how to edit out illegal characters in columns in large tables (>1000 files)

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06-15-2017 11:51 AM
LarryPearson
New Contributor

I'm attempting to join two tables.  

The join validation report indicates several fields with illegal characters.  I'm editing a large county file with over 1000 parcels.  How to remove characters such as "-" or "/" for a whole column of data without doing it manually?

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12 Replies
mfcallahan
Occasional Contributor II

I prefer the whitelist approach when cleaning up file names, ID columns, etc.  Blacklisting chars you don't want like "$%&*@!" etc still would allow things like æ Ñ █ ╬ all of which are valid ascii characters, but probably not charterers you'd want in a primary key or filename.

DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

Of course, we are all missing the line in the title where the OP say '1000 files'  ... which pretty much makes our field calculator expression suggestions less than satisfactory.  In such cases, it is best to have the person that put them in, in the first place, remove them

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TedKowal
Occasional Contributor III
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