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AKS Text Replacer Giveaway
$40
EXPIRED

Giveaway of the day — AKS Text Replacer

AKS Text Replacer is a powerful software tool designed to automate the process of search and replace, making it easy and controllable.
$40 EXPIRED
User rating: 231 44 comments

AKS Text Replacer was available as a giveaway on March 6, 2011!

Today Giveaway of the Day
$49.00
free today
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AKS Text Replacer is a powerful software tool designed to automate the process of search and replace, making it easy and controllable.

AKS Text Replacer will provide full control over search and replace process. It will allow defining various search conditions and will ask for confirmation before replace. It is not another silent replace utility; this software will show the text as it is and as it will be after replacement.

System Requirements:

Windows XP/ Vista/ 7

Publisher:

AKS-Labs

Homepage:

http://www.text-replacer.com/

File Size:

2.43 MB

Price:

$40

GIVEAWAY download basket

Developed by Microsoft
Create PDF documents from printable files.
Developed by ES-Computing
Generate, edit, convert and protect PDF files.

Comments on AKS Text Replacer

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#44

This is not a text editor but a powerful batch text replacer.

Reply   |   Comment by Jason  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#43

@Ozawa (#1)
As I understood your question, you need no spaces at all. As Doug said (#4), Find and replace in MS Word should do the work: [ FIND (Key in 1 space) and REPLACE(keep empty, don't key anything), then REPLACE ALL ].

...
If you have multiple spaces between words and you need to make it one space only between words: [ FIND (Key in 2 spaces) and REPLACE (Key in 1 space) then REPLACE ALL ]. You have to repeat this several time until all replacements are done

Reply   |   Comment by Hesham  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)
#42

@1, if you should happen to come back to look for answers to your question, would recommend you use any text replace program, such as, for example, BKReplace, and replace a double-space with a single space.

Won't that do the trick? Passing this GOTD only because BKReplace is pure wonder, made millions of changes in more than 422,000 pages today, what a blessing... although @40 Freddie Cougar put a mighty tempting tidbit out there.

All of the info gained and gleaned at GOTD from the visitors is an education in itself. Thanks to GOTD for the forum and software.

Reply   |   Comment by Linda  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)
#41

@30 Paladin

That was exactly my first reaction when I saw today's GAOTD. Grep, SED and AWK form a formidable set of tools (with AWK having a rather steep learning curve for some people because it mainly looks like a madman's scribllings when reading a AWK-program - which is something one might show off with from time to time ;-). The thing I would add is that you can "pipe" the outcome of one of these to another one - if I remember correctly, that is - allowing you to do some very powerfull editing in batchmode (among lots of other things). I loved it then (years ago) and wrote some really nifty programs using AWK. If I were still into programming I would advize oncoming programmers to learn these tools. It is indeed a pity that they only work on .txt-files and that no one ever thought about writing replacements for other formats - i.e. none that I know of.
Thanks for reminding us, Paladin.

Greetz to all.
Pat.

Reply   |   Comment by Patrick  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)
#40

Some Features:

Search and Replace across files, Insert or Delete text
Fast searching, even on large files.
Simple to use interface
Flexible search parameters
Text Extractor - rip text into a new file
Post-process extracted text - sort, remove duplicate lines, remove whitespace
Search and replace using Regular Expressions. Create sophisticated searches.
Regular Expression test tool
Regular Expression library - Save your searches.
Create backup files
Fully Unicode Compatible - Search ANSI, UTF-8, UTF-16, etc
Highlighted search results
Export Results
Preview Replace Function
Copy found files to new location
Batch Find and Replace

That's right. The software is:
http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/content/textcrawler

Reply   |   Comment by Freddie Cougar  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#39

I forgot to mention, avast! doesn't seem to like this program. It keeps on asking me if I want to launch it in sandbox mode.

Reply   |   Comment by GMMan, A+ Certified Tech (and Game Hacker)  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#38

This could be useful for people who need to replace text in files that have consistent formats. Currently, I use Notepad++ to do replacements. An advantage of Notepad++ is the "undo" button. Although this program has the option to backup the original files, there's nothing better than being able to do replacement and small fixes and seeing that change instantly to know if the operation was done correctly.

I currently don't have any files that I need to batch replace text in, but when I do I'll give this thing a good test.

Unix admin joke: There's nothing that can't be done with awk, sed, and grep.

Reply   |   Comment by GMMan, A+ Certified Tech (and Game Hacker)  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#37

AKS Text Replacer has the ability to save your replace parameters to a *.bat file so that common replacement tasks can be reused. I often save web pages as text files, but they always need to be cleaned up. I almost never am interested in pretty pictures or formatting, all I want to save is the information.

With this app I can automate my usual cleanup tasks and save a lot of time.

I also use Proxomitron to insert the source URL and the current date right after the .

Reply   |   Comment by Larry  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#36

Another excellent alternative I have used for years to batch replace across hundreds of HTML files using regular expressions is 'ReplaceText', formerly known as 'BKReplaceEm':

http://www.ecobyte.com/replacetext/

Highly recommended!

Reply   |   Comment by Kinsman  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+3)
#35

look in the FAQ regarding PDF files. no idea how well it works, but it does address that issue.

Reply   |   Comment by goodgotd  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#34

Thanks, burquenm,

I appreciate your clarifying the features of this product. Thank you very much. And yes regex is a sweet feature that does deserve kudos.

Too bad their marketing people didn't understand the true value add of this to be able to tell us. When they don't understand their own unique value and they emphasize the features that freeware does too, we will never recognize how their product can help us.

Yes, grep, sed, and awk can do magic with TEXT files. There is a learning curve and no handholding GUI.

There is nothing like them available for Word files, which is woefully the business standard.

I have successfully used sed to automate the editing of Word files, including converting nested lists into tables, but it took having scrupulously strict Word style usage, saving the Word files as RTF, and then using sed to massage the RTF. And that takes being able to read through the RTF. Again, a steep learning curve.

The fact that AKS TR handles Word files by opening WinWord is not a surprise. Why reinvent the wheel? But choking on large files is not good. It also means they require Word to be installed on the system. IS THAT IN THE REQUIREMENTS?

Not being able to edit PDF is not a surprise. Do they say they can? I have not looked. Or do they just refer generically to "FILES" without any distinction? Again, that sounds like marketing does not understand the technology or the product.

Given that they open WinWord.exe to edit word files, I would presume that if they were to attempt PDF at all, they would require Acrobat PRO. When you have Acrobat Pro, there is a JavaScript API that would make it "easy", but that would be a separate product under the hood, to integrate with the Word/text editing UI. There are many so-called PDF editors out there, but none with an exposed API. AKS would have to pick one as their favorite to require you to purchase to use their product to edit PDFs (as they currently require you to own Word to edit Word files).

For myself, if I had 100 Word files to do the same edits on, I would use something like QuicKeys ($$) or AutoIt3 (free) to create a script to open, edit, and close each file in turn. Either of those can be programmed to pause and let me use the Word Find/Replace UI to confirm or skip.

I'm going to pass, but that does not mean this product is useless. It does need to focus on its core competency, which appears to be bulk edit of Word files.

Selling a product is like hunting for a job. If your resume says, "I'll do anything", you won't get many offers.

I hope this helps,
August

Reply   |   Comment by August  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+11)
#33

#32, angie, you have numerous options. TheFreeCountry has a list of numerous free editors which can do conversions, edit Unicode on Linux systems, etc. You might try Notepad2 and Yudit listed there. A more sophisticated tool is uni2ascii for Linux, which will convert bi-directionally between UTF-8 Unicode and ASCII encodings (assuming your friends' software recognizes ASCII encodings of Unicode). Unicode Tools, near the bottom, lists a Unix command for character set conversions.

#31, JonathansToolBar&Grill, you know better than to post here without trying the software. AKS Text Replacer uses Word to handle Word files, and as noted by #25, DVMarsh, doesn't work well. TextCrawler does the rest and much more, although it previews matches, not replacements, and doesn't support filtering by file size or date. But AKS Text Replacer is very poorly coded, and I'm not going to give it administrator privileges so that it can work at all. TextCrawler has numerous features, I noticed that it didn't install the regular expression library and it's in the wrong location (maybe that's why they didn't install it, they need to code for a writable location).

Reply   |   Comment by Fubar  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+9)
#32

Since we are on the subject.... I need something to convert Windows text to simple ASCII to submit to Linux friends. I can usually spot the smart quotes or manually try to replace in my text, but there are other special chars that get inserted by different text editors.

So which free tool would convert to ASCII only?? No unicode, etc.

And you should know that using only notepad does not take out enough of these non-ASCII chars.

Reply   |   Comment by angie  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-3)
#31

I confess that I have not yet had a chance to try out today's giveaway to verify that it actually does what is says it can do. But if its claims are true, the alternatives that many of you have suggested cannot take its place.

AKS Text Replacer claims it can batch-replace in multiple files and across multiple folders (with various file selection filters), can work in both plain text and MS Word files, handles Unicode, and can preview the changes.

Is there any free alternative that can do all this? I have just checked the Web sites of the alternatives proposed in the preceding comments, and did not find one that can do it all. Please correct me if I am wrong, or if AKS Text Replacer does not do everything it claims.

Reply   |   Comment by JonathansToolBar&Grill  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-5)
#30

friends,

At the beginning of time there was grep, which will find patterns in files [or streams] including regular expressions. His little brother, sed [stream editor], can replace things found with new things, and finally, if you need the big guns, you call awk, which can do sophisticated pattern matching, substitution, and 'reporting'.
Awk, sed, and grep are available in many flavors and versions for all operating systems, including [original] unix, where they were born.
The only downside [if it can be described as such] is that they are designed to work on plain text files.

-pal

Reply   |   Comment by paladin  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)
#29

A word of advise, double check before you enter "ok" to make the changes...

Reply   |   Comment by ojoj  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#28

#1 - I don't know of a specific program that removes extra spaces in text but Google ''remove white space'' or ''remove whitespace''.

Reply   |   Comment by GMO  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-14)
#27

Text Crawler is free and does the job as well or better

Reply   |   Comment by Ole Smithy  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+6)
#26

I installed this, adds a shell context-menu entry. Some things from last time have been improved, other problems remain. The UI is very cumbersome. I tried this on a single file on Win7 and received "Access denied". I didn't bother to work around it. DigitalVolcano TextCrawler is far better, although it doesn't appear to have an option to prompt for individual replacements. Some of the other freeware options people have mentioned look interesting. I'm going to have to look up some of the things that TextCrawler can do. Text replacement via a general-purpose utility is something that's rarely used. Most editors will do it, and most programmers need context-sensitive replacement.

Reply   |   Comment by Fubar  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+15)
#25

Some of the other options people are suggesting don't have the same capabilities, i.e., to scan multiple files in multiple folders and to replace text in Word doc files.

However, there are a number of problems with AKS Text Replacer:

1. If you don't check the "MS Word doc" check box, it treats any doc files included in the search as regular text files and corrupts them when it replaces text.

2. If you do check that box, it launches WinWord in the background to actually do the text replacement. On a large Word doc file AKS Text Replacer froze with no screen updates and WinWord using all the CPU time in the background. I gave it 5 minutes, but it was impossible to tell if it was frozen or had crashed. There's no way to Cancel or Abort in that case. Word itself would only have taken a few seconds to do the Replace All operation.

3. In some cases in the "confirm replace" mode the chunk of text shown for context was too big to fit the window, so that the actual change was not visible without entering the window and scrolling down.

4. It doesn't remember the last folder specified, so each time you launch it you have to navigate through your system again to find the folder you are working in.

I don't think it's a keeper.

Reply   |   Comment by DVMarsh  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+30)
#24

This program's major strength is performing batch operations on MS Word files. For other purposes you might want to use something else, but this should be a VERY USEFUL program for those of us who work with MS Word (grr) all the time.

1) Doesn't work on Excel files, but doesn't claim to either.
2) File and folder selection dialogs need work, but are useable.
3) Doesn't appear to find text in PDFs.
4) Regex - kudos!

Best freeware alternative out of hundreds, but not for Word: InfoRapid Search & Replace.

Thanks, GAOTD.

Reply   |   Comment by burquenm  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+15)
#23

If you're having trouble accessing files in your My Documents folder or Word files in general, try running the program as Administrator. Worked for me.

I don't see my previous comment here, so I can't refer to it, and I don't want to rewrite it, but I will keep and use this program on a regular basis.

Best freeware alternative for me is InfoRapid Search & Replace, but it doesn't work for MS Word files, and this does.

Thumbs up.

Tnanks GAOTD!
Regards,
BurqueNM

Reply   |   Comment by burquenm  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+5)
#22

To #1 Mr. Ozawa

replacing 2 spaces with a single space in MS-Word is as easy as replacing any word or character.

you simply use "Find & Replace" feature, and use 2 spaces in the first entry, and use one space in the second entry.

Run it several times to eliminate multiple spaces (more than 2). for the fact that your first replacement attempt would add a space, thus you need to repeat this process several time probably until you are sure that all purpose is served!

I am not sure if today GAOTD would act the same, because I haven't tried it yet. Just finished installation and it went smooth [Win7-64).

Cheers

Reply   |   Comment by Dr. Olaimi  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#21

This is a true question if someone knows the answer. Based on the description, why would I need this application if I have Office 2010? Doesn't Word already do this function? Before I spen an hour testing, I wanted to ask. Until I get an answer, I will download the Game of the day and test that. Yesterdays was great. I love give away of the days and thanks for all of these new opportunities.

Reply   |   Comment by Todd Rosen  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-15)
#20

I've been using Textpad for years. It's the best Notepad replacement.

It's search and replace options are match whole words, match case, regular expression and wrap searches.

There's also an excellect feature that allows you to bookmark all occurances and then manipulate it further by using Edit > Delete bookmarked lines, cut, paste, insert, delete, change case, etc.

I pbelieve the price is still $29.95 and it's the best perogram I've ever purchashed

http://www.textpad.com

Reply   |   Comment by reghacker  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-25)
#19

I see that AKS Text Replacer is burning up the charts. $40?! What are you smoking?
http://download.cnet.com/AKS-Text-Replacer/3000-2352_4-10907254.html?tag=mncol;1

I can't live without Notepad++. It does all that Text Replacer does and much more, oh, and it's free.
http://download.cnet.com/Notepad/3000-2352_4-10327521.html?tag=rb_content;contentMain

Reply   |   Comment by Spencer  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+14)
#18

Haven,t loaded it yet. Don't like to crapup my reg to much. Does anyone know if the engine works with different languages.

Reply   |   Comment by RRRR  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-21)
#17

i had taken just trial on pdf file but it not works. just taken single pdf file. AKS not able to get the string in pdf file.. is it work with pdf or not?

Reply   |   Comment by Dhananjay  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-10)
#16

What? Metapad does this for free!
It is overcomplicated for such a simple piece of software.

Reply   |   Comment by Chris  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)
#15

Is this program able to work with Excel files?

Reply   |   Comment by Silent_K  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-9)
#14

Ozawa, using the MS Word approach, do a find and replace and click the "more" button and select "Use wildcards". Do a find for " {2,}" (i.e. 2 spaces followed by the characters {2,}. Replace with a single space and then do a replace all. Or install cygwin and use sed and you can do many files at once without opening them individually.

Reply   |   Comment by Ben  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#13

@Ozawa just replace " " with " " (space bar two hits with space bar one hit-no quote marks). Continually run that replace command until file is perfect. You'll end up with nothing more than one space between words anywhere on the page.

That should work. It works with my Advanced Find & Replace software (http://www.abacre.com/afr/).

Reply   |   Comment by BK  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)
#12

#6 "Frankly I do not see how AKS can charge 40 bucks"

LOL they can't and that's why they're here. Once in a great while GAOTD offers a truly worthwhile product but, mostly, it doesn't.

IMHO this product's function is trivial -- being duplicated by numerous freeware solutions --it's interface very poorly thought out and key features are missing compared to freeware alternatives.

In other words, this product would be overpriced at half of its cost and, even as a freebie, it isn't a good choice.

Reply   |   Comment by Wiser  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+7)
#11

@#2- julia... try InfoRapid Search and Replace, Text Crawler or TexFinderX 2.30

@#1, try PilotEdit Lite 4.1.0, enter a space in 'find' and nothing in 'replace'.

I generally use metapad one file at a time unless I need unicode..

Reply   |   Comment by goodgotd  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+15)
#10

Downloaded and installed OK on Win7, but produced repeated "access denied" error messages on sample Word test file. Downloaded #6's suggestion of TextCrawler and it did the job perfectly. No help in "help" so, thanks, but no thanks.

Reply   |   Comment by FIn  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+20)
#9

Skip this free deal, isnt worth 40 dollars. Or your time

Reply   |   Comment by heather  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-21)
#8

There is no way that this will sell for $40.00. Nobody will pay that.

Reply   |   Comment by voidoid  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+17)
#7

Text Crawler http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/content/textcrawler is freeware and does the same with a more flexible GUI than AKSTextReplacer.

Frankly I do not see how AKS can charge 40 bucks.

Reply   |   Comment by Mark  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+123)
#6

I just don’t get it. I turned off all background programs, all firewall and virus protection but can’t seem to access the server for activation. I keep getting “failed to connect. Please try again later.” I tried google found many people with the same problem but no answer. I had the same problem with “Super Clicks”, "XUS Desktop" and todays game giveaway "The Great Pharaoh". Yesterday from around 11pm untill just after midnight (gave up at 12:45) I also tried a Clear modem yesterday and got the same error with that as well as my Comcast modem. Anyone ever figure this one out? The last time I had this problem was with the Modiac Converter program but later in that day using a remote program, "Teamviewer", I was able to install and activate all 3 programs from 30 miles away. I see people having the same error and problem with activation all the time but no solutions. Have I missed the solution here at Giveaway of the Day? If so sorry for asking but this thing is driving me crazy. Have a great weekend everyone.

Reply   |   Comment by Dave fr Seattle  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)
#5

@Ozawa You can use notepad to strip out spaces. Or if that doesn't work if the file is too big, use Wordpad, MS-Word, OOO or just about any text editor or word processor in text format ant it will do the job on one file.

Reply   |   Comment by Mark Jacobs  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)
#4

Ozawa, copy document into MS Word and click on Edit, Replace.
Where it says "Find what:" just press keyboard space bar once. Don't put anything in "Replace with:". Now select "Replace All". All blank spaces will disappear.
Hope this is helpful.
Doug.

Reply   |   Comment by Doug  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+61)
#3

$40 for a program with this many pages, which is confusing too… that is too big a price. The build-in Notepad (and Word from MS Office) does the same job with less settings and non confusion…

For the price I expect way more settings and a GUI there is sorted and sampled in one page only !

Reply   |   Comment by Trucker  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-58)
#2

Thanks GOTD, this is a refreshing change from converters. A well designed, logical, flexible, useful search and replace tool with a clear, well thought out user interface. Installs quickly and easily. Does preview and highlighting of replacements. Does multi-folder replacements. Provides all sorts of filtering options, and backup. Supports Unicode, special characters, regular expressions, and for those still using MS Word, that too. I'll be getting a lot of use out of this, so thanks very much to AKS-Labs for the giveaway. Like the product, their website tends to inspire confidence. Incidentally, I'm not aware of any freeware alternatives.

Reply   |   Comment by Julia  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+32)
#1

A cute little software! I'm working with 40 huge word files and now can replace words with it without need to open each! It's been installed to my machine V64 without any issue!
Slightly off from the topic, does anyone know if there's any program that finds empty space between letters and words and then delete? I've a sequence of letters (500 pages) that isn't supposed to have a single space. Thanks GAOTD and everyone else.

Reply   |   Comment by Ozawa  –  13 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+19)
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