How do I globally change place fields by tag date?

[Dave Dalton 0]

As I am entering the phase where I am refining my TMG database, now up to about 900 primary names, I need to change many of the place names. As an example, for people who migrated to Louisiana before the establishment of civil parishes (counties) in 1807, I need to change event tag county entries that currently state, say, "St. James Parish", to "Acadian Coast", along with the appropriate changes in the other place fields. Obviously, in this example for those event tags with dates after 1807, "St. James Parish" would remain. So to do this in batch mode, I need to filter on tag date and change only the tags that meet the date criteria.

 

I see no way to do this, including using John Cardinal's Utility. Using the List of People, I could filter on place field names and dates, and set a flag. But once I've done that, there is no where else to go to get the rest of it done. Doing this manually, a tag at a time, will take forever.

 

Any suggestions?

Thanks, Dave D.

[Michael Hannah 0]

Sorry, Dave, I cannot think of a way to do this. Maybe some other user will be more creative.

 

Your current situation is a good example of why I "try" to make a point of using the place information supplied in the source that is contemporary for that event. Such a source "should" be using the name as it was known by then. You may have already thought of this, but while you are making such changes, you may want to add to the Master Place entry a "Start year" and "End year" for the place. Then if your Preferences // Program Options // Warnings are checked, TMG will warn you whenever you enter a new event, or modify an existing event, that the place is outside the appropriate date range.

 

Here's hoping some other user will have a better idea,

[Wiley 0]

Dave, I think John Cardinal's Utility may work. It may take a couple of passes to complete. Re-read the explantion of 'Filters' and 'Rules' on his site with reference to changing place parts. Do write out what your fileters and rules are and 'play' computer with a number of records to see if it works.

 

If you decide to try, FIRST make a complete backup of your project to where you normaly backup, then make a second complete backup to an external media, then make a third complete backup to a different external media. (Backups have been known to be corrupted.)

 

Pass 1:

IF

[date/year]<= 1807

AND

[County]= St. James Parish

THEN

the Rule would move Acadian Coast to [County]

ENDIF.

 

That would complete Pass 1. Throughly check that all is correct. If not try to figure out why, restore you project from a backup and try again until it is right.

 

When you get it right, make the three complete backups as above.

 

Pass 2: (there is no reason to chck the date as you have done that in Pass 1. All the correct records were selcted/changed.)

IF

[County]=Acadian Coast

THEN

the Rule would move whatever you want to the other place fields

ENDIF.

 

That would complete Pass 2. Throughly check that all is correct. If not try to figure out why, restore you project from a backup made after Pass 1 and try again until it is right.

 

Do one step at a time. Verify and check after each pass.

[John Cardinal 0]

IF

[date/year]Sorry, that won't work. The Change Place Parts feature changes place records, not events, and place records don't have a date. Place records are used by one or more events, and those have dates, but given that place records are shared, the place record isn't associated with a single date.

[Dave Dalton 0]

Thanks for the replies. Michael, there is simply no way to avoid the need to go in later and finesse the entries, as I am learning history as I am researching (and entering) genealogical records. So there is a need to do this now with my several hundred entries and there probably will be a need to do this again to a smaller degree in the future.

 

An "official" batch program for making global entry changes would be a welcome addition to TMG. John, with that said, be assured that I have used your utility many times with excellent results. A suggestion for perhaps a fairly easy enhancement would be to allow the use of flags to filter records to be changed in many of your utility functions. It's easy to set a flag in TMG as an output for just about anything, and then using that flag as a filter to make a global change in your utility would really enhance the utility.

 

Thanks again,

Dave Dalton

[JanisR 0]

While this does not completely diminish the manual labor, it helps some.

 

Locate events by place name using the Master Place list, select the place, then click on the Events button. All of the events at that place come up and you can see the date as well as both principals and the event tag type. Just double-click an event in the right time period and change the place. Close the event and you go back to the event list. Work your way through that way. Whatever events you change the place for disappear from the list. I used this to change my United States of America (Country) fields to British America. (As to the date, I cheated and started at 4 July 1776, unwilling to deal with allthe mess between.) I have used the same tactic for several other place changes including changing County to Parish on a couple stray Louisiana Parishes just now.

 

Caution, the Event LIST will still look like that place is unchanged until you do an optimize I believe.

[John Cardinal 0]

A suggestion for perhaps a fairly easy enhancement would be to allow the use of flags to filter records to be changed in many of your utility functions. It's easy to set a flag in TMG as an output for just about anything, and then using that flag as a filter to make a global change in your utility would really enhance the utility.

Dave,

 

Many features in TMG Utility already have that ability. At the bottom of the TMG Utility window there is a [set Flag Filter] button. It is enabled for many functions. If you click the button, it opens a window where you designate which TMG flag you want to use to restrict processing to a subset of people.

 

John

[Dave Dalton 0]

Many features in TMG Utility already have that ability. At the bottom of the TMG Utility window there is a [set Flag Filter]. It is enabled for many functions. If yoiu click the button, it opens a window where you designate which TMG flag you want to use to restrict processing to a subset of people.

John, I missed that capability at the bottom of the screen. Thanks for pointing it out. However, it doesn't help with my specific need, as I would want to [Change Place Parts] based on a flag I set that results from filtering dates, and the [set Flag Filter] is not available for that function. But since you have already coded the [set Flag Filter], perhaps it would be a fairly simple task to extend it to Places and other functions?

 

Thanks, Dave

[John Cardinal 0]

Dave,

 

Sorry, but it's not a simple addition. The [set Flag Filter] function is available in the places where a change can be restricted to a single person. In this case, a single place can be shared by multiple events, and each event can be assigned to one or two principals and multiple witnesses, so interpreting how the flag filter should limit the places is non-trivial. One approach would be to have TMG Utility determine if any person associated with the place passed the filter, and if so, clone the place record and only make changes to the clone. That's far from perfect, as a person's event might reference the same place more than once, and it might be desirable to change some of the places but not all. So, for example, a person who lived at the time of the Amer. Rev. could have events before the revolution that refer to the colonies and events after the revolution that refer to the states. The flag filter would either select the person or not, and the place would be changed (or not) in all the events, not in the ones before or after the political change. I don't want to disappoint you, but it's unlikely I'll modify the Change Place Parts feature given the above. I *might* implement an ability to make bulk changes to places based on the characteristics of the events to which the places are attached. That raises similar issues, and the solution would have to introduce new places in order to avoid the issue with a place that is shared by one or more events that pass the filters and one or more events where it doesn't.

[Dave Dalton 0]

Sorry, but it's not a simple addition.

Shucks! I suppose I will have to spend a few days sometime in the future manually changing place names to correctly identify what they were called when. Thanks for all the input.

 

Dave Dalton