Mass Modifications - Is it Possible?

[allanc]

Our postal standards in Canada are the same as the USA in that we are
supposed to use 2 alpha character abreviations for our provinces.
I see that I have hundreds of Business Contacts where the state
(province) is 'Ontario' instead of 'ON'.
Is there a way from within Outlook or the Business Contact Manager to
replace all of the 'Ontario' with 'ON'?
TIA.

 

[Guest]

Hi Allan

I dont know of any method to mass-modify within outlook, DO notify me if you
find out how to do that...

What I found to be the fastest way, within outlook, was this:

Sort your contacts by state, so that every Ontario is listed below
eachother. Right click on a column, select Customize current view, select the
"Other" tab (called other in my edition, its the one regarding Fonts etc). On
top right mark the "Allow in-line edition" (perhaps called allow cell edition
or something).

You can now edit the state field directly from your view. Only one at the
time, but atleast you don't have to open each contact.

When you only have a couple of houndred I think editing this way will be
faster than testing out export/import/database editing. I did try to export
the contacts filtered by state, opening the .csv in excel, mass-changing
Ontario to ON, and then import back as excel. This works, but you will loose
contact/company linking as well as log information etc.

-Vidar

- Vidar C.

 

[allanc]

Thanks for the tip.
I hope I can use ctrl/c .

In some ways, I miss my old friend ACT!
This type of mass mofication was really easy.

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

Many of ACT's features continue to be missed and they really do kick butt on
BCM. The main reason that folks are leaving ACT in droves for BCM is due to
Sage (newest owner) and how they botched the SQL rewrite. ACT now runs so
slow and buggy. Though it now performs poorly, ACT's feature set still
exceeds BCM in many areas. Another reason users are migrating is for greater
overall Office integration. This scenario is too bad because it lacks
incentive for BCM to evolve its design features.

-THP

Thanks for the tip.
I hope I can use ctrl/c .

In some ways, I miss my old friend ACT!
This type of mass mofication was really easy.

Hi Allan

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[Luther]

Our postal standards in Canada are the same as the USA in that we are
supposed to use 2 alpha character abreviations for our provinces.
I see that I have hundreds of Business Contacts where the state
(province) is 'Ontario' instead of 'ON'.
Is there a way from within Outlook or the Business Contact Manager to
replace all of the 'Ontario' with 'ON'?
TIA.

You can update the db directly if you're familiar with SQL.

The SQL will be something like:
UPDATE ContactPostalAddressTable
SET (PostalAddressState = 'ON')
WHERE PostalAddressState = 'Ontario'

Or you could write an Outlook macro to do something similar, but it'll
be slower.

 

[allanc]

You can update the db directly if you're familiar with SQL.

The SQL will be something like:
UPDATE ContactPostalAddressTable
SET (PostalAddressState = 'ON')
WHERE PostalAddressState = 'Ontario'

Thank you very much.

 

[Judy Gleeson \(MVP Outlook\)]

there's another way...

group by whatever field you need to modify, for example State. To change a
lot of Contacts' State at once, drag them from one state group to another.

In case you don't know how to group: To group, turn on the Advanced
Toolbar. Turn on the Group By Box. Drag the field header you want to group
by, into the Group By Box.

This works for changes of Company name as well. Group by Company field.
Change one manually, then drag the rest into that group.


Judy Gleeson
MVP Outlook
Trainer and Consultant

read my articles here: www.judygleeson.com
Canberra, Australia

how to post questions: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=555375

 

[Peter Marchert]

The Tool "EditContacts" can also do a mass edit to all contacts:

http://www.outlook-stuff.com/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_details/gid,3/Itemid,2/

Peter

 

[Luther]

The Tool "EditContacts" can also do a mass edit to all contacts:

http://www.outlook-stuff.com/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_det...

Peter

--
Infos, workshops & soft-
ware for your Outlook®:www.outlook-stuff.com











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It would be cool if they would do a version that worked on BCM
records.

A post earlier in this thread described trying to do search-and-
replace on an exported CSV file, then reimporting, and losing links to
parent Accounts. Doing the same, but using a BCM file, should allow
you to merge back into the original records, and preserve links.

 

[Peter Marchert]

It would be cool if they would do a version that worked on BCM
records.

Can you tell me please what problems you have to edit BCM records with
this tool?

Peter

 

[Luther]

Can you tell me please what problems you have to edit BCM records with
this tool?

Peter

I haven't tried the tool. If it works with BCM records as well as
Outlook's then I expect it is working through the Outlook object
model(?). If that's the case, then it will probably work for most
scenarios, but may be too slow if a large number of records are
changing.

 

[Peter Marchert]

I haven't tried the tool. If it works with BCM records as well as
Outlook's then I expect it is working through the Outlook object
model(?).

Yes, it works with the OOM.

If that's the case, then it will probably work for most
scenarios, but may be too slow if a large number of records are
changing.

That's relative. 1000 contacts will be changed in approximatly 10
seconds (on my notebook, 1,7 Mhz, 2GB). May be this is not fast enough
for some nervously people but I think it is faster than some ex-/
import actions

Perhaps I can increase the speed with the next version.

Peter