Find and Replace in Names of Fileds in a bulky way

[Adool]

Hi. I am using FM 8.5 Advanced. I am looking for a way to help me find and replace field names so that I can change 50 of them to new names the way we do in a word document.

[Lee Smith]

I'm not sure I follow what you are wanting to do. If you mean running a Find and Replace in the [color:blue]Define Fields, this feature doesn't exist. You can locate each [color:blue]Field by typing the name, and then select the name and changing it. This will change Every occurrence of the Field in that TO.

I'm confused however by your reference to [color:blue]Word.

What does finding and replacing in Word have to do with changing [color:blue]Field Names in the [color:blue]Define Field Edit Box?

You can't be looking for multiple occurrences of the same Field Name, because FileMaker will not allow duplicate Field Names in the same TO.

If you are Finding and Replacing single values in Word, it would be about the same as running down the list of Fields in Define Fields Edit Box and changing them one-by-one.

HTH

Lee

[Lee Smith]

You could export your TO as a Merge Document, and change the Names in a Word Processor, and then import the file as a new TO.

Will that Help?

HTH

Lee

[Adool]

Thanks Mr. Lee. I am sure I was not clear. Here is the problem again. I have a file with 20 Fields. Their names are: Quiz_01_T1 & Quiz_02_T1, .... I copied the fields into a new file. Now I want to change all these field names to: Prt_01_T1 & Prt_02_T1, ... al in a quick way. Is there a solution for that.

[Lee Smith]

You can do this using Grep Patterns and Regulare Expressions (RegEx) in a Word Processor such as TextWrangler, BBEdit on the Mac, and NotPad for Windows.

I would export the file as a Merge Document (one blank record). Replace the old with the new (as a pattern [color:blue]Quiz_ with [color:blue]Prt_, and then save it.

Import it as a New TO if you want in an existing file, or Open it in FileMaker Application as a File (You need to change the default from [color:blue]FileMaker to [color:blue]Merge in the Open Dialog Box .

[comment]

A better way would be NOT to do this at all, and work on a better data structure instead. I believe it's a safe bet that those fields should be records in a related table.

[Adool]

You are right. I did that. It is faster. Thanks.