Computer Assisted Reporting with TextPipe Pro

"Because we often get data from a number of different sources, cleaning and standardizing can be a mess. Using TextPipe filters and DataPipe, I've cleaned numerous databases with ease.

For example, I have a database of court filings with one field called Caption with defendants and plaintiffs in it. I wanted two fields and I needed to clean some of the records because they began with phrases like "In the marriage of xxxx and xxxxxx" or "In the matter of xxxx v. xxxx". I used several filters to split the field into two, then used the search and replace to change all of the phrases to blanks and another filter to remove the extra spaces."

Ron Nixon, www.IRE.org