I personally enjoy converting large documents or databases. Especially when problems arise that I have to resolve. It's like a giant puzzle. I used to use MS Word's macros ability to do a fair bit of document processing. Now I lean towards using awk and sed. But you can't get away without manually inspecting things, even if it's just after-the-fact inspections. Give me a 10,000 page document and tell me to accurately convert the CR's to spaces, and I'll be a happy puppy.
Yes, there is a certain satisfaction to getting so little (awk with a parameter or two) to achieve so much, isn't there!
What I'm working on at the moment is a huge project. But I like my data tidy and consistent - and, in the case of managing books, that's the way to find what you want quickly and avoid the possibility of buying duplicates etc.
I'm extremely grateful to everyone who's so kindly helped me with this… on Sunday I had only ever achieved one thing with KM… inserting my address into text docs. Now I feel I'm really beginning - as you would say, Sleepy, beginning to take off (it's a flying boat, you see)!
Tom,
With many, many thanks (please see PM) I'm happy to say that I've now selected all the records which have colons but don't need them (about 10%); removed them from the Colons Smart Collection, using a KM macro, successfully run your script - without a single stutter, hitch or hesitation - on all the records; put back the colons where needed, using a KM macro; and completed the project.
That part of my BookPedia database is exactly as I wanted it.
Your help has not only saved me probably about 10 hours, but taught me a great deal. I am very grateful!
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Great that it worked 
(With the help of your creative solution for the 10% colons that have to remain untouched!)
Thanks again to everyone who helped.
I'm off to continue to get to know KM.