Find and replace multiple notes

Q & A - getting started with Tinderbox
1

Hi.

I am able to search multiple notes for a note that contains a specific character. Looking at the forum related to replacement, it seems that I cannot replace the searched characters at once.

If I want to replace characters in multiple notes, do I have to change them manually one by one?

2

The forum posts are out of date; search and replace has been available in Tinderbox for some time.

  1. Use Find in the view pane to locate the notes whose text you want to change.
  2. Press [Return] twice; the Find popover will list all notes with the text or pattern.
  3. At the bottom of this popover, you’ll find a text field for the replacement text
  4. Press Apply
3

At the bottom of this popover, you’ll find a text field for the replacement text

I don’t know where it is.
image

4

Here’s what I see in Tinderbox 8.9:

temp
temp642Ă—837 39.1 KB

5

The “Replace in Text With” field disappears when you tear off the find pop-up.

Before tearing off
image

Same dialogue after tearing off

image

Not sure whether this is a feature. I can imagine wanting to make replacements also after the tear off.

6

Good point. I think the initial concern was that a persistent window with a global effect (and a big Apply button) might be a hazard, and that while browsing a list of search results is a common extended activity, search-and-replace tends to be a single task.

But consistency does argue for the opposite design.

7

As a rule it would be good to keep the interface the same whether pop-up or torn off… a user will understand if he/she hit the wrong button but will likely be confused if options appear and disappear.

At the risk of hijacking this thread I’m wondering why the find dialogue offers the options of searching through $Name, $Text and user attributes but not the other attributes ? I can imagine wanting to search $MyString or $Width or other system attribute assignments. Is this because some attributes cannot be edited ?

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8

With more than 500 system attributes, it’s hard to make a compact interface to select them.

And in agents we already have a great interface for search, with nice fringe benefits.

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9

Understand the choices you face and the alternatives via Agents. I agree with the listing problem which is not practical with so many attributes.

On the other hand it could be based on search only interface e.g. the user types in the name or first few letters like is the case for the QuickStamp. The advantage of using Find is that it is faster for the user to run simple ad-hoc search and replace operations with respect to Agents.

10

I want to replace 1,092 instances of “6/” with “6_” in the $Name of my notes but nothing happens when I click APPLY. Is the forward-slash in the text I want to find the problem or is it something else?

11

Find lets you replace the text, but not the name. So, we’ll have to find another way.

Fortunately, that’s pretty easy. Let’s make a new stamp, named Six, with this action:

$Name=$Name.replace("6/","6_")

Test this stamp on one or two selected notes, to be sure it does what you expect! Then, select all your notes — or all the notes you want to revise — and apply the stamp.

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