Bulk Edit Places

[Paul Blake]

I want to remove all reference to United Kingdom from my place names as it's a reference to a political union, not a country and I've decided to just stick to countries. This means I want to replace all text strings of ", United Kingdom" with a blank. It doesn't look like that's actually possible. Is that correct?

I'm a little nervous fiddling with the Find/Replace function in Reunion as there's no Find to first test things. I did however back everything up then tried to do the above, but Reunion came back with zero matches (I used a While Words Only search). Perhaps it doesn't understand blank replacements as there are thousands of ", United Kingdom" in place names.

Can this type of bulk editing be done? It would be useful anywhere I want to make things consistent or fix known spelling mistakes. Doing them one by one is incredibly time consuming. It is also very risky attempting a bulk replace when their's no Find first, as you may inadvertently change a text string that's actually is correct in certain circumstances; so you really need to check what will be changed before letting it do its thing!

It would also be useful if the export/import facility would allow me to export places data then reimport them. I presume each place has its own unique record ID that could be used as the key. That doesn't seem possible either as you can't export places!

[Blaise A. Darveaux]

If you have a particular place name that has been used multiple times for various events for various people, you can edit that place name only once to change them all. To do this, find the place name you want to edit in the Places list on the right hand column (when places are displayed.) Double click on the place name and it will open in a new window. Edit the place name to what you want it to be, then click change. It will change all occurrences of that place name throughout the family file. (You can also edit the place name right in the list, without editing it in a seperate window.)

Now if you have multiple different place names that contain "United Kingdom", you MAY have to edit those one-by-one in the right hand places list. I don't know if there is a way to bulk edit multiple place names in the places list.

[theKiwi]

Click and hold on the arrow in the Find item in the side bar and choose Find and Replace

Set it like this

image.png

That should do what you want?

Do it on a copy of your file to make sure it does what you expect, and doesn't do what you don't expect.

Roger

[Paul Blake]

Yes, thanks I'd tried that and it doesn't work. I've included some screenshots below.

I have 807 places I want to update and the Replace process does not change any of them! Any thoughts? Is there something obvious I've missed?





Screenshot 2025-01-15 at 6.47.03 pm.png
Screenshot 2025-01-15 at 6.52.01 pm.png

[Gregg]

Try selecting “Any match” rather than “Whole words only.”

[theKiwi]

Try selecting “Any match” rather than “Whole words only.”

Thanks Gregg

I didn't try my suggestion since I've never used ", United Kingdom" in any of my places ever for the reason Paul Blake outlined in his post.

Roger

[Paul Blake]

"Any match" did the trick. Thanks!
Also discovered some typos of "United Kingdom" in the process, and eliminated them too. Thanks for your help!!!