forcing freetext variants to update

As we’re going through a complete redesign of our site, we’ve made some drastic changes to our article variants and the reassigned the current freetext content into new slots.

The problem being is that I now have the enviable task of going through and manually quick editing and updating each and every assembled freetext variant (thousands!) as otherwise they are being ignored.

Is there any way around it? Is there a way to identify each public freetext variant within the site and getting it to refresh?