Replacing shortened words with full word

Question

I have a school district field in my data that contains values such as:

EUREKA UNION SCHOOL DIST

JOHNSON CITY IND SCHOOL DISTRICT

PLACER HILLS UNION SCH DIST

BROOKS CO IND SCHOOL DISTRICT

PACER CO PUB CMTY DISTRICT

What I want to do is transform these names to their full name. So I want "DIST" to be replaced by "DISTRICT", "IND" replaced with "INDEPENDENT", "SCH" replaced with "SCHOOL". "CO" replaced with "COUNTY", and so on...

Can I accomplish this with a find and replace tool? Fuzzy matching maybe? I am completely new to these tools and not sure how to configure. Thanks

Kenda · Accepted Answer

Sounds like you're right on track @The_Alternator

So long as you know all of the values you want to replace, create a Text Input with a mapping of the find/replace values. With your example, it would start like this:

FindReplaceDISTDISTRICTINDINDEPENDENTSCHSCHOOLCOCOUNTY

From there, you can use the Find Replace tool, as you mentioned, with this text as the R input and your data as the F input. Be sure to configure the tool so that it finds any part of the field and matches the whole word only.

Hope this helps!