Terms Remover

What it is and why it exists

Glossaries evolve. Terms are merged, renamed or retired, glossaries are replaced when projects are reorganized, and sometimes terms were linked with the wrong settings. Then the existing term links have to go: both the References Term links and the hyperlinks in the requirement text.

Doing that by hand means editing every artifact and deciding link by link which hyperlink points to a term and which to something else. Terms Remover was created as the safe counterpart of Terms Linker: it removes term links precisely and nothing more.

Problems it solves

• Outdated or wrong term links after a glossary has changed.
• Hyperlinks to terms mixed with hyperlinks to web pages and other artifacts, which must stay.
• Term hyperlinks left behind after the links themselves were deleted by hand.
• Manual editing of many artifacts, with the risk of deleting the wrong links.

Benefits

• Precise: only links to glossary terms are removed; the text stays and other hyperlinks remain.
• Complete: both the term links and the hyperlinks in the text are handled in one run.
• Visible before it happens: the list shows every artifact, its terms and what will be removed.
• Fast reset before relinking a module with a new glossary.

How to use

1. Open a module and click Find artifacts with terms. The widget shows the artifacts with term links, the most used terms and what will be removed.
2. Click Remove terms (N) and confirm. The work runs in batches with progress and Stop.
3. To clean only some artifacts, select them in DOORS Next and click Remove terms (N) in the Selection section.

Good to know

• Links are removed on the base artifact, so they disappear in every module that uses it. Work in a change set to review the result before delivering it.
• A setting can also remove every other hyperlink in the text, if you really want plain text only.