Data clean up

[Vicki 0]

I imported data from Family History years ago and did not realize that some data did not move into their proper field. You ask, You are just now discovering this? Yes, with TMG 7 and renewed interest in cleaning up my data and sharing with family (by request).

 

Is there a utility that will assist me with cleanup or is this a manual excerise? Example--Girard, KS is in the Country field. I tried Terry's suggestion in his "Primer" to move the data, but then the city, state is in one field. I admit I don't remember if I tried to double click in the field to remove the KS and perhaps a double click isn't allowed.

 

Thanks.

[John Cardinal 0]

My TMG Utility program (link below) has a "Change Place Parts" facility which can help with this task. You define some rules that describe what you want it to do, and then it processes each place according to those rules. So, for example, you could tell it to find every place where the "County" field ends with ", KS". FOr each such place, delete the suffix ", KS" and set the "State" field to "KS".

 

You can do a "dry run" to preview the results before actually changing anything, and if you did, you 'd see the rules above would leave "Girard" in the Country field. Presumably, other places in KS would also have the wrong value in the Country field. You might decide to amend the rule to move whatever remains in the Country field to the "City" field. The rules would be:

 

If Country ends with ", KS"Change Country delete suffix ", KS"And Change City copy CountryAnd Change Country set to ""

I suspect that in addition to "Girard, KS" in the Country field, you might also have county names followed by ", KS" in the Country field. Given the rules above, those county names would end up in the City field. You could write some rules to help move those values from the City field to the County field as long as there is something identifiable in the name, like the suffix "Co." or "County" or whatever.

 

Whether or not Change Place Parts will help depends on how many places you have to edit, and how many can be fixed by applying logic like the above. Clearly, it's not worth the effort to write the rule, and test it, to change a single place. If you have dozens of places that a ruyle can fix, well, then taking the time to learn Change Place Parts and test the rules you write is probably worth it. In addition to making many edits quickly, Change Place Parts will be thorough. It won't miss a place that needs fixing because it's tired: well written rules will change every place that meets the filter criteria that is part of the rules.

 

If you have specific questions about how to use Change Place Parts, you can respond here or ask a question on the TMG-L mailing list. I tend to check the mailing list more frequently...

[Vicki 0]

I imported data from Family History years ago and did not realize that some data did not move into their proper field. You ask, You are just now discovering this? Yes, with TMG 7 and renewed interest in cleaning up my data and sharing with family (by request).

 

Is there a utility that will assist me with cleanup or is this a manual excerise? Example--Girard, KS is in the Country field. I tried Terry's suggestion in his "Primer" to move the data, but then the city, state is in one field. I admit I don't remember if I tried to double click in the field to remove the KS and perhaps a double click isn't allowed.

 

Thanks.

 

Thank you for the information. Unfortunately, I have numerous one/two occurrances where the city, state is in the country field. I intend to try your utility program for the challenge of trying something new. I may find other 'problems' in my project which the utility program will be a time saver.

 

Vicki

[nbradley 0]

Vicki

 

Unless to have hundreds of problems it is pretty easy to fix everything from within the Master Place List. CTRL Left Arrow or CTRL Right Arrow will help you fix those places that are merely sitting under the wrong heading. Where you have concatenated fields use the Edit button within the MPL. One change in the MPL will fix all instances in your data. The Events button is a much more long winded fix.

 

John's utility is magic if you have lots to fix.

[Vicki 0]

Thank you for the help on how to correct the problem in my database. Unfortunately, I do have hundreds to fix so I am going to try John's utility program and hopefully save time and frustration.

 

If I only knew then what I know now...

 

Cheerio