* Map locations

[David Hawkins]

I have a very large number of relatives from Portsmouth, and I have been trying to locate them with the excellent map function. If I drag the map marker to any individual's actual location for birth, marriage or death, all markers for anyone from Portsmouth move to the same place - obviously. The only way I have found to distinguish places on the map is to put the full address in the facts, birth (marriage or death), place box. Then I can move the markers individually, and cover Portsmouth in pretty markers! However, then the full address appears on the tree diagram, where I only want to show the town, ie Portsmouth.

Is there any way to link the map marker to the address box without showing all details on the tree?

I have looked through FAQs, knowledge base and other correspondence, but cannot find any reference to this topic.

Any advice would be welcome. Many thanks

David Hawkins

[tatewise]

See glossary:places|> Places and Addresses that discusses this topic and has lots of links to Forum postings.

You have discovered a common dilemma.
FH only maps Place fields, so if you want that granularity must include Address details.
Some users go the whole hog and put everything in Place and nothing in Address.

The Rearrange Address and Place Parts Plugin lets you make that global change.

Let us assume that you have a logical column part structure to your Place names.
So the last column part is Country, the penultimate is County, and the previous one is Town.
e.g. ..., Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
Then you can use the =TextPart(...) function to extract just the Town part, 3rd from end.
e.g. =TextPart( %INDI.BIRT.PLAC%, -3, 1)
That must be applied to all fact items in your Text Scheme which should be a Clone copy to avoid disturbing the default.
See Help > Family Historian Help > Using Family Historian > Advanced Topics > Understanding Functions > Functions (all) > Text Part

[David Hawkins]

Thanks Mike

I have never seen the need to have a logical structure for place names in FH until now. When using a normal database, I always have several columns (house name, street 1 & 2, district, town, county, zipcode, country) to allow easy searching. In general, in FH I have entered only the town unless it is a common name, in which case I have added either the county or country as appropriate. I have been totally consistent with those, and double check them with the tools, work with data... functions, so every instance of a location is entered identically. However, different locations do not all conform to one standard.

I guess this lack of rigour on my part precludes the use of your suggestion?

David

[tatewise]

Yes, without any global structure it is going be a challenge!
I guess you have been using the SHORT format so that only the Town appears in Diagram boxes.
Or may be you used FULL format and just displayed whatever the Place recorded.

You say you have made your choice of format according to whether you think it is a common Place name or not.
I suspect you will discover that the FH geocoding service has a different view of what are common names worldwide.
So without County and Country you may find the plotting going astray.

I think the only solution is to use Tools > Work with Data > Places or the Records Window > Places tab and edit each Place name to include at least County and Country and perhaps leading <blank> comma parts too.
Then in Tools > Work with Data > Places you can sort columns by Country or County, etc, and all the other features we have been discussing become manageable.

[David Hawkins]

Mike

I must be using the FULL format as everything in the Place box is shown on the diagram. I don't remember selecting it - is that the default? For example, Newport, IoW is displayed in full, which is fine as that is what I want.

I have found some odd place plottings, but realise FH has different priorities and have corrected them easily.

Editing all Place entries is a monumental task, as there is over 30 years' work to go through with a huge number of places, but I guess I will have to bite the bullet. If only I had thought about this when I started.

Many thanks for your help

David

[tatewise]

The default is actually TIDY, which is the same as FULL but with any <blank>, entries tidied/hidden.

Use File > File Statistics and it will tell you how many Place Records need adjusting.
You can do just a few at a time, but do NOT attempt it via the Individual Property Box Facts tab Place fields.

[David Hawkins]

There are only 1837 Place Records! Thanks for the advice about how not to do it. I will start with the closest family and do a few and check them before moving on.

Many thanks once again

David