Using Search and Replace might help you in this situation. Read the CAUTION below.
Find where: Lists-Location Find what: Sumter Replacement text: Sumter Find whole word only Anywhere in the field. Replace only found text with replacement text The above is the *safe* way to do this. (make a backup first anyway) If you accidentally step to fast, or 'replace all', nothing is changed. Each instance of 'Sumter' in your Locations will be found and you can edit the name by pasting in the name of your choice in the Replacement box. Using "Replace only found text with replacement text" will only replace that one word - so be aware of what is going on. This is best to replace "Sumter" with "Sumter Co." If you are comfortable with using the Search and Replace, then "Replace the entire field with replacement text" which will replace ANY location with the word "Sumter" anywhere in the field with the text " USA, Georgia, Sumter Co." (or text of your choice). Find where: Lists-Location Find what: Sumter Replacement text: USA, Georgia, Sumter Co. < location text of your choice Find whole word only Anywhere in the field. Replace the entire field with replacement text And STEP through the list taking care to replace, or skip, each entry. Do NOT use "Replace all" CAUTION - you can make a big mess of you file in a hurry. BACKUP before. You might want to experiment on a practice file if you haven't previously used Search and Replace. This will only change the names in the Lists-Location - you should do the same in Lists-Locations Short as well. There are other ways of approaching this as well where you could make incremental changes - say change "Georgia, Sumter" to "Georgia, Sumter County". Or, Find what: ", Sumter" to narrow the initial finds. Bob A -----Original Message----- From: magnoliasouth [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2014 11:09 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [LegacyUG] Location merging I have a horrible list of locations. I understand how to combine locations, but that's not working for me. It involves way too much scrolling up and down and all around. Also, the "find" at the top isn't finding anything. It only looks for the first word which doesn't help me. What I need to do is do a search for one word and get a list of all locations that have that word in its various forms. For example: Let's say I want to search for Sumter. I want to get all of the results like this: Georgia, Sumter Georgia, Sumter County Georgia, Sumter Co. GA, Sumter GA, Sumter County USA, GA, Sumter USA, GA Sumter County USA, Ga. Sumter County United States, Georgia, Sumter Sumter You see the problem and I use this one because it's my worst nightmare. Sumter is all over the place and some location entries don't even have anything else in them. Now as you can see, when I have 300 locations and they're sorted they are at the top the middle the end and so on. Scrolling take WAY too long and that's just not an option. I'd rather not bother if I have to do it that way. How can I fix this? Please, tell me there is an easy way? Many thanks. :) Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
