Hi BJ, Many thanks for your explanations and examples. Yes I have now resolved many place names, moving data into the place detail field. However, I am closing the file and reopening it quite a bit as I don't want to lose my work and I am still a bit apprehensive. I think I now understand how that US address that was seemingly in 2 counties. Christine -----Original Message----- From: BJ via Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 9:28 PM To: ftm-tech@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [FTM-TECH] Program crashes when resolving place names see comments below BJ On 3/25/2015 12:10 PM, Christine Benson via wrote: > I have followed your advice BJ and merged it into a new file. I have > decided as a first step to resolve the place names as that should be > fairly > automatic. I may put data in the address field later but am taking one > step > at a time. So far it is working. Resolving Place names can mean several different activities. Have you attempted to move data from the Place name into the Place detail field? That was where you were encountering the crashes. If you are doing this, I take it to mean you are no longer experiencing the crashes after about 5 operations. If that is correct, then I think you have resolve the problem which I suspect were some corrupt addresses (pointers) in the Place table. By "addresses", I mean contents in fields which point or contain the record address to other data in the data base. Sometimes when these addresses/pointers become corrupted they may point to memory locations outside the area Windows has reserved for FTM information. When this happens Windows protects the other program's area by refusing FTM to use it. If FTM doesn't handle the error code returned by Windows, Windows terminates FTM. This is all computer jargon and you probably don't care about it but think of it this way. You live in one house and your next door neighbor lives in a different house. You leave yourself a note on where to find a book in your house but the note gets wet and blurry. When you read it, it directs you to go to your neighbor's house. When you attempt to enter the neighbor's house without permission, the security system prohibits your entry and goes off. That is sort of what happens within programs. > > But I have some specific questions. > > What do you do with the place Gold Coast, West Africa? I know it is now > Ghana but it wasn't at the time. I would probably handle it this way as I prefer to preserve the original data as much as possible. I would enter the Place name, "Gold Coast, West Africa" and leave it as unresolved. The "unresolved" indicator is simply an advisory flag which brings it to your attention. It doesn't mean the information is incorrect but simply alerts you the the fact it is not in the Place Name Authority data base. Alternately, if you want to get rid of the "unresolved" indicator, you can elect to ignore the alert. I recently encountered a similar case with the 1792 birth of an individual. The source says she was born in Hillsborough, Randolph, Virginia and it was marked as unresolved. I have tried to find any evidence of name changes etc. Current day Virginia has no county named Randolph. It does have a town named Hillsboro which was previously named Hillsborough but it is located in Loudoun County, Virginia. Now to make things even more complex, the current state of West Virginia was part of Virginia in the 1700's. So West Virginia has a county named Randolph but no town named Hillsborough. West Virginia does have a town named Hillsborough but it is in Pocahontas County which is no where near Randolph County. Ahhh what to do, what to do?? I handled it this way. I moved Hillsborough, Randolph County into the the Place Detail field and then resolved the Place Name to Virginia, USA. It may not be accurate based on today's names but I've preserved the historical name for this individual. > What do you do with Wadhurst, East Sussex? It wants to resolve it into > Wadhurst, Sussex but Sussex is now two counties, East and West and this is > a > fairly recent event that I have entered the data for. Was it Wadhurst, East Sussex at the time of the event? Your comment implies it was Sussex some time ago but that has been changed to either East Sussex or West Sussex. Try to find when that split took place and compare that date to the event date and make your entry using the Place name at the time of the event. Here is a possible work around - a bit kludgy but it may suit you. Enter the name as Wadhurst, East, Sussex, United Kingdom or England. You can then move the information Wadhurst, East into the Place Detail and resolve the Sussex. The move feature moves information preceding the comma into the Place detail field. So the first move would move Wadhurst into the Place Detail. The subsequent move would move East into the Place Detail. > Where does the zip code belong in a US address. A lot of the locations I > have put it at the front but I am not sure how to resolve these. I suspect > eventually this will have to go into the address field but I am not sure > of > the layout even then. US addresses sometimes seem more complex than UK > ones; > some of the discussion some time ago seemed to involve the fact that a > place > could be in two counties which completely confused me. The zip codes follow the state name abbreviation. E.g. 1313 E Ridge Route Road, Jackson WY 84211 ( this is for illustration only and is not accurate. Notice two things, the post office does not require or even desire a comma between the city, Jackson, and the state abbrieviation, WY. I'm sure most Americans are like me and put a comma there anyway but it is not required. Also notice the state abbreviation is two capital letters. Not the standard way of entering a state name or abbreviation but we're talking a big bureaucracy which is a law unto itself. Now that I've explained it, I will comment on its use. It is only useful for delivering mail and packages by the postal service. It has no bearing on the actual place. Therefore I do not record the postal zipcode as I don't see where it has any historical significance. Let me give you an example. I live in a rural area. The official postal address is Tetonia, ID 83452. However, I actually live closer to another post office in Felt, ID. I keep telling my grandchildren I live in Tetonia but they counter that I live closer to the Felt area. ********************************** List information page http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Software/FTM-TECH.html ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to FTM-TECH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

It is not necessary to close and reopen your data base in an effort to save the data. Once you leave a field by clicking Enter or using the mouse to select another field, FTM immediately writes the contents of the field to the data base. I'm not sure why FTM occasionally loses some data previously entered. It warns you the data base may not have been closed properly and that may have resulted in the loss of some data in the process of being transferred to the disk. While this may happen, it is extremely rare. I think you have resolved the problem with the data base so I don't think your closing and reopening the data base is necessary. BJ On 3/25/2015 5:38 PM, Christine Benson wrote: > Hi BJ, > > Many thanks for your explanations and examples. Yes I have now > resolved many place names, moving data into the place detail field. > However, I am closing the file and reopening it quite a bit as I don't > want to lose my work and I am still a bit apprehensive. > > I think I now understand how that US address that was seemingly in 2 > counties. > > Christine > > -----Original Message----- From: BJ via > Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 9:28 PM > To: ftm-tech@rootsweb.com > Subject: Re: [FTM-TECH] Program crashes when resolving place names > > see comments below > > BJ > > On 3/25/2015 12:10 PM, Christine Benson via wrote: >> I have followed your advice BJ and merged it into a new file. I have >> decided as a first step to resolve the place names as that should be >> fairly >> automatic. I may put data in the address field later but am taking >> one step >> at a time. So far it is working. > Resolving Place names can mean several different activities. Have you > attempted to move data from the Place name into the Place detail field? > That was where you were encountering the crashes. If you are doing > this, I take it to mean you are no longer experiencing the crashes after > about 5 operations. If that is correct, then I think you have resolve > the problem which I suspect were some corrupt addresses (pointers) in > the Place table. By "addresses", I mean contents in fields which point > or contain the record address to other data in the data base. Sometimes > when these addresses/pointers become corrupted they may point to memory > locations outside the area Windows has reserved for FTM information. > When this happens Windows protects the other program's area by refusing > FTM to use it. If FTM doesn't handle the error code returned by > Windows, Windows terminates FTM. This is all computer jargon and you > probably don't care about it but think of it this way. You live in one > house and your next door neighbor lives in a different house. You leave > yourself a note on where to find a book in your house but the note gets > wet and blurry. When you read it, it directs you to go to your > neighbor's house. When you attempt to enter the neighbor's house > without permission, the security system prohibits your entry and goes > off. That is sort of what happens within programs. >> >> But I have some specific questions. >> >> What do you do with the place Gold Coast, West Africa? I know it is now >> Ghana but it wasn't at the time. > I would probably handle it this way as I prefer to preserve the original > data as much as possible. I would enter the Place name, "Gold Coast, > West Africa" and leave it as unresolved. The "unresolved" indicator is > simply an advisory flag which brings it to your attention. It doesn't > mean the information is incorrect but simply alerts you the the fact it > is not in the Place Name Authority data base. Alternately, if you want > to get rid of the "unresolved" indicator, you can elect to ignore the > alert. > > I recently encountered a similar case with the 1792 birth of an > individual. The source says she was born in Hillsborough, Randolph, > Virginia and it was marked as unresolved. I have tried to find any > evidence of name changes etc. Current day Virginia has no county named > Randolph. It does have a town named Hillsboro which was previously > named Hillsborough but it is located in Loudoun County, Virginia. Now > to make things even more complex, the current state of West Virginia was > part of Virginia in the 1700's. So West Virginia has a county named > Randolph but no town named Hillsborough. West Virginia does have a town > named Hillsborough but it is in Pocahontas County which is no where near > Randolph County. Ahhh what to do, what to do?? I handled it this way. > I moved Hillsborough, Randolph County into the the Place Detail field > and then resolved the Place Name to Virginia, USA. It may not be > accurate based on today's names but I've preserved the historical name > for this individual. >> What do you do with Wadhurst, East Sussex? It wants to resolve it into >> Wadhurst, Sussex but Sussex is now two counties, East and West and >> this is a >> fairly recent event that I have entered the data for. > Was it Wadhurst, East Sussex at the time of the event? Your comment > implies it was Sussex some time ago but that has been changed to either > East Sussex or West Sussex. Try to find when that split took place and > compare that date to the event date and make your entry using the Place > name at the time of the event. Here is a possible work around - a bit > kludgy but it may suit you. > > Enter the name as Wadhurst, East, Sussex, United Kingdom or England. > You can then move the information Wadhurst, East into the Place Detail > and resolve the Sussex. The move feature moves information preceding > the comma into the Place detail field. So the first move would move > Wadhurst into the Place Detail. The subsequent move would move East > into the Place Detail. >> Where does the zip code belong in a US address. A lot of the locations I >> have put it at the front but I am not sure how to resolve these. I >> suspect >> eventually this will have to go into the address field but I am not >> sure of >> the layout even then. US addresses sometimes seem more complex than >> UK ones; >> some of the discussion some time ago seemed to involve the fact that >> a place >> could be in two counties which completely confused me. > The zip codes follow the state name abbreviation. E.g. 1313 E Ridge > Route Road, Jackson WY 84211 ( this is for illustration only and is not > accurate. > > Notice two things, the post office does not require or even desire a > comma between the city, Jackson, and the state abbrieviation, WY. I'm > sure most Americans are like me and put a comma there anyway but it is > not required. Also notice the state abbreviation is two capital > letters. Not the standard way of entering a state name or abbreviation > but we're talking a big bureaucracy which is a law unto itself. > > Now that I've explained it, I will comment on its use. It is only > useful for delivering mail and packages by the postal service. It has > no bearing on the actual place. Therefore I do not record the postal > zipcode as I don't see where it has any historical significance. Let me > give you an example. I live in a rural area. The official postal > address is Tetonia, ID 83452. However, I actually live closer to > another post office in Felt, ID. I keep telling my grandchildren I live > in Tetonia but they counter that I live closer to the Felt area. > > ********************************** > List information page > http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Software/FTM-TECH.html > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > FTM-TECH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message > >

Christine, Closing and reopening the file is not what you want to do to keep from loosing information in your file. Compact  AND Back Up your file FREQUENTLY is a much better solution for that. Save your Back Up to an External Drive is even better, and don't count on a Flash / USB Drive as that external drive. Just a suggestion, Russ  ___________________________ Mailto:rworthington@att.net From: Christine Benson via <ftm-tech@rootsweb.com> To: BJ <oldtrails@gmx.com>; ftm-tech@rootsweb.com Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 7:38 PM Subject: Re: [FTM-TECH] Program crashes when resolving place names Hi BJ, Many thanks for your explanations and examples. Yes I have now resolved many place names, moving data into the place detail field. However, I am closing the file and reopening it quite a bit as I don't want to lose my work and I am still a bit apprehensive.