When I use a city place name RM will find and add the county name. Is there any way to modify this function to automatically add the word “County” after the “County Name”? I know I can edit the entry on an individual basis to add “County”, but it would be more convenient if RM did this as the default format.
RonMerchant
The places are added by you, not RM. Whatever you enter the first time, will get populated from then on since it is now in your database and RM knows it. If you want “county”, edit the places to add.
MadDog-I do not quite understand your answer. When I type a city name, such as Cadillac, Michigan, in the “Place” box, RM gives me a Popup box with the County name where “Cadillac” is located (Wexford) and “United States”. I have the choice to accept these changes or not. If I accept, the place name will now be “Wexford, Cadillac, Michigan, United States”. What I want is for RM to use the format “Wexford County”, not just “Wexford”. I want to modify this function so “County” is added automatically to all the county names in the RM built in data base.
That’s been a longstanding subject of conversation and wishes that has gone nowhere. Best you can do is to accept what County Check or Gazetteer gives you and then edit the name in the master Place List to include “County”, “Co.”, “Township” or whatever.
TomH–Thanks. It looks like I’m stuck with just NOT accepting the offered changes and just typing in the “County”, “Township”, etc. However, having been a Computer Coder in the past, I can not believe that it would be very difficult to offer a dropdown settings window where you could choose your preferred default format. Does anyone know Bruce Buzbee, the RootsMagic Author, personally to strongly suggest this for the next update?
Ron
Might not be as easy as you think. I do not know if RM actually controls the databases that CountyCheck and Gazetteer use and it’s the databases that would have to be updated to contain these additional names of civil jurisdictions. I don’t think one can simply assume that a certain column or position in a comma-delimited string should have the suffix “County” appended to it.
There are two separate issues here. The first is that the FamilySearch standard is not to include the word “County” and RM is very committed to the FamilySearch standard. So many users have complained about this through the years without effect that I don’t think one more complaint is going to change anything.
The second issue is that RM has a database of places names without the word County that it uses for the Gazetteer feature and for the County Check feature. Well, I think both features use the same database. But even if the two features use separate databases then it doesn’t matter because neither database would use the word County.
You don’t turn the Gazetteer feature on or off. You just query it if you want to use it or you don’t query it if you don’t want to use it - just like you can choose to do a Google search or you can choose not to do a Google search. But the County Check feature is more active and it can be turned on or off. If County Check is turned on and you enter a place name it doesn’t like, it pops up a warning. If County Check is turned off and you enter a place name it doesn’t like, it doesn’t pop up a warning. Well, if it’s turned off it doesn’t even know it doesn’t like the place name because it’s not even invoked.
Besides all that, after you get started with RM for a while, your database will develop a set of place names you have already entered. As you type in place names for new facts, RM will look in your list of existing place names. If you start typing in a place name that’s already there, it will offer up an existing place name that you can choose or not choose. This process has nothing to do with County Check. It takes place before County Check is called. And it takes place whether County Check is turned on or turned off. But if County Check is turned on, the practical effect is that it will keep warning you about names you have already entered the way you want, over and over again.
My advice is to turn County Check off, enter the names the way you wish, and use Gazetteer as a tool. I sometimes even paste a place name in from Gazetteer and then add the word County to it after the paste. Since County Check is turned off, there is no complaint.
Do be aware that County Check and Gazetteer are supposed to be date sensitive so that they check against place names at the time of the event you are entering. The date sensitivity part of the tool usually works quite well but it’s not 100% accurate.
Even though I use Gazetteer as a tool and a resource, I also uses other resources to check out place names. My favorite go to place for U.S. place names is the USGS Web site which is supposed to be very accurate and official. But there are other such sites, and you may have a lot of place names outside of the U.S.
In addition to including the word County, I also leave out the country when the country is the United States of America. Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia seems clear enough to most of my readers without including the country even though there is a country in eastern Europe called Georgia. I think it makes reports look awful to keep to keep printing USA or United States as a part of my place names. I would love to enter the name of my country into my place names if only I could keep them from printing in my reports. I certainly do include country when the country is not the United States of America, but I have very few of those in my database. Most of my lines go back to the mid-1700’s in the American colonies and it’s hard to find ship manifests and such things to get back across the ocean that far back in time.
Thanks everybody for your comments. I see that what I assumed was a simple settings change is a much different problem.
RonMerchant
I have only been with RM for 3 years, any updates (or non updates is speculation). However, I doubt you would see that soon. There is a lot debate on whether a county place should have “County” in the name. My view it should not (one can choose to add it of course.
Not sure how you do you places hierarchy. My highest level is always 1 Country, Followed by 2 “State”, followed by 3 County (without County name in my case), Followed by 4 City, for the 5 position I only used that for cemeteries. I use place details for basically anything else where school, church, street and so on.
you could create a SQL suffix script to add “County” at end to everything at end (that did not already have it).
For the people who would want to have County – there essentially would need to be 2 sets of data (one without and one with). The only other way I could think of would be to modify the places data file which would NOT be recommended by Roots Magic and they would not assist you if you mucked things up.
That is because you have “Use County Check when entering places” turned on in Program Settings. Uncheck will not give popup.
Enter your place as you’d like it to be and it will remember for next time.
Mine is unchecked since I prefer Co and not County
Everyone–Based on all that has been said here, I have turned off “Use County Check when entering places” and use Google to find the County Name. I am in the process of editing over a thousand place names!!! One of my main problems is that the first Genealogy Programs I bought was TMG (The Master Genealogist). I used that (and LOVED it) for several years until it was discontinued and the only program that would import TMG files was RootsMagic (Which I like, but not as much as TMG). Over the years with TMG (I started Genealogy in 1971), I used many place name formats until now I have settled on City, Name (Township), Name (County), State, (Country when not U.S.A.). With any luck I won’t die before I get al the place names edited (I’m 77)!!!
RonMerchant
Everybody including FamilySearch is obviously free to include the word County or not. I’m firmly in the camp that thinks that the word County always should be used. I have two main reasons.
It doesn’t affect me very much because so much of my research is American, but I can’t see how the city, county, state, country model works in countries where the political subdivisions may not even have counties and states. For example, how do baronies and townlands from Ireland work with this city, county, state, country model with no descriptive words such as County or Townland. Remember that Ireland also does have counties. And for that matter, how do American townships fit into this system?
I think a much better system is needed for place names in genealogy, writ large - not just at FamilySearch and in RM. And I think words like County and Parish are very much needed (don’t forget Parish for place names in Louisiana since they have parishes instead of counties).
Mostly I dropped using “County” due to inconsistency with things like Family Search etc.
The bottom line is that whichever a user chooses either way should be easy within RM.
And let us not get into the discussion of USA or United States of America or leaving blank 
lol true. “I know what county it is ! (so I leave blank)”