Title: offline data management
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# offline data management

 *  Resolved [Jonas Grumby](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ss_minnow/)
 * (@ss_minnow)
 * [16 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/offline-data-management/)
 * This might seem like a dumb question to some of you, but can I export WP data
   and manage it w/ a program like MS Access then import it back in?
 * The specific example is that I have a client who is changing the name of his 
   company (adding a partner) and I have to replace every occurrence of the old 
   name or acronym with the new info.
 * Thanks

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  [jon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/adiant/)
 * (@adiant)
 * [16 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/offline-data-management/#post-1286058)
 * I did something like that a year ago, but probably wouldn’t do it like that again.
 * Last year, I took a backup of the relevant MySQL table(s). Which creates, among
   other things, a bunch of SQL INSERT statements to re-create every row of the 
   table(s). For straight search/replace, I used NotePad++ (Open Source text editor).
   For more complex changes, I wrote a program (in Regina REXX — please don’t laugh).
   Once I was happy, I restored the table(s) using the modified INSERT statements.
   Obviously, to avoid outages, I perfected the process over several weeks, then
   actually repeated it in 15-20 minutes to minimize the outage.
 * If I were to do it again, and only had to do straight search/replace, I would
   use the functionality built into MySQL. You can code SQL (an UPDATE statement,
   I believe) that will do search and replace of a table column (field) for all 
   rows of a table. The gateway to MySQL documentation is here: [http://dev.mysql.com/doc/](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/)
 * To put this all in context to your original question, I used Microsoft Access
   for nearly a decade, but, to quote an old Perry Mason episode, “I wouldn’t trust
   it as far as I could throw a horse.” On data, that is. I’d just be too scared
   that some oddball character in a post would get corrupted/changed during import
   or export from MS Access.
 *  Thread Starter [Jonas Grumby](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ss_minnow/)
 * (@ss_minnow)
 * [16 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/offline-data-management/#post-1286283)
 * Thanks Adiant. In the past I have updated Dbase tables w/ Access w/o any problems,
   but never SQL tables. The big caveat about the dbase tables was always to download
   them from the server and open them directly; and not use any import/export features
   in Access or the web site sofware.
 * Thanks for the advice about using MySQL though because that should work nicely.
   I’ll test it on a dev site of course.
 *  Thread Starter [Jonas Grumby](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ss_minnow/)
 * (@ss_minnow)
 * [16 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/offline-data-management/#post-1286345)
 * I have installed the search-and-replace plugin per the advice of Michael (moderator)
   and although it is too late for the site in question it does look like it would
   have done exactly what I wanted. I will keep it in mind for the future.
 *  [jon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/adiant/)
 * (@adiant)
 * [16 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/offline-data-management/#post-1286346)
 * Yes, I learned something, too, having not previously been aware of that plug-
   in.
 *  Thread Starter [Jonas Grumby](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ss_minnow/)
 * (@ss_minnow)
 * [16 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/offline-data-management/#post-1286348)
 * Yes, it works very well. In a perfect world I would like it to give me back some
   info about which pages or posts it changed. It’s easy to end up changing things
   that you didn’t intend to with a plugin like this. All I’m saying is be very 
   specific about what kinds of strings you are looking to replace, especially if
   you use it to make on-page code adjustments. Hopefully your code is standardized
   enough that you can avoid unknowingly replacing the wrong things.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The topic ‘offline data management’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [database](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/database/)
 * [management](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/management/)
 * [Offline](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/offline/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 5 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Jonas Grumby](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ss_minnow/)
 * Last activity: [16 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/offline-data-management/#post-1286348)
 * Status: resolved

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