FTM2014 - Place Workspace - Unresolved Place Names

Regarding: FTM2014 - Place Name Importance

The issue was brought up about the ability to have one "button" to push, to resolve all of the Unresolved Place Names.  This is not a new feature, but I think it is important to spend a few minutes understanding the Resolve All command.

The Unresolved Place Names are very important when you want to use the Map Feature. I use this feature to see who had an event / fact in a specific location, mainly because the Place Name feature allows us to standardize the Place Names. This feature has us use the Location, (which might be a city), County, State, and Country format, without the use of the word County. Location might be a Township, but the word Township won't be in the place name.

I wrote about this earlier: Consistency Check Reminders part of the FTM2012 Places Workspace

There doesn't appear to be anything new in this area, but based on the comments about the Place Name Importance blog post, I thought I would review the Resolve All feature again.

The Place Workspace:

A review of the ICONs in the upper left of the Place Workspace shows down the Left Column all Place Names that are NOT Resolved. At the top of that Left Hand Panel are 4 ICONs.

• Flat View - Turns the Flat View On or Off. I normally don't turn it off and have the Hierachy View on
• Expand All - In the Place Names at the Country, State, County, local level all expanded
• Collapse All - Turns the Expand All off
• Resolve All 

 

Example of the Hierachy View on

Notice the Yellow in the Arizona box? That is a right pointing arrow. It's difficult to see on this screen capture, but can be seen on your display. That indicates that it can be expanded, like California is below and Los Angeles is below that. The other thing to notice is the Check Mark that has replaced the Question Mark (?) in the earlier graphic. That indicates that the Place Name has been resolved.

The Expand All, Collapse All will do just that for those countries where the Place Names have been resolved. In the screen capture above, I did NOT use the Expand All, I manually expanded USA, California and Los Angeles.

For this blog post, we are going to Resolve All.

Selecting the Resolve All ICON, the Back Up window will open. I STRONGLY Recommend that you take that option.

Clicked on YES which brought up the normal Back Up window. I take all of the options, with check marks in the lower Left side of the screen. AND I normally select my External Drive for the Location of the Back Up. For this purpose, I am left FTM2014 back up to the Default, My Documents / Family Tree Maker folder.

The Back Up is Processed as usual

And completed.

Clicking OK will bring up the Resolve All screen

This is a list of ALL of my Unresolved Place Names.

A little closer view of the top part of that screen

There are 5 places for Check Marks

• Unrecognized Place Name
• Suggested Place Name
• Desc
• Ignore
• Other

From the Help Menu (F1) from that Resolve Place Name window we see:

Resolve All Place Names

Resolve All Place Names helps you correct location names that are not found in the Family Tree Maker database. You can correct the name so it is spelled correctly and in a consistent format throughout your tree file or have Family Tree Maker accept the place name as you entered it.

Family Tree Maker checks each place name against its database to determine if the location is known. If the name is not found, it is listed in the Resolve All Place Names dialog box. You have a number of options for handling each place name. The following table describes the options available in the Resolve All Place Names dialog box.

 Each of the 5 options are described there. I'll not post that here. Basically the Description means that the data may belong on the Place Name Description field, like the name of a cemetery; Ignore simply means to Ignore the Place Name warning.

The Suggested Place Name column is what Bing and Family Tree Maker "think" the place name should be.

In my case, I have used this feature in the FTM2012 Place Workspace blog posts.

But why do I still have Unresolved Place Names? Here are a couple of examples:

• South River Monthly Meeting
• Shewan, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Sharston Hall, Manchester, England
• Saint Georges Cemetery, Harford, Maryland, USA
• Penndenny, Annapolis, Anne Arundel, Maryland, USA
• All Hallows Parish, Anne Arundel, Maryland, USA

Each of the location names have been found in source material. Many are historical place names. All Hallows Parish, Anne Arundel, Maryland, USA being one of them. Pre-county times in Maryland. Shewan is a Property Name. The first entry is a Quaker Meeting Name. They aren't resolved because I haven't been able to research where those locations WERE and where they might be on today's map. I don't want to Ignore these place names, I want to research them, but haven't gotten them manually resolved. I work on them frequently.

The Map feature is very important to me, and I want it to be as accurate as possible.


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Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington