The Locations tab allows you to examine the Locations in your family tree and detect errors or missing information. Its prime functions are to highlight elements listed under the wrong heading or missing elements.

The data in your Locations in your Family Tree program and therefore in your GEDCOM are separated by “,” – each element representing a specific type of information. If there is no separation by “,” then this will be treated as a single element e.g.

1 The Street, Basford, Nottingham, Notts, England will populate each of the 5 tabs in the Location screen and appear as individually stepped entries in the Tree View tab separated by + symbols.

1 The Street Basford Nottingham Notts England will only populate the Country tab and will appear as a single entry in the Tree View tab.

1 The Street Basford, Nottingham Notts England will populate the Country and Region tab as the “,” separates the data in to 2 elements – in the Tree View it will appear as + 1The Street Basford and after clicking on the + symbol the second element Nottingham, Notts, England will be listed as a sub element.

In FTA the separate tabs are named Countries, Regions, SubRegions, Addresses, Places and each of these is separated in to columns Country, Region, SubRegion, Address, Place relating to each individual element but could in your own tree be whatever meets your regional or personal definitions – you just need to be clear in your own mind which of your elements fits the FTA defined heading.

FTA sorts the Location information in the format that takes the final element as the first column and each previous element as the next column e.g.

Leeds, Yorkshire, England = SubRegion, Region, Country

Equally

1 The Street, Basford, Nottingham = SubRegion, Region, Country

even though the elements do not match the heading.

If there is only one element this will be defined under Country regardless of its actual value.

 

There are 6 different tabs each allowing you to examine the different elements of your Locations.

Tree View

This lists the locations in a format that shows the lead (final element in a Location) with a + symbol to the left of it. Clicking on this + symbol will expand the entry to show other elements linked to that entry. If there are no additional elements for that entry the + symbol will not be present. This will continue with other sub elements until the location entry is complete.

If the Lead element is a Country as recognised by FTA this will be highlighted in bold.

This view will enable you to spot any lead elements that are not recognised Countries and find any elements that appear in more than one level or in an incorrect level.

Countries

This tab lists all entries where there is only one element.

This will enable you to identify any locations where the data is not separated by “,”and where the location is not a Country. Any element in this list which is recognised by FTA as a Country will be highlighted in bold.

Regions

This tab lists all Locations which include 2 elements (Country and Region) or just 1 element (Country).

This allows you to check for incomplete entries – i.e. missing an element corresponding to Region and incorrect entries e.g. any entry where either element does not meet the requirements for that element’s heading.

SubRegions

This tab lists all Locations which include 3 elements (Country and Region and SubRegion) or 2 elements (Country and Region) or just 1 element (Country).

This allows you to check for incomplete entries – i.e. missing an element corresponding to Region or SubRegion and incorrect entries e.g. any entry where any element does not meet the requirements for that element’s heading.

Addresses

This tab lists all Locations which include 4 elements (Country and Region and SubRegion and Address) or 3 elements (Country and Region and SubRegion) or 2 elements (Country and Region) or just 1 element (Country).

This allows you to check for incomplete entries – i.e. missing an element corresponding to Region or SubRegion or Address and incorrect entries e.g. any entry where any element does not meet the requirements for that element’s heading.

Places

This column lists all Locations which include 5 elements (Country and Region and SubRegion and Address and Place) or 4 elements (Country and Region and SubRegion and Address ) or 3 elements (Country and Region and SubRegion) or 2 elements (Country and Region) or just 1 element (Country).

Where a location includes more than 5 elements the additional elements will be included in the Place column

This allows you to check for incomplete entries – i.e. missing an element corresponding to Region or SubRegion or Address or Place and incorrect entries e.g. any entry where any element does not meet the requirements for that element’s heading.

 

Double clicking on a column heading (Country or Region or SubRegion or Address or Place) will sort by that column enabling you to group similar entries to check for spelling mistakes or incorrect positioning.

Double clicking on a linear entry (location) will open a second window listing all of the persons connected to that location (in the upper segment of the window) and the families they are connected to (in the lower segment of the window).  This also applies to each element listed in the Tree View

After selecting a row (location) clicking on the Show OS Map button FTA will attempt to show that location on the Bing Ordnance Survey map.

After selecting a row (location) clicking on the Show Map button FTA will attempt to show that location on the Google Map.

In both of these map windows you will be able to zoom in or out and also move around the map to see adjacent areas.

Where FTA recognises a County in an element it will add the Country thereby expanding the number of elements.

Where FTA recognises a City / Town in an element it will add the County and hence the Country.

At the moment this section of FTA is UK biased so other countries may not be recognised.