Find and replace

Use this tool to change text in titles and names across a CWR file, for example, to put a title in upper-case. CWR (Common Works Registration) is the text format publishers use to register works with collecting societies.

Your file is never uploaded. The tool changes a copy and leaves your original file as it is.

What it can and cannot change

It changes text in titles and names: work titles, writer names, publisher names, performers and recordings, and a few other names. It never changes shares, dates, codes, numbers, identifiers, or record prefixes. To tidy IPI numbers, ISWCs, or ISRCs, use Clean identifiers.

If you pick a field the tool cannot change, it refuses the whole request and names the field. Nothing is skipped quietly.

Steps

1. Open the Tools tab and select "Find and replace".
2. Under "Look in", choose the fields. They are grouped into Titles, Writer names, Publisher names, Performers and recordings, and Other names. Each group has a "Select all" button.
3. In "Find", type the text to search for. The text is taken as you type it, not as a pattern.
4. In "Replace with", type the new text. Leave it empty to remove the text.
5. Under "Match", choose "Part of a field" or "The whole field". Part of a field replaces every occurrence inside the field. The whole field matches only when the entire field equals your text.
6. Tick "Match case" if capital letters must match.
7. Tick "Write the new text in upper case" if you want upper case. This writes the whole field in upper-case, not only the new text. The checker flags lower-case, so this is the usual fix for rule FMT-UC.
8. Select "Preview changes".
9. Read the list. The tool marks every change in the file before it makes it. If your text is short, the tool warns that it can match inside longer words.
10. Select Apply. The tool asks you to confirm the number of fields it will change.

When a change cannot be written

A change goes under "Can't be written" when the result is too long for the field, would leave a required field empty, contains a character your file's encoding cannot hold, or would turn a letter into one of another script. If any change cannot be written, none is made. Shorten the new text or choose fewer fields, then preview again.

Fix one field

For a single lower-case field, open its problem in the Problems tab and use the Fix button, or "Fix one field". To search the whole file for that text instead, select "Find this text in the whole file instead".

What to check next

1. Use "Undo" if a change is wrong.
2. Read the line that says how many problems the change fixed and how many are new.
3. Download the copy. See Download your copy.
4. Check again in the CWR checker.