Recently, a DataPoint user was looking after a feature in DataPoint to replace or remove some unwanted characters coming from his database. We assisted him for a solution.

We came up with a new addition to DataPoint where you have the option to scan all the database texts and to replace it with a certain value. In his case, he was looking for some unwanted characters, and he had the option to remove those unwanted characters with nothing or an empty string, as this is called.

Global substitution file

You can create a translation file named DataPoint-replacements.txt at the folder C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Corporation\ and put all translations in there. The [user] notation is a variable and needs to be replaced with the name as your log on to this computer. So, if you log on to your computer with username John, then place this file at C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Corporation\DataPoint-replacements.txt.

This file is a tab delimited file, with a find and replace value on each line, separated by a tab character. A text delimited file can easily be created in a simple text editor like notepad. The file’s content would look like this:

copyright[TAB]©
trademark[TAB]™
EUR[TAB]€
USD[TAB]$
GBP[TAB]£

When the file exists, DataPoint will scan all columns and rows of your data connections and replace those values. If you have a value of ‘USD 99’ in a given field, DataPoint will translate that into ‘$ 99’ and this value will be displayed on your slides.

Update DataPoint

Download the latest setup of DataPoint to benefit from this new feature to find and replace values in your data connections.