A practical strategy for Place Name consistency.

When I was working on a recently merged tree, made from several smaller and older files, the Place Names are a mess: incomplete entries, abbreviations, spelling errors, inconsistent use of county or USA versus United States, etc.

Instead of going straight to the Resolve Places tool, I have decided to work on getting the data as consistent as possible first. So I decided to work in the Flat List View in the Paces Workspace. Here I can see similar entries sorted near each other and pick-out those that need editing. First step was to determine if any entry is in the preferred format, if not pick one and edit it. I am speaking of the standard [city, county, state, country] format.

Next highlight an entry that needs work. Right Click and select "Replace With Other Place Name", then in the popup window, select the preferred format entry and click ok. Repeat for as many of the entries as are near by, then scan the listing for any others that need correcting. The idea here is to combine as many obvious entries as possible to make your data as consistent as you can first. Ignore any that have more info than the standard for now. Later you can go on to Resolve the remaining places, make decisions what needs to be in the description or be treated as a historical place and/or that need to be placed on the map.

This seems to be working for me, feeling more organized and less overwhelmed.

Oh, if you are not aware of Flat List View, see the screenshot. It toggles the list between Flat and Hierarchy.