I need to edit a gedcom file (.ged) and have been told any text editor can do it. I need to input a .ged file, do two “find and replace all” and output a modified .ged file. Secifically i need to replace all occurrences of C’ and c’ with Č and č respectively. . Would someone please tell me if I can use LibreOffice to do this and, if so, provide me with very simple instructions to do this?
RonZ
LibreOffice has no text editor. Use a text editor - like notepad, gedit, whatever is there on your system.
This article might be of some help to you.
five programs to edit GEDCOMs
I cannot vouch for any of the programs listed, but you might start with GEDKeeper, as it seems tailored to the task. Let us know what works for you.
I would not use LO Writer for this. Writer is intended to work on formatted files and provides a lot of powerful tools to manage the requirements for sophisticated layout.
On the contrary, A GEDCOM file is plain text with some syntax rules structuring “records” (it looks somewhat like old COBOL DATA DIVISION description with numeric level indicators.
A text editor would be better fit to the task as there are much fewer risks to corrupt the structure by implicit (= not user-caused) editing actions. It may even be possible to find editors with GEDCOM consistency checking (this is not built-in in my favourite Linux text editor KWrite, but it should be possible to create manually such a checker).
A text editor does not
Practically all text editors nowadays have powerfull search and replace features.
Hello,
I do not know how to do these steps. PLEASE explain with simple instructions for the technology challenged.
Ron
If you are referring to the dot points in @ajlittoz answer, you don’t want or need to do those things. Short answer is as already said by @mikekaganski don’t use LibreOffice for this task; instead use a simple text editor. You haven’t specified your operating system, but whatever you are using will have a text editor of some kind.