dorisw 0 Report post Posted March 30, 2019 Is there a way to target the Name field to remove the asterisk I have attached to the first name of every immigrant in my database? It is interfering with the matching algorithms at Ancestry, MyHeritage, etc. Or is there some other way to accomplish this? Thank you. Doris Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
svhous 0 Report post Posted March 30, 2019 I used a flag and color, which seems to work OK. Do you have an immigrant flag? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dorisw 0 Report post Posted March 30, 2019 Thanks, svhous. I have done that, but I'm trying to remove an asterisk from the names of these people. TMGU doesn't seem to have that feature, unless I'm missing something. Doris Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
John Cardinal 0 Report post Posted April 26, 2019 Doris, Do you still need help with this? I don't check the Forum every day, and without that habit, I sometimes skip multiple weeks. Yes, you can remove a trailing "*" from a name part such as the given name. You use Change Name Parts to do it. Changing a "*" is a little more difficult than changing other characters because "*" has a special meaning in the pattern-based replace operation, and that's what you need to use. You have to "escape" the "*" character so that it does not have its special meaning. I changed one person in a TMG project to have a trailing "*" in the given name of her primary name. She had a couple non-primary names that were using the same given name, for a total of three names that needed fixing. Here is the TMG Utility log that shows the Change Name Part rules and the resulting changes: TMG Utility v7.3.7 Copyright (C) 1999-2016 by John Cardinal. All Rights Reserved. Do not redistribute. Function=Change Name Parts Project=test09 Started at 16:57:29 Options: Match case: False Show All Name Fields: False Flag Filter: <No Filter> Rules: If GivenName ends with "*" Change GivenName replace pattern "\*$" with "" ID, Old Name, New Name #3, 'Mary* Millet', 'Mary Millet' #3, 'Mrs. Mary* Bezanson (Millet)', 'Mrs. Mary Bezanson (Millet)' #3, 'Mrs. Mary* Vaughan (Millet)', 'Mrs. Mary Vaughan (Millet)' Finished at 16:57:32 Elapsed Time=3 seconds People=24,849 Names read=33,072 If GivenName ends with "*" = 3 Names changed=3 If you have any questions, contact me. It's probably best to contact me via email... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dorisw 0 Report post Posted April 27, 2019 Thank you, John, as always! This worked like a charm and saved me gobs of time and probably lots of oversights. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites