Hello,

I would like to float the idea of a global find and replace function that can search through questions and answers in order to replace text.

This might work like the find and replace in word processors or text editors.

At the moment it is possible do achieve something like it by exporting a survey, then opening the exported file in an editor and doing a find and replace. This can work very well. In some cases it would not be as good - for example when some text of the to-be-replaced instances of text is formatted and some is not.

With many thanks,

Sacha

Hello,

I think your idea is good. You would be able to use a Global Find and Replace feature to change the question/answer text of multiple questions/answers without deactivating the survey (in a running survey a few days ago I had to change some identical help messages which took quite long).

But I'm not sure if this feature is easy to implent or if it would increase the server load. Perhaps you have to check multile database tables and search them for the questions/answers your looking for, then writing the changes made into the tables.

I second this. I know this feature from Globalpark and it is really handy. However, you need to have a good mask for the changes, because sometimes you might want to change a certain word and in some cases not. So there must be the option to exclude parts from the replacement.

This is definitely a useful feature but I consider it quite hard to implement.

One solution I can think of is a simple input field where you can add the search strinbg and also select a survey from a dropdown. Then the script searches the related DB columns (these will be a lot) and presents a list of instances. Then you can have another text where you can input the replace string and select the strings from the list which should be updated.

holch: Can you explain and maybe even post some screen shots how this is done at global parc?

Good that this spam message came in here, I totally had forgotton about this thread.

First of all, the search & replace function in Globalpark is survey based and not totally global. I think it won't be necessary to go over the whole Limesurvey installation. Usually it is some kind of wording the client wants different or was written wrong or a brand name has to be changed, but this is usually the case for one survey and not the whole installation. But of course it has to include all texts visible in the survey like questions, explanations, answers, tooltips, etc.

In global park you have a little search field, then they list in a table all the occurences together with the identification (e.g Question number) and some text around it, so that you can identify. Then you specify which of those occurences you want to change, and which shouldn't be changed.

Then you specify to what it should be changed and there you go...

Sounds like a nice feature. Can you add this as a feature request at our feature tracker . Please describe your idea as detailed as possible and try to outline a suitable solution/implementation as well.