Global Searches in PAF
I recently figured out a new trick that can be used in the PAF 5.2 program. My mother has a friend who needed to delete the word "submitted" in about 1600 of her names so that she could run them all through TempleReady again. My mother used the Global Search tool to delete all 1600 "submitteds" and then told me how to do it.
1. Click on "Tools"
2. Go to "Global Search and Replace"
3. You then decide which area you would like to search in, the Places, Dates, Names, etc.
4. Put the word you're searching for and then what you would like to replace it with.
For example, I just merged 2000 names into my file from somebody else and this person likes to abbreviate states, such as OH instead of Ohio. I don't like to abbreviate states, so I went to Global Search and clicked on Places and searched for "OH" and replaced with "Ohio." It then produced a report that showed me every change that was made; 250 places were changed to match my preference.
I also have a city in my file named Marlborough. Unfortunately when I've added others' information to my file they spell it like the well-known cigarette, Marlboro. I easily just fixed all of those mistakes by doing this Global Search and now they are all spelled correctly. This is a great tool to utilize and hopefully others have figured it out much sooner than I have.