Master Place List - Please Help Me Shrink my 33,000+ list of places

[breamefford 0]

1. First request is some ability to have some sort of database of all the places out there, so as we're typing a place for a new tag, we're prompted with a location. It's too easy to misspell and omit information, and I really would like all my places to be uniform. I don't want to constantly be having to monitor the Master Place List and cleaning it up. If we had to choose from a Standard list of places and got a warning if we weren't using a known place, then there would be so many less mistakes to correct. And those people that don't want that warning, can just turn it off in the preferences.

 

2. Second request is about the Master Place List being cumbersome to clean up. Since I have imported a lot of data into my program, I have a lot of places that are in the incorrect format. And a lot of data that has been imported into the Place List, that should be notes and are not a place. I've got thousands of tags with ID#'s that I just want to delete. But it takes me 30-45 sec to delete just one of these records, because my master place list has to collect places & update master place list. It would take me months to clean this up! There has got to be a better way to clean up the Master Place list.

[Terry Reigel 0]

You item # 1 exists, mostly. To reuse a recently used place, put the cursor in the field you want to recall and use the Repeat function - the F3 key. Press it more than once to get the last 15 values for that field. Or, use Ctrl-F3 to bring up a list of the last 15 values and choose from the list. (this works in almost all fields, not must for places.)

 

Alternatively, use the Search function - F2. Place the cursor in the lowest-ranking place you want to recall, and press F2. Type a few letters of the place you want, and choose from the list. This function, in contrast to the Repeat function, enters all the higher-ranking place fields that are present in the item you choose. But since it doesn't change any lower-ranking fields than the one you start in, they are preserved. This is useful, for example, when you add a new street address in an existing city. Enter the address in Details, then move the cursor to City, press F2, and select the city, county, and state.

 

For cleaning up Places that contain non-place data, open the Master Place list, select the place in question, and click the Events button. You can then select the Tag in question and edit it to move the non-place data to the Memo field, then return to the Master Place list without waiting for it to collect again the information needed to open it, so you can move quickly to the next case. Note that when you do this, the Place item with the erroneous data is not removed from the list until you run Optimize in the File > Maintenance menu.

[AndyH3rd 0]

1. First request is some ability to have some sort of database of all the places out there, so as we're typing a place for a new tag, we're prompted with a location. It's too easy to misspell and omit information, and I really would like all my places to be uniform. I don't want to constantly be having to monitor the Master Place List and cleaning it up. If we had to choose from a Standard list of places and got a warning if we weren't using a known place, then there would be so many less mistakes to correct. And those people that don't want that warning, can just turn it off in the preferences.

 

2. Second request is about the Master Place List being cumbersome to clean up. Since I have imported a lot of data into my program, I have a lot of places that are in the incorrect format. And a lot of data that has been imported into the Place List, that should be notes and are not a place. I've got thousands of tags with ID#'s that I just want to delete. But it takes me 30-45 sec to delete just one of these records, because my master place list has to collect places & update master place list. It would take me months to clean this up! There has got to be a better way to clean up the Master Place list.

 

1). Do you have any idea of what you are asking for?

You say "all the places out there". That would be a database that included every known name during any time period for each place on earth. There is not now, and probably never will be, such a database.

Even if there were such a database to have it consulted in real time as you type a place it would put such a performance hit on the system (and the system better be a supercomputer to even think about running such an application) as to make it almost totally useless.

 

2). I found out a long time ago the best way to keep the Master Place List clean is to not import locations into it. I rarely import anything into my database but on the handful of Gedcoms I've imported over the years I always strip location beforehand. I've found it takes less time to re-add them than to clean them up later.

[Jim Byram 0]

It sounds like you are doing Family Tree Maker imports. If that's the case, I have some suggestions to make things easier with the place issue.

[John Cardinal 0]

If you need to make the same change to multiple place records, such as changing "Co." and "Cty." to "County", you should check out the Change Place Parts feature in my TMG Utility program.

[breamefford 0]

You item # 1 exists, mostly. To reuse a recently used place, put the cursor in the field you want to recall and use the Repeat function - the F3 key. Press it more than once to get the last 15 values for that field. Or, use Ctrl-F3 to bring up a list of the last 15 values and choose from the list. (this works in almost all fields, not must for places.)

 

Alternatively, use the Search function - F2. Place the cursor in the lowest-ranking place you want to recall, and press F2. Type a few letters of the place you want, and choose from the list. This function, in contrast to the Repeat function, enters all the higher-ranking place fields that are present in the item you choose. But since it doesn't change any lower-ranking fields than the one you start in, they are preserved. This is useful, for example, when you add a new street address in an existing city. Enter the address in Details, then move the cursor to City, press F2, and select the city, county, and state.

 

For cleaning up Places that contain non-place data, open the Master Place list, select the place in question, and click the Events button. You can then select the Tag in question and edit it to move the non-place data to the Memo field, then return to the Master Place list without waiting for it to collect again the information needed to open it, so you can move quickly to the next case. Note that when you do this, the Place item with the erroneous data is not removed from the list until you run Optimize in the File > Maintenance menu.

 

 

Thanks for the suggestions Terry. I have always used F3. It definitely makes data entry quick, but not necessarily accurate. I haven't used F2 because of the message that always pops up that it might take a long time to search for values, but that looks like a much better option to help the places be consistent.

 

And thanks for the suggestion on how to avoid the database from collecting data. I'll give that a try.

[breamefford 0]

1. First request is some ability to have some sort of database of all the places out there, so as we're typing a place for a new tag, we're prompted with a location. It's too easy to misspell and omit information, and I really would like all my places to be uniform. I don't want to constantly be having to monitor the Master Place List and cleaning it up. If we had to choose from a Standard list of places and got a warning if we weren't using a known place, then there would be so many less mistakes to correct. And those people that don't want that warning, can just turn it off in the preferences.

 

2. Second request is about the Master Place List being cumbersome to clean up. Since I have imported a lot of data into my program, I have a lot of places that are in the incorrect format. And a lot of data that has been imported into the Place List, that should be notes and are not a place. I've got thousands of tags with ID#'s that I just want to delete. But it takes me 30-45 sec to delete just one of these records, because my master place list has to collect places & update master place list. It would take me months to clean this up! There has got to be a better way to clean up the Master Place list.

 

1). Do you have any idea of what you are asking for?

You say "all the places out there". That would be a database that included every known name during any time period for each place on earth. There is not now, and probably never will be, such a database.

Even if there were such a database to have it consulted in real time as you type a place it would put such a performance hit on the system (and the system better be a supercomputer to even think about running such an application) as to make it almost totally useless.

 

2). I found out a long time ago the best way to keep the Master Place List clean is to not import locations into it. I rarely import anything into my database but on the handful of Gedcoms I've imported over the years I always strip location beforehand. I've found it takes less time to re-add them than to clean them up later.

 

 

There's a program called Family Insight that actually takes all of your places and compares them against a database and gives you suggestions of corrections. I have only used it once, but from what I remember I was blown away at how many US and foreign country places it recognized. To have something like that incorporated into TMG would be amazingly powerful!

[breamefford 0]

If you need to make the same change to multiple place records, such as changing "Co." and "Cty." to "County", you should check out the Change Place Parts feature in my TMG Utility program.

 

Can it add Co. to a place if there is none? Thanks for creating such a powerful utility to help fill in the gaps of TMG. Any chance you will create anything to help LDS users sync with the new Family Search API? I haven't heard from TMG about that request, and have a feeling it's not on their priority list.

[Terry Reigel 0]

Thanks for the suggestions Terry. I have always used F3. It definitely makes data entry quick, but not necessarily accurate. I haven't used F2 because of the message that always pops up that it might take a long time to search for values, but that looks like a much better option to help the places be consistent.

You're welcome. 

 

The delay on use of F2 was real once upon a time, but I don't find it noticeable on my much-larger project now. You can turn off the warning by un-checking the box on that screen, which makes it much quicker.

[John Cardinal 0]

Can it add Co. to a place if there is none?

Yes, but to use that capability effectively you need some other way to limit the change to a subset of the records. Something like this:

 

- If the County field is not empty

- And if the County field does not contain "County"

- And if the County field does not contain "Co."

 

Then

 

- Append " Co." to the County field.

 

Thanks for creating such a powerful utility to help fill in the gaps of TMG. Any chance you will create anything to help LDS users sync with the new Family Search API?

Probably not. I've got my hands full.