Making Changes to Subject Data

There are several ways to make changes to the subject data after import. This article will touch on many of the different methods, including:

• Manual editing

• Importing a secondary text file

• Adding a field

• Populating a field

• Changing the case of the data

Manual Editing

At any time, the data in a given field may be edited in Details Mode by selecting the desired field and double-clicking to make changes.

Importing a secondary text file

Importing a secondary text file follows the same process as the initial text import with a few variations.

The user must prepare a new CSV that contains the unique subject Field in addition to the desired data. Then in Details mode, select File> Import text file and follow the onscreen prompts to map the data to the appropriate columns.

At the bottom of the import file detail screen is the Details for elements that already exist area. Carefully select one of the following options:

• Keep existing

  • incoming data will be ignored however any new subjects will be added

• Replace all  

  • incoming data will replace all existing data even if the incoming data is blank

• Replace if Blank  

  • incoming data will replace existing data only if the existing data is blank

• Update with non-blank

  • existing data will be replaced by incoming data only if the incoming data is not blank

Adding a field

If, when making changes to subject data, a new field is needed it can be added in one of three ways.

• ‘on-the-fly’ as the text file is being imported

• Adding the new field to the current job via Details Mode> Edit> Fields…

• Adding the new field to the Timestone Administrator (tsAdmin)

Populating a field

The populate field option allows the user to add data to a specific subject field automatically. The data can be randomly generated or fixed text and can be applied to all subjects, a selected folder or a selection of records.

To use populate field:

1. Open the desired job in Details Mode

2. Optionally sort the data - the fields will populate in the sorted order.

3. Select Edit> Populate Field

4. Select the field to be populated and the parameters of the data to populate it with.

5. Select the folder(s) or subjects as needed

6. Click OK To populate the fields with the data

TIP

Populate field is great for generating unique subject data like an ID number when none was provided or for online gallery passwords.

Changing the Case of the data

There may be occasions when the user wishes to change the case of the data in one or more fields. For example, the data in the Firstname and Lastname fields may be in upper case and yet the output requires the data to be in “name” case where only the first letter is capitalized.

To change the Case of a field, select Details Mode> Edit> Change field case…

Select the desired field from the dropdown, then select whether to change the case to:

• All upper case, eg SMITH

• All lower case, eg smith

• Name case where only the first letter is capitalized, eg Smith

Handling special names

Changing the case of data is most commonly used with subject name data. With this in mind, the user must understand how some of the names are handled when changing from upper or lower case to name case.

• Mc as in McDonald, McKenzie - When the software encounters Mc as the first two letters of a name, it will always capitalize the third letter.

• Mac as in Mackie, Macey - Names beginning with Mac cannot be treated the same way as Mc since there are too many situations where the fourth letter should not be capitalized, such as Mackie, Macy.

• Hyphenated names and names with apostrophes as in Smith-Kline and O'Reilly - The software will always capitalize the first letter after a non-alphabetic character.

• Names with spaces as in Van Der Haar and Van Essen - The first letter after a space will always be capitalized.