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More => Old Versions => Media Center 12 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: Skeezix on July 19, 2007, 08:37:37 am

Title: Fast Way to Search/Replace in One Field of Many Records??
Post by: Skeezix on July 19, 2007, 08:37:37 am

My view consists of Artist, Album, Preference. Many records have asterisks in their Preference fields (old means of rating). Now that I have a column in my view for Rating, I would like to get rid of the asterisks in the Preference column. What would be a quick way to do this?

Title: Re: Fast Way to Search/Replace in One Field of Many Records??
Post by: JimH on July 19, 2007, 09:56:46 am

Search for *** (for example).

Select all the tracks resulting from the search (check carefully to be sure you've got what you want).

Alt-Enter to get properties.  Change the field you want to whatever you want.

Title: Re: Fast Way to Search/Replace in One Field of Many Records??
Post by: hit_ny on July 19, 2007, 09:59:19 am

- In your Audio View enter preference=* into the search box.
this will list all files that have at least one * in their [Preference] field.

- You can also customise the bottom files view, to include the [Preferences] field, this way you can be sure you got the right files. Right click on a header, customise current view and add the preferences field.

- Single Click the preferences field in the bottom view of the top most file.
- Select all files or Ctrl+a
- F2, to edit, will allow the preferences field previously clicked, to be edited.
- Hit backspace to blank it out, then hit Enter.

Watch all the Prefernces fields for your selected files get reset.

Title: Re: Fast Way to Search/Replace in One Field of Many Records??
Post by: Skeezix on July 20, 2007, 12:53:33 pm

Specifically, I want to remove any and all asterisks in the Preference field of the selected records while leaving the remaining contents of the Preference field intact.

Generally, I want to search for <any character> in the <whatever> field of the selected records (rows) and replace it with <some other character>.

Can this be done easily or does one need to do a little programming?

Title: Re: Fast Way to Search/Replace in One Field of Many Records??
Post by: hit_ny on July 20, 2007, 01:05:53 pm

use the search expression i mentioned above to get a list of files that you want to modify.

- select all of them
- right click->Library Tools->Find & Replace
- click 'Select none' to reset all fields in the Find & Replace dialog
- scroll down the list to Preferences and check it only.
- in the Find what box enter what you are looking for, in this case,  *
- in the Replace box, leave empty, this will substitute nothing for each "*"

hit OK.

Review, easier if you have the prefernces field in the view scheme handy, if anything is amiss...ctrl +z to undo

repeat above till done.

Title: Re: Fast Way to Search/Replace in One Field of Many Records??
Post by: Skeezix on July 20, 2007, 09:50:29 pm

Great!  :)

For $40, MC12 sure packs a lot of features!

In the Search field, is there a way to enter non-printing characters (the ones that display as squares)?

Thanks again for your help. I'm slowly getting the hang of how the program works.

Title: Re: Fast Way to Search/Replace in One Field of Many Records??
Post by: hit_ny on July 21, 2007, 02:01:54 am

possibly, just copy+paste it there.