[paddington]

CTRL-H will allow you to replace the <uniquestring> with "John" or with anything else.

I don't understand abiout the alphbetized list. You want a list of the shit you need to change?

Don't think it'll do that exactly, but you could just use something like {[string]} for your variables, then search for "[{" to have it highlight all the places you've yet to plug in the final text... something you can search for that will not normally be found.

Then CTRL-H to replace all instances of {[string]}