Correcting Names

Names can either be entered formally through the Names Menus or simply typed into Item Cards. The former requires forward planning and some time to organise but is almost bound to be accurate. The second route allows users to get on with it but depends on parsing to bring the Names into the Names Lists.

If you missed the section called Getting the Names Right the lists of Individuals, Organisations and Stored Names may be in less than perfect condition. This will not necessarily appear in the Item Cards or in your Disclosure List but will be evident from the Names look-ups - the indexed lists used to enter and search for Names. This may not matter of you are just knocking out a quick Disclosure List, but will matter if you want to make searches based on Names. This section identifies some common parsing errors and then suggests how best to tidy the names up where it does matter.

Reports on Names

The most powerful tools in the hunt for incorrect and non-conformed names are the reports on Individual, Organisation and Stored Names. These are Additional Reports and so only available to those with a copy of Microsoft Access on their PC.

The reports on Individuals and Stored names can be indexed by either Show Name or Lookup Name. They include a tick box which shows whether they are in use ie if Individuals and Organisations are used in Stored Names and Stored Names used in Items.

A good start can be made by getting rid of unused entries which are not redundant (ie not intended to be used) and by using Find and Replace to dispose of obvious duplicates (ie variants on the same name). With these quick kills out of the way, you can concentrate on corrections requiring more thought.

Common Errors

In addition to obvious mis-spellings and multiple variants on the same name, common causes for error are

Error Sample 1 - Organisation treated as Individual

The section on parsing gives a specific example of an Organisation called Aberdeen Quality Confectioners. None of the words in this Name are standard indicators of an Organisation (such as 'Ltd' or 'Department' would be). If anyone had had the time to plan ahead, the name could have been entered manually as an Organisation in advance of parsing but this was not done.

Parsing will therefore treat the Name as an individual whose first Name is 'Aberdeen', Second name 'Quality' and Third Name 'Confectioners'. The Show Name (ie what appears in the Item Card) is as typed and correct. The LookUp Name, however, indexes as 'Confectioners, Aberdeen Quality'.

Error Sample 2 - Job Description treated as part of Name

A part of a Name which is a Job Description must be typed in square brackets if parsing is to recognise it as a Job Description. If you type John Smith [Managing Director] of Smiths Ltd or just [Managing Director] of Smiths Ltd then parsing will handle each component properly. If, however, the inputter forgets the brackets then the words Managing Director will be treated as components of the Individual Name (and result in a character whose Last name is Director). If the inputter uses commas to separate the Name from the Job (eg John Smith, Managing Director, of Smiths Ltd then the words between commas will be treated as a new Name entirely (because commas are used to separate Names) and three distinct Names will result.

Corrections Methods

Find and Replace one Stored name with another

The easiest way to correct such errors is to create a new Stored Name manually and use the function Find and Replace Names to get rid of the incorrect entries. You might instead create a new (and correct) Stored Name by editing an existing (incorrect) entry. Re parsing will create the new version as a Stored Name which you can then use to Find and Replace in exchange for the old one.

Delete Stored Names and Delete or Edit Components

You cannot edit or delete an Individual or Organisation which exists in any Stored name. You can, however, delete a Stored Name even if it is in use in Item Cards. The main reason why you will want to do this is where, for whatever reason, Find and Replace will not do what you require because you cannot create the new Stored Name. This may happen in two circumstances:

the wrong Stored Name differs from the right one only in that one or more characters is in lower case when it should be in upper case or vice versa - the unique index keys in Openlaw do not distinguish between cases and will see the 'right' version as identical to the 'wrong' one and will not allow the second one

an Individual Name with the correct allocation of components to fields (eg First Name, Second Name etc) creates a Stored name which is identical to a 'wrong' one; for the same reason as above, Openlaw will not allow the creation of the apparent duplicate entry.

This is the message when you try to delete a Stored Name which is in use.

If you say <Yes> the messages you see will depend on whether the Individual and/or Organisation Name are used as part of any other Stored Name. The picture below shows the option to go on to delete the Individual Name. You will see the same, if relevant, in relation to an Organisation name. You will not see any such message in relation to components which are used in another Stored Name

Whether you delete the components will depend on the circumstances. You may want to edit the Individual or Organisation name to match entries which you have already edited in the Item Cards, in which case you will not delete them. If the components have been made redundant by the deletion or editing of the Names in the Item Cards then you might as well accept the offer to delete the Name.

Note that the deletion of a Stored Name sets all Items containing that Name to unparsed (see the section on parsing). You can search for unparsed Items (Parsed = 'No' in the Query Wizard), so deletion of a Stored Name is a way of finding records affected by the deletion of a Stored Name.