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

FTM2012 (704) - Place Name Hierarchies - Historical Places

Another new feature in the 704 update, was the ability to move our Historical Place names into the new Hierarchical structure of Family Tree Maker. I have a bunch of them, that I marked as Ignore in the past. Now I can put them into the new format. That doesn't mean that I have completely ignored them, but have a better chance of placing them on a map in a historical view, over a current map.

I have a lot of ancestors in "historical" Maryland. There were parishes and I have recorded them in that manner.

When selecting St. Anne's Parish, Maryland, there is a warning in the center panel. There maybe options and other screens, depending on the location and how you entered the data.

 In the past, this entry was ignored, so there is no ICON to the Right of the Place Name. However, clicking on the field, in the Right Panel, the Pencil ICON will appear and the new Pop-up window will appear.

In an earlier blog post, I mentioned what the last paragraph said:

Place Detail (historical name, address, Church, Cemetery, etc.)

Before proceeding, I suggest that you Back Up your file (File Menu).

 The existing Place Name is in the lower field, but by clicking on the UpArrow to the left of that place name, FTM2012 will move the information up to the first comma, into the upper field. So St. Anne's Parish is not in the upper field, and I can now put Anne Arundel Co., Maryland into the correct format for the Place Name authority. You will not, that since my existing file had Anne Arundel Co., Maryland, USA in the file, it is presented. I don't want that, so I select the correct format (without the Co.,)

 Clicking on Replace St. Anne's Parish is now is the Hierarchical format.

Looking back at the "old" format, there is another entry. So this process is repeated.

Since I have already made the new entry, I RIGHT click on the Old Place Name and select Replace With Other Place Name, where I select the one just created.

 Watch carefully, what you create and what you replace the old format with selecting the new format.

 You will be asked "Are you sure..." and Yes is the correct answer.

Lot's of clean up to do.

Note: I do suggest that you run the Compact File AND the Back Up frequently, as you clean up your file.


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Copyright © 2012 by H R Worthington

FTM2012 (704) - Place Name Hierarchies - Resolve Addresses

I don't know about you, but I have a lot of Street Addresses in my Database. I mark them all Private, but they don't (or should I say had not) fit into the Place field in the past.

The the update to FTM2012, this issue has been resolved. This example has 4 street / complete addresses. In the Past, I had to Ignore the Place Name warning. Also, note the "Lock" on the left of the Address Fact Name. That is an indication that the fact is private.

Selecting the first entry, will put that information into the Right Panel. At this point, there the warning ICON is NOT there, because I had ignored that warning. However, clicking into that field, the Pencil (edit) ICON will appear to the Right, clicking on the ICON will open a new window. Please note what that window says:

Place detail (historical name, address, church, cemetery, etc).

 The item is selected. Just below that Place Detail text, on the left are two arrows. The top pointing down, and the bottom one pointing up. Will click on the bottom arrow. That will take that first part of that address entry and move it to the upper Place detail field.

 So, the Address is in the Place Detail field and the City remains, with the Place Name authority below that. Clicking on Replace, that will replace the "new" place name with the Place Name authority Place name.

Now in this case, there were 4 such entries for that address. You CAN, although I don't to that, as I prefer to do one entry at a time, update those 4 entries.

 The Result is the New Place Name, with the Pin AND the Full Place Name in the full Hierarchical format. State, County, City, Address, in this case.

 Looking back to that first screen, the first entry has not been updated and the address is in the new format.



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Copyright © 2012 by H R Worthington

FTM2012 (704) - Place Name Hierarchies - Resolve All

With the 704 update, we may find that our Place Names have become UnResolved. From the best that I can tell, this is to remind us to put the Place Names into the Hierarchical format.

But, and old friend, feature, will help us out, at least getting most of our formerly resolved place names into the new format.

Going to the Place Workspace, and the ICON on the right of the List of Place names (Resolve All), clicking on that will bring up a reminder to Back Up your file. Please take that offer.

After the back up this screen will be presented.

The first two hi-lighted places are the correct Place Name, but USA was missing. Must not have caught that before. So, putting a check mark in the 2nd column will update those places.

I have 1,382 Place Names in my file. There were 337 Places to be resolved.

 On of the places really belonged into the Description field, so a check mark in the third from the Right box (Description). That will move the information in the Place field to the Description field.

 At the end, I ended up with 301. I will leave them, as looking at the list as I went through, more research was needed. Some were still Historical Place Names.

More on that will follow.
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Copyright © 2012 by H R Worthington

FTM2012 (704) - Place Name Hierarchies

Details of the 704 Update can be found here:

http://www.familytreemaker.com/Support/Patch21

 A new feature for FTM2012 is this:

Place Name Hierarchies—Place names can now better accommodate addresses and other place detail (such as cemetery, church, hospital, or historical names, etc.). This new capability also allows places to be displayed as part of their hierarchical structure if desired (this can be turned on or off).

 What does this mean? There will details to be posted in the future. This blog post will just show what it looks like.

Please note, that is appears that all place names are "unresolved". It appears to me, that what this means is that we have the option to put our Place Names into this new Hierarchical format or not.

When we go to the Place Workspace, we will see three new ICONs at the top of the Place Name list. The first ICON is "Show place names as a flat list" This would be the existing format, more or less, or with the new "hierarchy turned off".

My examples will show that I have done some work in putting my existing Place Names into the new format, so that I have examples to share.

Example below..

The next ICON is where ALL nodes are Expanded.

As the pop-out says, ALL nodes will be expanded. I have already put some of my Kansas Place Names into this format. Follow up blog posts will show how that is done.

For example, this is my listing for Places in Kansas.

This shows the Counties and the Place names within the county.

If you were to start in the normal mode, you would scroll down the Place Names and you will see a Right Pointing Arrow. These arrows are at the County Level. Clicking on that Arrow will expand THAT Place (country)

 Here is a partial list from the USA being expanded, meaning to the State Level. Notice the Right pointing arrows again, clicking would then expand that state to the next level.

You can expand ALL place Names in the 2nd ICON, you can expand one country, or one state, as you are working in that area.

To Collapse them all, the 3rd ICON is used.

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Copyright © 2012 by H R Worthington