Family Historian User Group

Hi, I have a query with Places and Addresses. If this has been dealt with elsewhere I do apologise and would ask that I be re-directed: thanks! When I first started working with FH4 (after spending some time with FTM 2010) I noticed how differently FH4 works with locations. It took me a while to understand the expectations of Place and Address fields. For example, Place: Ormskirk, Lancashire, England. Address: 60 Wigan Road. When I access Tools/Working with Data/Places, only the Place detail is available. I want to be able to both work with the Address field data AND have a report on the same. How, if this is possible, do I do this?

In anticipation,

Shaun Moorcroft

ID:4779

Don't forget you can use Fact Queries to work with both fields, so you can easily build a query to sort all your facts by Place and Address and filter them as you need.

There is no direct management for Addresses though.

Sadly there isn't a similar 'work with addresses' tool in Family Historian. There is a wish list item for it and also a related wishlist item regarding multimedia for places here.

I think there is a general consensus that the way that places and addresses are handled in Family Historian needs to be improved , largely because of the limitations of the GEDCOM standard that it is based upon. There really ought be a way to record a place/address as a single entity with multimedia, notes, sources, grid references, google (etc.) map links, etc. It would require a shift in the Family Historian philosophy of sticking to the GEDCOM standard and for this reason I'm not holding my breath for this to appear any time soon.

Thanks for the replies, Jane and Nick.

I read the two 'WISHLIST' links. I gather, then, that the problem lies with the standards and limitations of the GEDCOM framework, and that the only real way around the Address/Place problem is for the good people at FH to 'break the rules' and offer an update.

I am now toying with the idea of putting all my Address data BACK into the Place fields and forgetting the Address field altogether. I have enough work to be going on with though, family-history-wise (in fact I haven't done ANY research since starting with FH4 and Anscestral Sources) and I am concerned that using the Place field for both address (eg 1 House, 5 Court, Hodson Street) and what I understand to be the place bit (eg Liverpool, Lancashire, England) will make life within FH4 complicated.

What do others do? How is this 'location' problem, if you pardon the non-intended pun, addressed by other FH4 users?

Thanks,

Shaun Moorcroft

I never use the Place field, can't understand why it's there. Unless they do things differently outside the UK.

Hi Stevebye, hope you don't mind me asking, but if you don't use the Place field, and bearing in mind my initial query regarding not being able to report on anything typed into the Address field, how do YOU know the whereabouts of your 'people'. If one just uses the Address field then the Data: Places system is empty. Or am I missing something?

Cheers,

Shaun Moorcroft

[oops] Sorry Shaun, for Place read Address. [oops]

Hi Stevebye,

Sorry Shaun, for Place read Address.

So, do you just use the Place field for the complete 'address' - house number to country - leaving the Address field blank?

How do you, or anyone reading this in fact, deal with this when using Ancestral Sources...because if I were to only complete the Place field in AS then I would then have to manually adjust the Title field as the title would be very long and somewhat over-detailed.

Shaun Moorcroft

Ancestral Sources assumes that users will use the place field for the Town (e.g. Warrington, Lancashire, England) and the address for the location within the town (e.g. 15 Sankey Street). So if you enter a place, the address field has a drop-down list of all the addresses that have previously been recording against that place in your file.

Shaun,
Please also see the earlier discussion on this at http://www.fhug.org.uk/cgi-bin/index.cg ... y&num=4007.

Tools...Working with Data...Places and auto-completion of Place values could probably not be easily implemented for the Address field because that is a multi-line field, whereas Place is a single-line field.

I generally use the same approach as Adrian Bruce (his post on 12/10/09 in the above thread), e.g.:

Place: Westerhope, Northumberland
Address: St John's Church
               Whorlton

I could instead use Address: St John's Church, Whorlton
i.e. all on one line, but there is no guarantee of consistency and there is no limit to the number of continuation lines which, I think, would make auto-complete and Tools...Working with Data...Places much trickier to implement.

Hi, PeterR

When I type in the Place Field I can only do so as one line of writing. If I key ENTER at the end of the line there is no Return to a next line, therefore I would take this as a Single Line Field. The button at the end of the line opens up the Places List. However, the Address field is exactly the same (without a button). In fact only the NOTE field has a Return ability. So, I cannot do this

Place: Westerhope, Northumberland
Address: St John's Church
Whorlton

As a result of using the Address Field and not burdening the Place field with the whole 'location', the Places list is slowly deteriorating into 3 Columns of Town, County and Country. Any chart I create only shows that someone was born in a particular Town/County/Country and does not show the full address. So, annoying.

Nick says about AS

So if you enter a place, the address field has a drop-down list of all the addresses

Surely, FH could be made to 'address' the Address field in the same way that AS does?

Shaun Moorcroft

Shaun,
If you click in the Address field on the Facts tab of the Property Box, a button with 3 dots appears:

If you click that button a window opens in which you can type as much as you like on as many lines as you like:

I'm pretty sure that AS (of which I am a great fan, of course) shows only the first line of the Address field.

Thanks PeterR, In response to your last post: Thanks, I see what you meant now! Can anyone tell me what the purpose of the Address field in FH is when 1) if you type an address in the pop-up box as multiple lines it actually adversely affects how the words are presented, no commas just thick black lines (sorry I don't know how to paste examples as PeterR did in his response) and 2) the info can't be accessed, manipulated or reported on, except within the field itself...?

I'm pretty sure that AS (of which I am a great fan, of course) shows only the first line of the Address field.

But it also has a drop down list of previously included names. Something the FH Address field doesn't.

Anyhow's, going back to my original query, perhaps we will have to wait until the FH people decide to do something with the Address field.

Unless, again I am missing something of importance, ?!

Shaun Moorcroft

The GEDCOM Address allows multiple lines to be entered and therefore Family Historian allows multiple lines to be entered. However, I feel that the way that the data is presented in the properties dialogue implies that the address will usually be entered as a single line. Otherwise it would be displayed as a multi-line text box like the notes are. Family Historian is forced to display the vertical line (pipe/bar) characters to try to fit it onto one line.

As the Place field works as a single line of text separated by commas, I see no reason why the Address field can't be used in the same way. If you want to display a full address you can simply take the Address (e.g. 15 Sankey Street) and append a comma (and space) followed by the Place (e.g. Warrington, Lancashire) to form a full address: 15 Sankey Street, Warrington, Lancashire. Whereas if you have your Places recorded split by commas and your addresses by carriage returns then it is rather messier to join them together.

As I mentioned in my first post to this thread I think the whole handling of Places and Addresses is flawed but I feel the best work-around is to approach places and addresses in similar ways.

Shaun, please see my thread on this topic under Forums > V4 Usage Subject: Place and Address References which may offer you a solution.

Thanks, Tatewise

Shaun Moorcroft