How do I clean up my loaction information across all my records

RootsMagic
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1

I have imported all my gedcom data to try and rebuild my records. This has resulted in massive duplications. Under places I have multiple duplications and one problem is that the imported data has multiple “, , , , , ,” after the location. Is there anyway to strip all the commas off? (ps sorry for any spelling errors)

2

In general, there are two ways to go about cleaning up places. One way is to use the main Places tab on the left side of the screen. From there, you can edit your place names to clean them up and you can merge duplicate places. The other way is to use Tools > DataClean > PlaceClean. It sounds to me as if in you case, the main Places tab is going to be your best choice.

It’s probably going to be tedious, but that probably can’t be helped. It will probably help to display your places in reversed order (country, state, county, city) while you are working on the project.

Suppose you have three or four different variations on the same place name that need to be cleaned up. One way would be to clean all three or four of them up and then merge those three or four together. It can save some time to clean up only one of them and then to merge the remaining uncleaned up versions into the one cleaned up version.

You will not have to go into any of your people to cleanup their individual place names if you do the cleanup from the main Places tab. After you cleanup the place names in the main Places tab, the new versions of the place names will be the places names you will see for all of your people.

3

Thanks so much. I am waiting for a full subscription to be sorted, so merge/edit is the only option I have for now,

Appreciated

Peter Deane

4

DataClean will enable you to do these one at a time but perhaps using Search and Replace for the “, , , , , ,” and leaving the replace field blank would be quicker and easier. If there is a variation in the number of commas you may have to run it several times but it would still be quicker.

1 Like
5

Yes, search and replace would probably help a great deal with the commas, and I failed to mention that possibility. It’s a very good suggestion. But I think you are still going to need a lot of merges of place names, even after the commas are gone.