Renaming Living People as ';Living Person'

rfj1001 · Post by **rfj1001** » 24 Jan 2011 16:30

With some great help from tatewise I've now got a gedcom file where all events, etc. for people who are flagged as Living has been deleted.

I need now to rename each of those 300+ people 'Living Person'.

Is there a way I can globally change a name in FH, or alternatively globally add a birth date of, say, 1 Jan 2011 to each person in the FH file and then use ResPrivata to rename the people and strip the birth event out

The important thing is I'm left with a gedcom file.

Can anyone help.

Thanks

Robin

ID:4963

Post by **tatewise** » 24 Jan 2011 17:21

Deleting the NAME of every Living individual is easy, but replacing is more difficult.

Create an Individual Query that lists the %INDI.NAME[1]% of everyone who has %INDI._FLGS.__LIVING% set.
In the Results, select the entire Name Column, then press Delete key, and OK the warning.

PeterR · Post by **PeterR** » 24 Jan 2011 18:41

Generally an Individual whose Name has been deleted will have an entry in the GEDCOM file which starts as follows:
0 @nnn@ INDI
1 SEX F

Thus if the above holds true it would be possible to use a multi-line text editor to search for:
@ INDI
1 SEX

and replace with:
@ INDI
1 NAME Living Person//
1 SEX

But this would also add a Name to any other Individual who did not have a Name to start with.

Post by **tatewise** » 24 Jan 2011 21:26

With regard to the deleting NAME tags Query above, include extra Columns for %INDI.NAME[2]%, and %INDI.NAME[3]%, et al, in case there are alternate names.

PeterR is correct, the GEDCOM will then contain:
0 @Inn@ INDI
1 SEX F
for every individual with no name.

The easiest way to insert the Living Person names is to use Microsoft Office Word or maybe Works.

Open the GEDCOM file using Word and it will ask you to select the encoding, so select the Windows (Default) and OK.
Use the Replace command and enter:
Find What: @ INDI^p1 SEX
Replace with: @ INDI^p1 NAME Living Person //^p1 SEX
and click Replace All button, and Close button.
Finally Save the GEDCOM and accept the warning about plain text format.

An alternative if you don't have Word is to use PSPad in Hex edit mode.
See http://www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id ... pad_editor
Open the GEDCOM file using PSPad and use View > Hex Edit mode.
Use Search > Replace and enter:
Find: 4020494E44490D0A3120534558
Replace: 4020494E44490D0A31204E414D45204C696E6720506572736F6E202F2F0D0A3120534558
(These represent the same characters as for Word but in ASCII Hex coding).
Ensure As Text are not ticked and click OK.
Save the GEDCOM file.

PeterR · Post by **PeterR** » 24 Jan 2011 23:10

Please see also the following thread in FHUG for a much easier way of using PSPad for a block find and replace:
http://www.fhug.org.uk/cgi-bin/index.cg ... y&num=4820

Post by **tatewise** » 25 Jan 2011 00:34

Unfortunately, phreplace does not work on Windows Vista as documented on the developers website, and probably explains why I cannot get it to work on Windows 7.

Unless anyone knows a workaround.

rfj1001 · Post by **rfj1001** » 25 Jan 2011 11:21

Thanks tatewise and PeterR - I've got to where I want to be, so many thanks. Thought I'd give a bit of feedback in terms of loose ends.

- It doesn't seem essential to add additional field names in the query to pick up multiple name instances. After I deleted all the names I was left with a much smaller list; I deleted that (which I assume were second occurences) and left with another smaller list, etc.
- I did the search and replace in Word; it wouldn't allow me to save to *.ged extension so it was a simple question of saving as a txt file and renaming.
- The S&R was particularly successful - it identified over 350 correctly and left me with just six to look at. Two of those were people who never had any names; four required manual change.
- For info I seem to have PSPad working on a Win7x64 PC although I haven't got the hang of it yet or installing the plug in to handle multiple lines. A task for another day

Thanks guys

Post by **tatewise** » 25 Jan 2011 15:04

I have found the workaround for installing phRepalce for PSPad on Windows 7 / Vista in the PSPad Forum at:
http://forum.pspad.com/read.php?2,34061

The details are now in the Knowledge Base at:
http://www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/wiki/doku.p ... pad_editor

Post by **tatewise** » 07 Feb 2011 13:55

For a full description of these and related techniques see the Knowledge Base entry Delete Data For Living People at:

http://www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id ... ing_people

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