Regex to Remove Relativity Numbering on Downloaded PDFs

Relativity has an annoying habit of appending numbers to the beginning of PDFs that you download from a workspace. So, files can be named with either a 1, 2, or 3 digit number followed by an underscore, and the document identifier or field selected to name the file. E.g.:

7_ABC002276411

17_IBM080414121

134_GE0005425444

Using Bulk Rename Utility you can use this regular expression search to remove the numbering, so the files are only named with the Bates numbers:

([0-9]{1}_|[0-9]{2}_|[0-9]{3}_)(.*)

In the replace box simply enter:

\2

The search for the numbers with the underscore are separated in parentheses from the second part also in parentheses which searches for any number of characters.

Regex Search for Month, DD, YYYY

You can use the below regular expression posted here by Veverke to search for dates in the 'Month, DD, YYYY' format - using the full spelling for the month. For example, 'July 4, 1976'.

(Jan(?:uary)?|Feb(?:ruary)?|Mar(?:ch)?|Apr(?:il)?|May|Jun(?:e)?|Jul(?:y)?|Aug(?:ust)?|Sep(?:tember)?|Oct(?:ober)?|Nov(?:ember)?|Dec(?:ember)?)\s+(\d{1,2})\,\s+(\d{4})

This will account for standard abbreviations of the month names, but it will need to be modified if those abbreviations are followed with a period.

Running Regex searches in an Access database

If you need to run a query in an Access database using regular expression, Renaud Bompuis has posted a great solution here. In your Access database, press ALT + F11 to enter Visual Basic. Enter the below vba code in a new module. It will create a new function that you can reference in a query written in SQL.

For example, in this database, we have a table with numbers. We want to create a query which will find 7 digits numbers that begin with a '2'.

Go to Create . . . Query Design, and switch to SQL view. Structure a SQL search like this:

SELECT Field1

FROM Table1

WHERE RegexMatch(Field1, "2[0-9]{6}")

First, we SELECT the field we want in the results. Then we designate the table to be searched. The WHERE command lists the RegEx function, first referencing the field to be searched in parentheses.

Click Run on the toolbar, and your results will be displayed

As always, I have tested this script tonight in order to confirm that it works.

' ----------------------------------------------------------------------'

' Return True if the given string value matches the given Regex pattern '

' ----------------------------------------------------------------------'

Public Function RegexMatch(value As Variant, pattern As String) As Boolean

If IsNull(value) Then Exit Function

' Using a static, we avoid re-creating the same regex object for every call '

Static regex As Object

' Initialise the Regex object '

If regex Is Nothing Then

Set regex = CreateObject("vbscript.regexp")

With regex

.Global = True

.IgnoreCase = True

.MultiLine = True

End With

End If

' Update the regex pattern if it has changed since last time we were called '

If regex.pattern <> pattern Then regex.pattern = pattern

' Test the value against the pattern '

RegexMatch = regex.test(value)

End Function