Change place names

[klaesser]

I have a lot of place names I would like to have the same : example Montreal, PQ, Montreal Que, Montreal Quebec Etcetera. Is there a way to mass change these to jjust one name

Thanks Ken

[theKiwi]

Yes - you can edit them in the Places list - open the ones that are wrong by double clicking them, and change it to what is correct. That will merge with the other correct one. Repeat until you have only the single correct one left.

Search the Manual for "merging places" - without the "" marks.

Roger

[klaesser]

Thank you so much for the quick respnce

[eventide]

On a similar note, does anyone know a way to change "place names " in the "locality" field in sources globally?

[bmohr]

Yes - you can edit them in the Places list - open the ones that are wrong by double clicking them, and change it to what is correct. That will merge with the other correct one. Repeat until you have only the single correct one left.

It's even easier than that! In the place list, you can drag a place name and drop it onto another. A dialog will appear offering to merge the first into the second. Click "Change" and you're done.

[bmohr]

On a similar note, does anyone know a way to change "place names " in the "locality" field in sources globally?

As far as I know this isn't possible, but it's a great feature request! I'd love to be able to mark source fields as places (or dates!) and get all the handy features those kinds of fields get for people and families.

[Gregg]

On a similar note, does anyone know a way to change "place names " in the "locality" field in sources globally?

If the place name you want to change is unique and does not appear in any other structured source fields you can use Find and Replace. Click on "Find" in the navbar on the left and then click the "Find and Replace" button. The "Where" popup menu has an option for structured source fields.

It might be a good idea to make a backup copy of your family file before doing this in case you get an unexpected result.

[eventide]

Thanks Greg. That seems tricky. Seems like you need to know ahead of time exactly what values you want to replace. I didn't see anywhere you could do a "find" first.

Here's my example. I am finding that I may have structure my localities differently and want to normalize them.

For example, I may have
Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn, NY
brooklyn, NY, USA

With places, I can just click on the places icon and see the inconsistencies - or do a search for Brooklyn and see what pops up and then fix them. With find and replace I need to know ahead of time what my mistake is and then at that same moment run a replace,. Sounds risky.

Brad is right - this would be a great feature request.

[A Hougie]

In the "Places" drop down list on the right, you can either drag and drop or amend each of these places and it will change them wherever they are used.

[Tony Voss]

The ability to edit a place name by double clicking it in the places list is great, as is the reverse name sort. But I have hundreds of changes to make as I am adding the country name on the end, e.g. Dorset -> Dorset, England.
Trouble is each time I change one, the focus moves with it to its new place and I spend ages scrolling back to where I was to deal with the next one, i.e. Dorset -> Dorset, England. It is tedious in the extreme.
I appealed to the Leister folk for an option to keep the focus at the 'from' place in the list (maybe option click), but they have declined to make this change.
Any suggestions?
A bulk edit of place names with pattern matching would be just wonderful.

[Bob White]

Thanks Greg. That seems tricky. Seems like you need to know ahead of time exactly what values you want to replace. I didn't see anywhere you could do a "find" first.

Here's my example. I am finding that I may have structure my localities differently and want to normalize them.

For example, I may have
Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn, NY
brooklyn, NY, USA

With places, I can just click on the places icon and see the inconsistencies - or do a search for Brooklyn and see what pops up and then fix them. With find and replace I need to know ahead of time what my mistake is and then at that same moment run a replace,. Sounds risky.

Brad is right - this would be a great feature request.

......but there is one more step left out in the example -- making sure that there is a "correct" entry for the era. Brooklyn is in Kings County in New York State. It is also a borough that is coterminous with Kings County. I know everyone has their own way of doing things BUT... I would correct any single one of the entries for the three listed which would give you a fourth entry of Brooklyn, Kings, New York. I would then proceed to drag the found three onto the correct (by my style) entry.

In Tony's example, I just looked up Dorset and it turns out to be a county. I would record as Dorset County, England. Otherwise, someone looking at my work may thing Dorset is a city and waste time trying to find that city.

[Jan Powell]

…I just looked up Dorset and it turns out to be a county. I would record as Dorset County, England. Otherwise, someone looking at my work may thing Dorset is a city and waste time trying to find that city.

I would definitely not write it as Dorset County. "County" in the United Kingdom is the equivalent of "state" in the United States of America. That being the case, leave "County" out. One wouldn't write, as an example, "Calfornia State" or "Michigan State" or "State Texas". The same applies in the United Kingdom.

In terms of looking up the term "Dorset" any good atlas, online or in hard copy, will sort that out.

[Tony Voss]

I would definitely not write it as Dorset County. "County" in the United Kingdom is the equivalent of "state" in the United States of America. That being the case, leave "County" out. One wouldn't write, as an example, "Calfornia State" or "Michigan State" or "State Texas". The same applies in the United Kingdom.

In terms of looking up the term "Dorset" any good atlas, online or in hard copy, will sort that out.

This is where being British (or at least brought up in Britain) is helpful - it is complicated and completely irregular. Many counties (the shire ones) take a suffix such as Herfordshire which distinguishes it from the county town after which it is named. e.g. Herefordshire distinguishes the county from the city of Hereford. But not all counties can take the shire suffix - Cornwallshire would have us falling over laughing. You really do have to know case by case. In a few cases it is optional and both are accepted. Somersetshire can be used for Somerset and Devonshire for Devon, but it is a little quaint.
Titles sometimes have the shire bit, so we have the Duke of Devonshire whose county is Devon (although he does not live there) but the Duke of Bedford, even though the county is Bedfordshire.

County as a prefix is widely used in Ireland but in England the only case is County Durham, used to distinguish it from the county city of Durham. Why this one only, I do not know.

When writing or recording an address, if the county is named after its county town, the county is omitted. So one would never write "Hereford, Herefordshire". Everyone knows where the county towns are

[A Hougie]

My only quibble with Tony's comment above is in relation to "Hereford, Herefordshire". In normal parlance I would agree entirely, but for Reunion place names I would put "Hereford, Herefordshire" so that when I search for "Herefordshire", or order place names by reverse order in the place search bar, Hereford comes up with other places in Herefordshire. I would put "Hereford, Herefordshire, England, UK". This is of course personal preference but consistency within a family file is useful.
Andrew

[Bob White]

I would definitely not write it as Dorset County. "County" in the United Kingdom is the equivalent of "state" in the United States of America. That being the case, leave "County" out. One wouldn't write, as an example, "Calfornia State" or "Michigan State" or "State Texas". The same applies in the United Kingdom.

In terms of looking up the term "Dorset" any good atlas, online or in hard copy, will sort that out.

I'm in my mid 70's and have known since 4th grade geography that England's counties were the equivalent of the USA's states. That being said, many English locales are of the type that Tony makes an example of. Thus, to eliminate confusion, I note County. (Please note, Tony, that we Yanks are not part of "Everyone knows where the county towns are ", so we need to help ourselves to understand.) Also, I never put things in reverse order as it is pretty standard genealogy practice to describe localities in the small to big order (like for the USA... city, county, state, USA).