Tuesday’s Tip – Cleaning Up Locations

madhattergenealogy@gmail.com

06 Oct 2015

Tuesday's Tips provide brief how-to's to help you learn to use the Legacy Family Tree software with new tricks and techniques.

Cleaning Up Locations

I like to enter my locations in a standard and uniform way for both the long location and short location fields. I also check to make sure that the pin is where it is supposed to be on the map. Sometimes I am in a hurry and I don’t do this when I first enter the location. Periodically I go through and clean them up. When I have finished with a location I tag it so that I know it has been done (you can also use the verified check box for this). That way I can keep tabs of my progress. Also, take advantage of sorting. Sorting your list in all the different ways that you can will show you duplicates you didn't even know you had.

You can start cleaning up your locations list by going to >>View >> Master List and then select Location.

Find tech tips every day in the Facebook Legacy User Group. The group is free and is available to anyone with a Facebook account.

For video tech tips checkout the Legacy Quick Tips page. These short videos will make it easy for you to learn all sort of fun and interesting ways to look at your genealogy research.

Michele Simmons Lewis is part of the technical support team at Millennia, the makers of the Legacy Family Tree software program. With over 20 years of research experience, Michele’s passion is helping new genealogists get started on the right foot through her writings, classes and lectures. She is the former staff genealogist and weekly columnist for the McDuffie Mirror and now authors Ancestoring, a blog geared toward the beginner/intermediate researcher.

Comments (14)

Lynn, You can print the Master Location List to a pdf but not to a csv. That would be a great suggestion to send in to the programmers for them to consider. You can make the suggestion here http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/suggest.asp If you send your suggestion in this way it will get logged into our tracking system.

I am trying to cleanup my master location list and find that using the methods you describe very painstakingly ling. Is there a way to export the list to a csv file format for use in excel, Where I can then import the list again and match them up then purge the unused one from my file?

Ken,
You might be interested in our Legacy User Group Facebook Group page. We recently had this discussion. You can join here. https://www.facebook.com/groups/LegacyUserGroup/ It is also comes up from time to time on our Legacy User Group mailing list. You can search the Archive here http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com/ If you are interested in joing the mailing list you can do that here http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/LegacyLists.asp (second option)

What does anyone else does about early US names, do you put USA anyway or something else. I have been trying to get United States off any location before 1781 when we actually became the United States.

Kathy,
Once you have the location geo located (pin in place) your can format the location however you want. It will remember the location. Where are you seeing this flag? Send me an email at support@legacyfamilytree.com Attn: Michele and I will help you get things straightened out 🙂

Don’t worry. Just worked it out. Geo location. Doh!

What can be done if the pin is in the wrong place? I have London, England as a location, and the pin is in Leicestershire, which clearly isn’t right. How can I get the pin in the right place?

Thanks for the tip. I have been able to make a number of changes. However, as a Canadian, I have quite a few problems with Lecacy’ s GPS. I include Ontario’s counties, and since there are a number of cross-overs in names for example Simcoe town and Simcoe County, the defaults give the wrong GPS. I’m going to have to google to get the correct GPS!

Another nice feature is that when you have a location that is not listed in the Geo-Location Database, you can enter your location, click on the edit button, locate on the map where your location is and right-click on it. You will be prompted, “Would you like to set the Lat/Long to the Right Clicked location?” By clicking yes, you will set the latitude and longitude coordianates for your location.

I thought this sounded a good idea so went in to have a go and I really wish I hadn’t. Places Geofinder can identify it changes the format from what I had as my standard, but there are too many places it doesn’t seem able to find at all, so now I have a mixture. How do I switch off the US flag nest to the State/ Province field? I don’t know if it is the cause or effect of it not being able to find my English towns and villages

Love this and the surname clean up (purge) feature! Before I backup or if I make typos, wrong names, or delete a few individuals I find this a fast way to clean up before I backing up my files. I do a monthly, file repair and check after I clean up those 2 place and save the whole thing to a flash drive! Great feature!

I put all kinds of crazy things in the first Legacy I had years ago – even notes and details that were about an ancestor’s family! Sigh. I’m still cleaning up the Master Location list. It took me a long time to figure out where it was, and how to use it correctly. Apparently I avoided asking for help, eh? Still lots of messy locations.
The big thing for me was to learn how to standardize both the long and the short form of an address. And then to do it every single time.
Cheers.

Dwight,
You need to send this to support@legacyfamilytree.com so that we can get this logged into our tracking system and a tech can help you.

Cleaning up my Locations would be fantastic IF I could even see any location. I’m on my 3rd new PC and have had the same problem with all of them since you folks introduced Legacy 6. I have a Lenovo PC and a 27 inch Samsung widescreen monitor and experience no other problem running any windows based program EXCEPT Legacy. Every since you made the change from 5 to 6 I have not been able to access several of the master lists athough I can input new ones in the master list view the sub-window duplicates inself over the top of itself like looking at a mirror looking at a mirror. I just upgraded to your newest release moments ago and the problem remains.
What can’t anyone help me with this issue? I cannot believe that out of millions of users, I’m the only one experiencing this.

M
Michele

9 years ago

Lynn, You can print the Master Location List to a pdf but not to a csv. That would be a great suggestion to send in to the programmers for them to consider. You can make the suggestion here http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/suggest.asp If you send your suggestion in this way it will get logged into our tracking system.
LB
Lynn Bingham

9 years ago

I am trying to cleanup my master location list and find that using the methods you describe very painstakingly ling. Is there a way to export the list to a csv file format for use in excel, Where I can then import the list again and match them up then purge the unused one from my file?
M
Michele

9 years ago

Ken,
You might be interested in our Legacy User Group Facebook Group page. We recently had this discussion. You can join here. https://www.facebook.com/groups/LegacyUserGroup/ It is also comes up from time to time on our Legacy User Group mailing list. You can search the Archive here http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com/ If you are interested in joing the mailing list you can do that here http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/LegacyLists.asp (second option)
KH
Ken Hess

9 years ago

What does anyone else does about early US names, do you put USA anyway or something else. I have been trying to get United States off any location before 1781 when we actually became the United States.
M
Michele

9 years ago

Kathy,
Once you have the location geo located (pin in place) your can format the location however you want. It will remember the location. Where are you seeing this flag? Send me an email at support@legacyfamilytree.com Attn: Michele and I will help you get things straightened out 🙂
MH
Megan Hitchens

9 years ago

Don’t worry. Just worked it out. Geo location. Doh!
MH
Megan Hitchens

9 years ago

What can be done if the pin is in the wrong place? I have London, England as a location, and the pin is in Leicestershire, which clearly isn’t right. How can I get the pin in the right place?
RH
Robert Halfyard

9 years ago

Thanks for the tip. I have been able to make a number of changes. However, as a Canadian, I have quite a few problems with Lecacy’ s GPS. I include Ontario’s counties, and since there are a number of cross-overs in names for example Simcoe town and Simcoe County, the defaults give the wrong GPS. I’m going to have to google to get the correct GPS!
DM
DeLoss McKnight

9 years ago

Another nice feature is that when you have a location that is not listed in the Geo-Location Database, you can enter your location, click on the edit button, locate on the map where your location is and right-click on it. You will be prompted, “Would you like to set the Lat/Long to the Right Clicked location?” By clicking yes, you will set the latitude and longitude coordianates for your location.
KM
Kathy Millett

9 years ago

I thought this sounded a good idea so went in to have a go and I really wish I hadn’t. Places Geofinder can identify it changes the format from what I had as my standard, but there are too many places it doesn’t seem able to find at all, so now I have a mixture. How do I switch off the US flag nest to the State/ Province field? I don’t know if it is the cause or effect of it not being able to find my English towns and villages
EK
Elizabeth Korf

9 years ago

Love this and the surname clean up (purge) feature! Before I backup or if I make typos, wrong names, or delete a few individuals I find this a fast way to clean up before I backing up my files. I do a monthly, file repair and check after I clean up those 2 place and save the whole thing to a flash drive! Great feature!
CL
Celia Lewis

9 years ago

I put all kinds of crazy things in the first Legacy I had years ago – even notes and details that were about an ancestor’s family! Sigh. I’m still cleaning up the Master Location list. It took me a long time to figure out where it was, and how to use it correctly. Apparently I avoided asking for help, eh? Still lots of messy locations.
The big thing for me was to learn how to standardize both the long and the short form of an address. And then to do it every single time.
Cheers.
M
Michele

9 years ago

Dwight,
You need to send this to support@legacyfamilytree.com so that we can get this logged into our tracking system and a tech can help you.
DA
Dwight A. Kuhn

9 years ago

Cleaning up my Locations would be fantastic IF I could even see any location. I’m on my 3rd new PC and have had the same problem with all of them since you folks introduced Legacy 6. I have a Lenovo PC and a 27 inch Samsung widescreen monitor and experience no other problem running any windows based program EXCEPT Legacy. Every since you made the change from 5 to 6 I have not been able to access several of the master lists athough I can input new ones in the master list view the sub-window duplicates inself over the top of itself like looking at a mirror looking at a mirror. I just upgraded to your newest release moments ago and the problem remains.
What can’t anyone help me with this issue? I cannot believe that out of millions of users, I’m the only one experiencing this.