Click the "Replace..." button

You can repeat that until all the spaces are gone. I suppose it would be wise to make a backup before you do this, just in case something goes horribly wrong.

[BLH]

Re: Cleaning up Places names

Thats the ticket. The Find and Replace solved my problem!

Thank You

-BLH

[Bob White]

Re: Cleaning up Places names

Thank you, Dennis. I do exactly that with two newsletters that I proofread each month -- as my first step. The good old "a Mac is not a typewriter" deal. I should have thought of that.