10 replies to this topic

[Vyger]

Following on from the wish from Lighthouse, which has been uttered several times before, I would like to add a few opinions of my own. With Place lists growing ever larger in expanded databases Rootsmagic does lack some very simple database features that would greatly benefit users and increase their productivity, I believe much more filtering and reporting is greatly needed.

 

 

1. Add checkbox to filter list to only those Places which contain Place Details, this would greatly aid the search and reconciliation of Place Details where they exist.

 

2. Add a checkbox to filter only those Places which do not contain geocoding, existance and non existance of Place Details geocoding can easily be seen in the right pane but not so for Places without scrolling down the list one by one. I know this can be done in Gazetteer I would prefer not to run Geocode all Places to get there.

 

3. Add a button to access Gazetteer directly from Place List showing suggestions for any highlighted Place.

 

4. Incorporate an Online Map button on Gazetteer focused on the highlighted suggestion or better still an embedded Map pane to aid the reconciliation of possible Place matches.

 

5. Provide a direct paste box for the geocoding produced by right clicking on the Online Map accessed from Place List or provide direct geocoding from map as done in other software.

 

 

6.. Add a Search Filter Box just like that of Media Gallery to provide a filtered list of Places which contain the user input criteria.

 

7. Provide association reporting for Place Details, the PRINT button, since this exists for Places I can only conclude this is a miss and not an enhancement request.

 

8. As Lighthouse has wished, provide functionality to delete all or multi select unused Places for deletion rather than the current time consuming functionality.

 

 

 

I am not using RM7 but everything I have watched and read suggest none of these wishes currently exist within the current program, please disregard if I am in error and my apologies for any repeated wishes.

 

[Renee Zamora]

Confirming enhancement requests are in our tracking system.

[genealogy4primm@earthlink.]

RM 7 user here.

 

The management of Place and how the Place List and Place Clean work are several closely associated areas I have long thought needs improvement in RM as well as other modes of documenting Genealogy.

 

I would add to the above list:

 

9. In addition to #6, add the ability to "filter" Place List by alphanumeric character. A row of selective alphanumeric buttons for a quick pick in addition to typing a few characters in a field entry. That is, to click on the "X" in the selection row which would then filter the Place List to see only the places that start with the letter "X", where "X" is any available alphanumeric character that is allowed in naming of a Place. This would maintain until restart of software or until user selects to "See All" again.

 

A lot of time will be saved when we attempt to correct or resolve the improper naming conventions in the Place List if we did not have to scroll or page down all the way through every single other entry. Unfortunately, the Place Clean feature just does not get it all done currently.

 

10. Allow GeoCode and County Checker resolution/matching in Place Clean.

 

These may have to be run more independently of each other in Place Clean, but I would think it is possible to utilize them together. See below.

 

11. Consider changes to allow alias "Historical Place" names that would be GeoCoded with current 'Vernacular Place' and "Place" (aka "Standardized Place") names.

 

See the "County Check, Places, Geocoding et al" thread from 2012 below.

 

http://forums.rootsm...-al/?hl=geocode

 

TomH and other on that post have some good ideas, almost exactly as I have been thinking for a while. Yet, that post is over three years old and it seems not much has changed in resolving the core issues.

 

My thoughts are to have this modification built where the user has a selection preference. If I want to use the "Historical Place" names, or full "Standard Place" names, as well as if I wish to use "Co.," or spell out "County" after every county entry, as well with U.S.A. or "United States" etc., then let me select that as a user preference on what I see onscreen and print for reports. The Standard Place naming convention can still be the core entry and default in exports to other software.

 

With that being said; The Historical Place field should be able to match that of the Gazetteer County checker which is also cross linked to the GeoCode tables with a modern "Standard Place" list. Somewhere in the forum Renee mentions that a GeoCoded Historical Place list would be of interest at a reasonable cost. I would think a talented coder could utilize the current Gazetteer County checker Table to compare to the GeoCode Table as a start. I would gather both of the Tables are in somewhat of a standardized name format that should align for a large proportion of entries. Certainly better than using those two Tables independently isolated from each other. For those entries that do not align and resolve, then some sort of system of user submitted GeoCode-to-Place names match suggestions should be initiated. A simple look at a GeoCoded map software could be utilized to validate the coordinates of user submitted entries. This could even be done through an honor system of end users, or much like that which is used to Transcribe documents (albeit with slightly stronger oversight). The updated GeoCode-to-Place matches could be then pushed out in periodic updates. No updates to my entries unless I choose to modify them.

 

However, I would take it one step further. Dealing with the "Place" from imported data is usually my biggest source of incorrectly named places. The Tools: Data Clean:Place Clean does help in cleaning up the Place List, but as I mentioned before, it only goes so far. Many times the source data is poorly or partially transcribed  Other times the data is concatenated with "Place Details". Then there are also issues with certain cities and Counties that County Search and or Gazetteer fail to offer a reasonable rendition of the desired Place. Not to mention foreign places. For most of these, neither Place Clean, Gazetteer, GeoCode, nor "Use Standard Place" in the Place List can resolve. I suggest a separate field such as "Imported Place Name" from the source entry would allow us to have a wysiwyg field whereas we can later improve or correct that entry in the Place field to be more standardized. This would especially be valuable for all the Family Search and other sources that have improperly transcribed place details as mentioned above. We then would be able to retain the original entry as it was originally documented or transcribed (*preferably already GeoCoded as well!). Salvation would exist here for hastily merging the Place List. I know I have one where I accidentally clicked on a different named entry after doing it for several hours trying to clean up my Place List. This would allow me to go back and find where I incorrectly merged that block of places.

 

This might make resolving reports a bit more of a challenge for the coders since now they would have four "Place" fields to resolve on reports; The original "Place" (aka "Standardized Place"), "Historical Place". "Vernacular Place" and "Imported Place" names. I would think a Master Place Preference user selection would help alleviate that issue whereas user would select an option that works work much like how one sets the Boot preference in a computer. As well the Master Place Preference selection could offer to minimize the multiple "Place" is on the screen in the same manner of preference with a simple indicator to click on to expand the view if so desired. RM could also define which field is a "shared" for export outbound in the same manner described with other resources, such as Family Search. 

 

*Concerning Place standardization, the real issue is in the Transcribing of the original sources. This seriously needs to be addressed, or at least those organizations that offer the general public to sign up to transcribe should come up with a second (or would it now be third) tier of document evaluation. There are just way to many documents are getting by in the current system with partial transcription, especially ones such as Marriage License Images, Birth Certificates, Death Certificates and Census Records where Places (as well as a lot more useful data) are clearly being missed or overlooked. What the result is that we have several "sources" (notwithstanding Indexes) available which all came from the same exact original document- unneeded and unprofessional clutter. These original documents are where the "Standardized Place" name convention GeoCoding should originate for the said Place or Location. I will try to address this with those organizations, but I do feel this needed to be included in this discussion regarding Place names.

 

I should note that I see Family Search, and yes I realize Family Search is not Roots Magic, has updated its Place Research website. Hopefully this will eventually blend over into the Transcribed Documents as well. Possibly the Tables utilized by the Place Research website would be equally important to match the GeoCode, Gazetteer, and Place List Tables within Roots Magic.

 

Happy Puzzle Hunting!!

 

Harold

[Jerry Bryan]

I was motivated by Harold's message to read once again the original place management thread he cited. I realized to my chagrin that I still don't know exactly how County Check works. Certain things cause it to declare that otherwise valid place names are not valid, and it's very hard to understand what those "certain things" are after all this time.

 

I did look at the newly updated  place research site at Family Search. I offer up the following interesting examples. Why did it include the words "city" and "county" with New York, but not with Los Angeles? Well, "New York City" may be the official name of the city (like Kansas City), but why the different treatment of the county names?

New York, United States (type = State, 1776 - present)
New York City, New York, United States (type = City)
Colony of New York, British Colonial America (type = Non-Administrative Colony, 1664 - 1776) 
New York County, New York, United States (type = County, 1776 - present)
Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States (type = City)
Los Angeles, California, United States (type = County, 1850 - present)

On another and related note (and not just slinging darts and arrows at County Check), when I first started doing genealogy I was taught by several very wise mentors to record place names as they were at the time because that's where the records would be found. So I have an ancestor born in 1755 in Augusta County, Virginia.

 

The Family Search research site would have me write that as Augusta, Colony of Virginia, British Colonial America. I'm still not sure how a typical reader of a report created by any genealogy software would understand that Augusta was a county as opposed to a town or other populated place, absent the word County in the name. But there are other problems.

 

First and foremost (and despite my very wise mentors), Augusta, Colony of Virginia, British Colonial America doesn't geocode correctly because Augusta County was split in 1788 to form Rockingham County. The birth place and the family land, etc. are all in modern day Rockingham County. I have visited the land and I have photographed two houses from the 1700's (and been inside one of them), and I assure you that I drove to Rockingham County and not to Augusta County. My RM database presently lists the birth as having taken place in "Augusta County, Virginia (now Rockingham County)". I'm not very happy with my solution, but it's hard to think of a better one. And I can't even begin to imagine how I would expect County Check or geocoding to deal with "Augusta County, Virginia (now Rockingham County)". But it's what I think my readers need to see.

 

Second, you will notice that I didn't write the place name as "Augusta County, Colony of Virginia, British Colonial America (now Rockingham County)". I simply write it as "Augusta County, Virginia (now Rockingham County)". Any American reader would know automatically without even having to think about it or reflect about it that an event before 1776 was in the colonial period. I very much prefer not to clutter up a narrative that already reads in a somewhat stilted fashion with numerous occurrences of "Augusta County, Colony of Virginia, British Colonial America" or any other such place name. If I were creating the same report with Microsoft Word, and if I was trying to make the report more friendly for non-American readers, I might include a comment one time and one place that says that American place names prior to 1776 should be considered to be in the colonial period. But in general, I think that kind of redundancy in place names in reports is not necessary and hurts the readability of the report.

 

That's why I prefer to leave out United States (or United States of America or US or USA) for place names that are very clearly American from context. But I can't leave out Virginia from Augusta County, Virginia because there are counties named Augusta in several America states. Similarly, when I write Augusta County, Virginia (now Rockingham County), I don't feel the need to write Augusta County, Virginia (now Rockingham County, Virginia) because it's very clear from context that Augusta and Rockingham counties are in the same state. But I do have to write Greenbrier County, Virginia (now Monroe County, West Virginia) with state name included for Monroe County because the state name itself has changed even though it's the same physical location.

 

Jerry

 

[Vyger]

http://forums.rootsm...-al/?hl=geocode

 

TomH and other on that post have some good ideas, almost exactly as I have been thinking for a while. Yet, that post is over three years old and it seems not much has changed in resolving the core issues.

 

Again a long and very well considered post of observations and ideas, this time from Harold, who points to a previous well documented discussion which is over 2 years old and now seems to be forgotten about.

 

Users have and continue to fall away from County Check and Place Details due to what can only be described as apathy towards the many threads and detailed posts on these subjects over many years. In my opinion Rootsmagic, whilst a good program, is falling behind it's competitors in respect of Place recognition, the other two big players have considerably bigger "gazetteers" to help with Place reconciliation to begin with. They also have the facility to lift geocoding from the embedded map, Rootsmagic has Mapping but not in direct conjunction with Place management.

 

I won't go on except to repeat my wish that the many fragmented Place related features are brought together on one UI and the many repeated wishes over several years be addressed.

[Vyger]

On another and related note (and not just slinging darts and arrows at County Check), when I first started doing genealogy I was taught by several very wise mentors to record place names as they were at the time because that's where the records would be found. So I have an ancestor born in 1755 in Augusta County, Virginia.

 

The Family Search research site would have me write that as Augusta, Colony of Virginia, British Colonial America. I'm still not sure how a typical reader of a report created by any genealogy software would understand that Augusta was a county as opposed to a town or other populated place, absent the word County in the name. But there are other problems.

 

 

In reply to Jerry but also motivated by Harolds post and previous threads it is becoming more clear that we need further Place fields to compliment Place, Std Place and Abbrev Place fields all of which need to be selectable for reporting and display purposes.

 

By the very nature of genealogy we search further into history, county lines have since changed, administrative bodies have combined regarding record repository and whilst we need to accurately record and geocode Places within Rootsmagic the output to reports should be everyones eventual goal (retirement plan  )

 

Personally I would like to see the place as recorded output to reports alternating with Abbrev Place on subsequent entries. Years ago I posted a wish for a Place appendix which would be user selectable and should also include choices for Notes and Media, the same options for Place Details. That appendix could reference any (as recorded) Places and Place Details used within any report explaining in the appendix "now part of..." & Std Place and any brief notes the user chose to enter.

 

I work mostly with Parishes in Ireland as Places and Townlands as Place Details at present and the gazetteer recognizes none of this, and of course all those historical parishes and Townlands are now administered by modern day councils which is where I would look for records. I believe the addition of further Place fields does seem to be inevitable to handle this but how many to satisfy differing Country needs?

[Renee Zamora]

9. In addition to #6, add the ability to "filter" Place List by alphanumeric character. A row of selective alphanumeric buttons for a quick pick in addition to typing a few characters in a field entry. That is, to click on the "X" in the selection row which would then filter the Place List to see only the places that start with the letter "X", where "X" is any available alphanumeric character that is allowed in naming of a Place. This would maintain until restart of software or until user selects to "See All" again.

A lot of time will be saved when we attempt to correct or resolve the improper naming conventions in the Place List if we did not have to scroll or page down all the way through every single other entry. Unfortunately, the Place Clean feature just does not get it all done currently.

 

It sounds like you are not aware of incremental searching. Just click on any place and start typing it will take you directly to that part in the index. There is no need to scroll.  We have a blog article that explains this - http://blog.rootsmagic.com/?p=2050

[Renee Zamora]

10. Allow GeoCode and County Checker resolution/matching in Place Clean.

CountyCheck looks at the time frame for the location and if the county, state or country existed for that event. So I don't see how Place Clean could work like that. There is a CountyCheck report that could help you locate which localities are correct for the time frame of the event.

 

Geocoding I could see that potentially working inside Place Clean.

[genealogy4primm@earthlink.]

 

It sounds like you are not aware of incremental searching. Just click on any place and start typing it will take you directly to that part in the index. There is no need to scroll.  We have a blog article that explains this - http://blog.rootsmagic.com/?p=2050

Renee,

 

Thank you for the quick reply. I am sorry for such a delayed response on my part. I always forget how to launch and access the forums.

 

I am aware of incremental searching. It works when typing in a Place Name in an ancestor's Edit Person page and in the Place List among other areas. I have utilized it in Place List to create a starting point on a particular letter of the alphabet. 

 

I know realize my suggestion for the Place List Place Name filtering may not have been explained fully and to some degree may have been misdirected, yet there is something of how the Place List re-sorts and presents the very first entry (or the edited entry) after making an edit, rather than staying where the last edit occurred. This "jumping" seems undesirable to me. For example: if I edit an entry such as “of, Chrlstn, S. C.” to the standardized and GeoCode recognized place of “Charleston, South Carolina, United States”, then when the edit is complete the list repopulates to the Place List location of “Charleston, South Carolina, United States” location in the list rather than to the next incorrect “of, xyz place”. This occurs when I attempt to edit (standardize & GeoCode) a Place Name which is with leading “of”, “<” or apostrophe’s to include a county name, or after an edit of a very poorly spelled abbreviation. If there are other “Charleston…” entries this is a good thing, so then I can merge all of them, yet I often find there are several “of, Charleston…” entries and have to go back to that location in the Place List. If not I still have to retype the “of, …” to restart where I left off, unless I merge all the similar “bad” entries together first (which sometimes is not wise to do, especially if there are Place Details  –based on previous experience). Most of these issues can be overlooked by using the Data Clean’s Place Clean.

 

This Incremental Search feature, however, does not seem to be available in the Data Clean's Place Clean (as well I do not believe it to work in Name Clean).

It is in the Data Clean where I would suggest such a limiting alphanumeric search criteria that populates a minimized list feature should be added. Incremental Searching, although it would also be useful here, simply will not suffice.  The utilization of Incremental Searching with Select All feature in an extensive Place List is simply not useful without some restrictive criteria. I simply cannot see how those two would work together without an additional “only select matching records to [user entry]”. This then goes back to having an alphanumeric search to populate a minimized list based on the desired alphanumeric character (or string of characters).

 

My suggestion is to create a search response in Data Clean whereas only those items in the alphanumeric segmented response list show up which would allow the patron/user to edit an individual alphanumeric section of the Place List at a time rather than having to individually check off each and every Original Place Name that is desired to be edited. Granted we have the Select All feature in Data Clean, which is great, but is not easily utilized when the database of Places is several thousand entries of botched up Place Names. I say this due to it being nearly impossible to correct All places in the same sitting, say an afternoon, then Tab down (arrow down) the entries to see which ones we would prefer to deselect (not accept suggested edit). To some degree, my suggestion is more of a time saving suggestion. If within Data clean we had the option of selecting the letter "x" and then Select All (within the limited response to Place Names which begin with the selection of letter "x"), then we might be able to Edit those entries in one sitting. I realize we can do the exact opposite of this by individually selecting one place at a time, yet that has its own drawbacks which i address below.

 

I suggest this because, in my current databases situation (and with no relief seen in the near future as I import source record Fact details from Family Search), it is a much faster prospect to see the Cleaned Place suggested edit, then deselect those entries which we would not like to edit or interject our own edit. This does come with a catch, whereas a patron might miss a suggested edit which would be incorrect to accept. To remedy this, the just modified Place Clean list could repopulate immediately after Clean Checked Places showing the previously selected results of Clean Checked Places (sorted to only show aforementioned "x" results) in a third column and include a check box option to revert, that is not accept a particular change, that we may have missed. This at least allows for us to review what the Place Changes are one time and correct them before they are finalized. This may seem redundant, yet it is a way to idiot-proof the Place List modifications. Similar screens should be for merging duplicates IMO.

 

The alternative, and current state, is to individually select each Original Place Name we wish to edit (accept suggested edit or interject our own edit.), then select the check box of the next entry we wish to edit one at a time, or Tab down (arrow down) through the list. Currently this process takes me well over an hour, if not longer, per alphanumeric character. As such I am currently limited to only select one Place at a time as I go through the list.

 

The current status would be fine if we, as individual product users, either already had a database with a highly standardized Place List or could assure that the other sources we are getting Place Names data from has been "scrubbed" to fall within the standardized methodology. Unfortunately the former is not my current case and the latter is extremely far from the case. The other current option is to manually type in entries in the standardized form into a Edit Person Fact instead of "digitally transferring" them from a source record in Family Search- which makes the digital transfer of Facts (i.e. Place Names) feature useless. I do do both of these methods, individually select within Data clean and Edit as I go when importing sources, occasionally, but it these are extremely tedious and time consuming to do so.

 

Again, aside from populating a database with correctly and "scrubbed" named places, this suggestion is so that the GeoCoding will associate with a known standard of a location (including historical names) and actually render appropriate maps of the Places in/for a given time frame. The basis for populating a map being a GeoCode location that may have a current and numerous historical names, rather than a current or historical Place Name that is associated to a GeoCoded location.

 

 

CountyCheck looks at the time frame for the location and if the county, state or country existed for that event. So I don't see how Place Clean could work like that. There is a CountyCheck report that could help you locate which localities are correct for the time frame of the event.

 

Geocoding I could see that potentially working inside Place Clean.

 

I ran the CountyCheck report with default settings...over 6,000 pages in length for my primary RM database.

 

In the report, I see it offers counties where there is just an abbreviated State such as "Ms."...the result is a long list of Mississippi's counties, per Fact per RM Record (it appears all of the counties - possibly only those which were established on the date if there is a date on the Fact). Most of the time we have no clue what the county or city-township is...that is why we left it with just the state abbreviation, albeit in the example it is an incorrect abbreviation for the state. Other than a rather extensive long list, I see on the first page it does not indicate the RM Record number, although the Family Search record numbers do populate. Nice to have the Family Search numbers, but not helpful to find that exact John Smith in my RM database without the RM record number.

 

Also the date, which I guess someone approximated rather than indicating "bef" for before or "abt" to indicate about, with a fact offers an entry with

 

<1739> in Isle of Wight Co, Surrey, Va

Match: Isle of Wight, Surry, Virginia, British North America 

Match: Isle of Wight, Surry, Virginia, United States

 

OK it is only CountyCheck, not County and Nation Check.

Yet other entries seem to only have the British offering when the < and > are not found on pre 1776 entries, but both British and United States are found if the same < and > are used after 1776.

 

Then there are some with Error presented, yet they do not seem to be consistent.

abt 1691 in of Alton, Hamps., Eng.

Error: Hamps., Eng. is not recognized

31 Mar 1733 in Alton, Hamps., Eng.

Match: Alton, Hampshire, England, Great Britain

 

OK the "of" before Alton is throwing off the result in the above entry of "Hamps., Eng", which in itself is spelled exactly the same in both, Hampshire is the County though, so confusing.

 

As well almost all the entries seem to mimic exactly what is already there (I guess this is good?).

Such as: 

1871 in Sulphur Springs, Hopkins, Texas, United States

Match: Sulphur Springs, Hopkins, Texas, United States

 

I would guess the last sample is indicating the CountyCheck match is correct, but needs minor correction? Possibly an extra space on end of it. 

 

Obviously the report will be smaller once I go through Data Clean of Place List.

 

Not much help to sort through all of those 6000 pages. But I can see it will be useful once my Place Names become more manageable.

.....

 

I agree that it would seem more likely to utilize GeoCode linking within Data Clean's Place Clean, rather than utilizing CountyCheck to also resolve a GeoCode Location...mainly because CountyCheck only checks the name of a County, so it could not be precise enough to GeoCode a township or city.

 

As I already suggested back in July, to me it would be ideal to integrate all of the available tools (County Checker, Place List Edit, Place List GeoCode & Data Clean) to work in unison or in series to suggest the current (& historical) standardized Place Name when entering a Place Name in the Edit Person or Add Person forms (also for the historical Place Name for the time period if a date is available in our individual Fact). I realize that such an integrated Place Name resolver would be quite complex -  and depending on the data structures of these mentioned tools, might be near impossible in their current data table structures.

 

Currently, I utilize the tools more or less in the following order when entering a Place Name in the Edit Person (works in a different pattern when entering in the Add Person):

 

1) Run Gazetteer on the typed or imported text and paste the suggested most likely candidate to Place.

 

2) Run Place List on Place to set as a standardized place name and to set the GeoCode, if possible.

 

3) Save the Fact entry which, if a mismatch to CountyCheck, launches the CountyCheck suggestions...modify as needed to satisfy the suggestion -sometimes this takes some investigating as the suggestions are, or do not seem to be, valid  or they simply are too vague- usually the case for pre-1850 locations that have changed names several times since (The "Indian Territories" are really unforgiving in this).

 

4) Save the Fact entry again (because if I do not and the suggested CountyCheck Place Name has not been saved before to the Place List, then it will take me to the top/first entry of the Place List and I will have to bail out to the Edit Person Fact again and save it still), then I copy the Place as suggested by CountyCheck, then go to the seek out the original Place List entry derived in step 2 above (this  is tricky as I do not want to overwrite a singular Place Name in use elsewhere) , then paste the CountyCheck Place location to the original Place List Place field, then double checking the Standardized and GeoCoded Place Details remained the same - this is often redoing what step 2 already did, but this time with a "CountyCheck Place Name" in the Place field rather than a matching Place to the current Standardized Place Name.

 

5) Depending on how step 4 goes, I might have to merge the two entries just created for the Place List.

 

Unfortunately, this process is not always fail safe as the Standard Place Name sometimes is not discovered in step 2. Occasionally this is due to being an obscure or abandoned location, or a incorrectly spelled Place. For example it took me well over an hour to define the best GeoCode location for one Place location in the British Leeward Islands.

 

The issue with doing the above, besides being very tedious, is that I almost always have only the historic or partial city-township name of a location which renders some sort of erroneous CountyCheck matching to a Standardized Place Name and GeoCoded location for an entry.

 

In my opinion, the Place location emphasis is too often placed on the actual source document as being the central point of information, when the reality is the GeoCode for such location is really the only unifying piece of data between past historical and current location Place Names.

.....

 

As well I realize I could become more educated on utilizing SQLite to manage my RM database. I can and most likely will do this, but my thoughts are for those who might not have the same level of patience and ability to understand how to implement SQLite as a tool to manage their database(s).

[Renee Zamora]

In PlaceClean you can specify certain problems to focus on. The one "Invalid Characters" would help you find all the places with the < brackets > in the place field. If you just focus on one problem at a time the list becomes more manageable. Just uncheck the other options.

 

There is also a "Replace < brackets > with option. I change them all into: of, 

The < brackets > mean it is a computer generated place name. Not the actual place so "of" tells me I need to still find the correct place name. If I wasn't going to use "of" then I would remove the place name altogether since its not a real place associated with them.

 

Every time you clean a place name with PlaceClean it will keep that location in the Place List. It is not automatically merging them with places of the same name. I would use PlaceClean and then go through the locations in the Place List to merge the duplicates.

 

The reason the Place List will move to the name you just cleaned in the list is because the focus is on that location and not the next place in the list. It also makes the most logical sense as to what people are wanting to look at. It's hard jumping back and forth but it would be just as frustrating to "loose" the place you just cleaned in the list, especially if you need to continue working on it, typically to merge that place with duplicate place names.

 

When I bring a place over from FamilySearch I immediately open the Edit Person screen off the FamilySearch Person Tools and click on that fact. Then click the icon for the Place List. There I clean the place name and merge it with the correct place since in most cases I have duplicates. This keeps my Place List nice and clean.

 

With CountyCheck I think it would be to your advantage to clean up the place list and standardize them before running the CountyCheck report. Date with < brackets > are also computer generated, so I would at least put an "abt" before that date. If you go to the Fact Type List report there is an option for "Facts with Text Dates". I would work on cleaning those up first so the CountyCheck can recognize them as real dates too. 

[genealogy4primm@earthlink.]

In PlaceClean you can specify certain problems to focus on. The one "Invalid Characters" would help you find all the places with the < brackets > in the place field. If you just focus on one problem at a time the list becomes more manageable. Just uncheck the other options.

 

There is also a "Replace < brackets > with option. I change them all into: of, 

The < brackets > mean it is a computer generated place name. Not the actual place so "of" tells me I need to still find the correct place name. If I wasn't going to use "of" then I would remove the place name altogether since its not a real place associated with them.

 

Every time you clean a place name with PlaceClean it will keep that location in the Place List. It is not automatically merging them with places of the same name. I would use PlaceClean and then go through the locations in the Place List to merge the duplicates.

 

The reason the Place List will move to the name you just cleaned in the list is because the focus is on that location and not the next place in the list. It also makes the most logical sense as to what people are wanting to look at. It's hard jumping back and forth but it would be just as frustrating to "loose" the place you just cleaned in the list, especially if you need to continue working on it, typically to merge that place with duplicate place names.

 

When I bring a place over from FamilySearch I immediately open the Edit Person screen off the FamilySearch Person Tools and click on that fact. Then click the icon for the Place List. There I clean the place name and merge it with the correct place since in most cases I have duplicates. This keeps my Place List nice and clean.

 

With CountyCheck I think it would be to your advantage to clean up the place list and standardize them before running the CountyCheck report. Date with < brackets > are also computer generated, so I would at least put an "abt" before that date. If you go to the Fact Type List report there is an option for "Facts with Text Dates". I would work on cleaning those up first so the CountyCheck can recognize them as real dates too. 

 

Renee,

 

 Thank you for the response. I do appreciate the fact that you and others of Roots Magic actually reply with some rational suggestions.

 

I see the "of" in a place name quite often, and your rationale now makes more sense of why it is encountered so often. This is sort of similar to adding "Abt" before a date, which indicates it is not fully known the exact date.