Mass replacement of a text-part in product descriptions

[quetschwurst]

Hi,
i wonder if/how i could batch process a simple text replacement in the product description for all products in one category.
I have 1000(+) products in one category and in every product there is one word that needs to be changed.
Any idea someone?

[jenkinhill]

I think I would use CSVI to export the descriptions just for that single category, search & replace within that exported file and then re-import.  http://www.csvimproved.com/

If the word is unique and only used in those descriptions then a quick fix could be to use Rereplacer - that would replace the displayed word on the fly and not require changing the actual descriptions.

Of course it could be done in phpMyAdmin with the right SQL, but that would be beyond my skill level.

[quetschwurst]

Yes, i know CSVI, but i had the problem, that when i import a file, the "published" field left actually blank. Tried this with a extra field in my csv named "published" and set it to "Y" but it did not work in the end. So i had to manually activate thousand of products in VM (was not funny).
Can you tell me, if i first export (by using a pre-defined CSVI export template) and then re-import the edited CSVI that the activation status will be the same as before? That is a big thing a am worry about.

[jenkinhill]

The issue in CSVI was fixed and current version includes a "published" field.