I am shocked that someone, somewhere, has not created a Word or Excel macro that searches and replaces based on a list of common nicknames — changing all “Mikes” to “Michael” and so on. It would seem to be a darned useful tool.
Having just spent about 45 minutes crafting a neat little Excel formula, I found that it could be made immeasurably better if it had the ability to clean up nicknames. Oh, well. (I did find some lists of nicknames, so maybe I can figure out how to do it myself….)
Update: I found a good and comprehensive list of nicknames — too comprehensive, perhaps (Hetty = Mehitabel?). But with a bit of cleanup to remove the old-fashioned ones (this was from a genealogy site), it might be a good starting point for a macro. “If [nickname] is on nickname list, replace it with the [fullname] from that list and shade the cell so I can verify it.”
Hmm.
