Family Historian User Group

Is there a way to sort the place name on two fields in the Tools>Work with data>Places screen? For example, I want to sort on the country name first then the State, province or equivalent fields to look for anomalies. If this is not possible, then could you add it to a future release.

Yes, just tick the Reverse Display Order option, and sort on left-hand Column, which is the Place field Last Column that will usually hold your Country name.

Also take a look at the Place Summary Report Plugin.

BTW: There is no point in asking us to add to a future release, because we are just the User Group and not Calico Pie the developers. You can either post in our New Wish List Request Forum or contact Calico Pie Support at their FH website.

Mike,
Even when you sot in reverse order, you are still only sorting on one field. Ricklach wants to sort on at least two fields, Country and State, some thing I personnaly would like to do, with County and Town.
As far as I can see, this is not possible in FH as it is. I have added it to the wishlist.
Mike L

Although not exactly what is being requested, use of the Reverse Display Order does give sorting on multiple columns and is the option I use when looking for discrepancies (particularly in spellings) as, for Places, it lists Countries (my last column) in alphabetical order then in County / State order within the Country and finally Town within the County.

Brent,
Show reverse order, just alters the order of the columns, it does not sort them. e.g. Town,County,Country becomes Country,County,Town, as can be seen in the two attachments showing the same entries. The only difference between the two images is that in one is shown in Reverse Order, and you can see no sorting took place.
i.e I can sort on Country OR County OR Town. What was requested, was the ability to sort on Country AND County AND Town
I think it must be a co-incidence in your case, that the end result is what it was.

Mike L,
Brent's end result is no coincidence, but he has applied a lefthand column sort.
Just like most other FH lists, simply click on any column heading to sort by that column.
In the Work with Data dialogues all the other columns are also automatically sorted from left to right in descending precedence.

A challenge with your Place name data is that it has inconsistent column Parts.
There is no single column Part that contains only Country names.
e.g. Yemen is in Part 2, or Part3 is missing altogether.
So the first step is to rationalise them by adding extra commas where necessary and filling in missing Country names.

Without that data consistency, any form of column sorting is impossible, or at least only partially useful.

Then the Work with Data dialogue will work as requested, and no New Wish List Request is required.

Although I didn't know this before, I agree with Brent, whether by design or accident, it also works for me. I also notice that it works right across the columns, unless you have a blank entry on one row (say 4th last) , then rows to the right become unsorted until a non blank if found in 4th last, then sorting resumes correctly.

David, it is sorting entirely rationally across all columns. It is simply that a 'blank' entry has highest priority in that group.

If the sorting of 'blank' entries sometimes looks inconsistent, it will be because the 'blank' entries have different numbers of space characters.

Mike, that's what I thought at first, although this doesn't seem to follow that:
I've checked the actual entries, there are no extra/missing spaces in there that could throw the sort order out.

Sorry, yes you are correct. It seems to sort identical 'blank' entries in an arbitrary order and ignore columns to the right.

Hi Forum

As an aside - I fell foul of this padding using 'Commas' as then you have to remember this when entering existing or new place names to keep the ordering consistent. Unless you will go and select from the list each time.

David

Mike,
My mistake, you are correct re sorting columns 1,2 & 3, something I hadn't noticed. However, as Davidm_uk has found out, it only seems to apply to a maximum of 4 columns! Understandable when you think about it, as 3 columns are there by default, and although Calico has anticipated an extra column for sorting, to expect them to write the code to anticipate 'n' extra columns is expecting too much!

David's scheme though, is not the usually recommended way of using places, as he includes Addresses in his Places data. Used the usual way, 3 columns would suffice for Places.

PS I'm aware of inconsistencies in my own Places data, and am slowly working my way through them, removing the unused ones, and correcting those with missing fields.

Sorry Mike, you are mistaken again.
If you check the earlier large screenshot by davidm_uk it illustrates sorting 5 columns OK, and in fact sorts the maximum of 10 columns OK.

The only anomaly is where a column is 'blank', which always sorts above all other values, but in an arbitrary order that inhibits the columns to the right from being sorted. I consider that a 'bug' that should be reported to Calico Pie to fix.

David Potter,
When entering existing Place names, FH auto-complete should usually ensure you get the commas correct.
Anyway, it is easy to make the necessary global corrections via the Work with Data dialogue Edit and Merge options.

Mike,

To me, in my defence, both screenshots clearly show only columns 1-4 sorted, with column 5 random, hence my guess that only first 4 columns are sorted.

I'll bow to your superior knowledge, if you tell me that it does sort on 10 columns. Calico are even better than I thought

Ignore the Rows with 'blanks' in 4th Last column.
Concentrate on the Rows with Southampton in 3rd Last column.
The 4th Last column is sorted perfectly.
The 5th Last column is sorted perfectly except where 4th Last is 'blank'.
If it were not for 'blanks' all columns would sort OK.

Mike,
You know better, but I still maintain, that the screen shots as shown do NOT show column 5 sorted, and I was just going by the evidence presented. Anyone, without knowing the problem with blank fields, would have come to the same conclusion.

Perhap, with a screenshot showing more more columns, I would have come to a different conclusion, but it wasn't, so I didn't.

tatewise wrote:... David Potter,
When entering existing Place names, FH auto-complete should usually ensure you get the commas correct. ...

Depending on what David meant, auto-complete is not helpful with leading commas and spaces. If I have ", Cheshire, England" already in my places, then "Ches" will not auto-complete to ", Cheshire, England". You need to type ", Ches". I did start the conversion but got so tied in knots trying to remember whether it was comma-space or space-comma, especially when they repeated, that I reverted.

I also had problems with "Adelaide, South Australia, Australia" pre and post the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia if I tried to put the "country" in the same column.

"Adelaide, South Australia, Australia" and "Adelaide, South Australia" look fine to me, even though the countries are in different columns.
"Adelaide, South Australia, Australia" and ", Adelaide, South Australia" isn't OK and "Adelaide, , South Australia" is no better.

It's up to you what you think is the least worse solution.

Sorry for the late reply but the format of PLACe ADDRess formats is a recurring problematic theme. I repeat again my method below which I find makes finding a place/address much easier with FH 'as it is now'. In this case everything sorts from the off. However, I fully agree that it would be nice to have much better sorting/ drop down/ find selection etc. If I have a lot of address input to do, I find it quickest to export my PLACes to a spreadsheet, find the closest address there and copy/paste it to the required PLACe field in FH. Sounds convoluted, but I find the drop down menu selections in FH very slow.

from Rearrange Address and Place Parts Plugin (12330)
Following the introduction of the "Rearrange Address and Place Parts Plugin" (RAPPP) I have again experimented with my PLACe comma separated fields ordering them with the largest field first e.g.

(N.B. This is for "modern" addresses to tie in with automatic geocoding with things like the Map Life Facts FH Plugin and Google Maps.
To be used if needed in conjunction with a PLACe SOURCE records where extra/old detail upsets auto geocoding OR for simply giving more historic detail about a place nand its people.)

[1] country
[2] state
[3] county
[4] Town or Large village
[5] small village if associated with nearby town OR area of town
[6] street
[7] house number or a place name understood by Google Maps (separate column to aid street number sorting)
[8] -" house number if no longer exist/ property name/ detail/ flat number" = extra FH searchable detail, not for Google maps search, might include old no longer existant house numbers.
(you need to put inside -"xxx" any detail that upsets Google Map search, as it ignores this, similar with Map Life Facts FH Plugin but minus sign not needed - this can be added with the LUA pattern mode in the Search and Replace plugin)
[9] post code
[10] possibly for lat/long as in TMG, but unfortunately not globally used, but would be Standard Gedcom.

I have found that within FH this makes it so much easier to find PLACes, especially when using the Place List (e.g. selecting a place for a Fact) which has rather limited search capabilities.

Drawbacks:
- not the standard order, but then it was never defined as far as I can tell for Gedcom, so it might confuse other recipient programs.
- If doing automatic geocoding type searches with things like Google Maps (and hence Map Life Facts Plugin) sometimes does not give as good results which is more important once outside of FH.

So, to get around this for say Map Life Facts Plugin:
- Run RAPPP to get the fileds in the best order for automatic geocoding searching.
e.g.
[1] house number or a place name understood by Google Maps
[2] street
[3] small village if associated with nearby town OR area of town
[4] Town or Large village
[5] county
[6] state
[7] country
[8] post code
[9] -" property name/detail/flat number" not forgetting the -""
[10] possibly for lat/long as in TMG, but unfortunately not globally used, but would be Standard Gedcom.

- Then perform Map Life Facts Plugin, (or export as Gedcom etc etc)
- when all complete, simply rerun RAPPP again putting the fields in the order you wish for FH use.

Try it on a copied project, only takes a few minutes. You will be amazed at how much faster it is to find PLACes via the Place List.