PK Tip: Merging Keywords

Occasionally, you may discover that you have two (or more) keywords in your Personal Knowbase data file that are redundant. Plurals, alternate spellings, and abbreviations are common culprits.

You may have keywords file and files. Or United States and USA. Or TOS and terms. Or web site and website.

In these cases, you probably want to combine the two keywords into one. You want all articles which were associated with either previous keyword to be associated with the surviving keyword.

To merge two keywords:

• First, select which keyword you want to remove and which one you want to keep. The first keyword will be completely deleted from the data file.

• In the Index Window, in either the Index column or the Selected column, locate the keyword that you want to remove.

• Click on that keyword to highlight it.

• Use the Merge Keyword command from the Keyword menu.

• From the resulting Merge Keyword dialog box, from the Into: list box, highlight the keyword that you want to merge the first keyword with. This is the keyword that will survive in the data file.

  

• Click OK to complete the merge.

• You are asked to verify the merge. Click Yes.

The first keyword is now removed from the data file. The second keyword is now assigned to any article that the removed keyword was assigned to. (If an article happened to be assigned to both keywords, it is now assigned only to the second one.)

If you have more than two keywords with similar meanings, you need to combine the keywords two at a time, first merging one redundant keyword, then the next, and so on.