I have a file in which people can store sentences, phrases and paragraphs. I would like to have a system in which they can select a stored paragraph with "xx" and "yy" instead of first name and his/her and have it change, for example, "xx" for first name; "yy" for "his/her" and so on then paste the updated paragraph into another field.

I cannot remember how you make FileMaker search word by word within a text block and replace when it finds and then continues with he search, but I have seen this done.

Any ideas?

You will want to use nested substitute functions. Make a calculated field cResultText with the formula:

Substitute(Substitute(OriginalTextField,

"xx",FirstName),

"yy",HisHer)

...where FirstName is a field, HisHer is a field, etc. You can nest the substitute functions as deep as necessary for as many fields that you want to insert. But, you may be better off using merge fields if you just want to print these records out as form letters. Have a look at merge fields in the manual.