How to Safely Delete All Name Normalizations: Don't Be Scared!
- Jedidiah Cassinelli
- 17 hours ago
- 3 min read
Whether you’re splitting up the work among several people who aren’t used to working in Relativity, making mass updates to titles, organizations, and attorney designations, or just like doing things in Excel, Chronicle has you covered with its 4-step process.*
*3 regular steps + 1 potentially scary step
That potentially scary step? It's mainly due to this:
Chronicle is made for humans.
One of the core tenets we believe in at Milyli is that software should be easy to use. That’s not to say that it doesn’t do complicated things; it’s just that it shouldn’t be complicated for people to do those complicated things. From building privilege logs to normalizing names, we’re pretty proud of how Chronicle simplifies what can be challenging tasks and makes them quick and easy (and dare we say, fun?) to do. For the most part. Just not everywhere, unfortunately.
Chronicle is happy to team up with Excel.
The vast majority of the history of privilege logs lies in the world of Excel. While Chronicle aims to provide an even more straightforward approach to priv logs and name normalization, we're not so brash as to think that there aren’t scenarios where Excel isn’t necessary or preferred. Thus, Chronicle allows for exporting normalizations as well as importing normalizations - perfect if you want to make some mass updates, get non-Relativity users involved, or just spend some quality time over in Excel. No problem, right? Well, there’s just one thing.
Chronicle doesn’t allow you to overlay normalizations into the workspace.
This isn’t the end of the world, but because Chronicle doesn’t like it when you try to import a normalization that already exists, one additional step is required - deleting normalizations. Yep, deleting all normalizations. In our original designs, this seemed fine, but when you say it out loud, it’s not hard to see how that might not be ideal.
Delete all normalizations. Delete all normalizations. Delete all normalizations.
Yeah, not the best.
But it works – and here’s how to do it!
There are definitely better ways that this could be done, but for now, this does work! Export, make changes, delete all normalizations 😱 and import!
Export
Navigate to the Chronicle Manage Normalizations tab within the workspace.
Make sure you download all of the normalizations, not just the ones you need to modify – having all of the normalizations available for import is required later for the Import step.
Remove any filters on the columns.
Ensure that the “All Projects” option is selected.
Within the Export menu, select “Export all data to CSV”
Modify
Before making any modifications to your file, save a second copy as a backup.
Make any necessary modifications to your downloaded file.
Import (+ Delete)
Navigate to the Chronicle Manage Normalizations tab within the workspace.
Verify that there haven’t been other changes since you exported in step 1.
Select “Delete all”
There is no option to overlay new normalizations, so all existing normalizations in the workspace must be deleted before the updated values can be imported.
If you did not export all normalizations in step 1, or if you have removed some of the normalizations from the CSV, those normalizations will be lost.
Select “Import” and select the CSV with the modified values.
Select “Upload”
... The End?
It’s definitely important to take precautionary steps along the way (ensure you’re exporting all of the normalizations, make a backup copy (or two) of the file, check that there weren’t other changes made while you were over in Excel), but once you’re past that, this workflow is a powerful addition to core Chronicle functionality.
Don’t be scared about combining the powers of Chronicle and Excel. Just stay prepared!