Importing locations and places problematic for tree comparison

[pdp11]

I've just learned about Ancestris, and it looks like a much more user-centered alternative to MyHeritage. However, I've already amassed over 500 entries in my family tree in MyHeritage. Similarly, my brother-in-law did much in MyHeritage, too. I've exported both his and mine trees with GEDCOM files and imported them as two genealogies into Ancestris. I was hoping to compare both lineages in Ancestris, but it seems it would be unavailable unless I clear up all the locations for events in both trees. There are many of them to get straight and correct (hundreds) - and only some of the places imported from MyHeritage are mapped correctly; most end up pointing to someplace on the ocean with longitude and latitude out of nowhere, and the automatic Internet searching option does not straighten it up.
Is there a way to prepare the GEDCOM file - specifically the PLAC records - before importing it into Ancestris so this is not a problem? Or maybe an option exists to turn off considering locations when performing tree comparisons? I searched this forum for answers and the documentation as well, to no avail.

[Zurga]

If you use the "Table of places" you should be able to adjust globally your places.
https://docs.ancestris.org/books/user-guide/page/table-of-places

Zurga

[pdp11]

Thank you, but I don't see how that solves my problem. I'd still have to go through them and correct them individually, wouldn't I?

The problem is that MyHeritage has one uniform field for a place of any event, be it birth, death, marriage, or anything else, and there's no validation of that place there - you can be very specific and put the exact address, or just a name of a country. When Ancestris imports this data, it assumes it's homogenic, i.e. puts everything as a country. That means most of it would be perceived as incorrect, as is in my case. I'm trying to figure out a way to compare two genealogies having this problem without having to manually correct hundreds of locations. I understand that using this table I can correct given place for all events that refer to it at once, but that does not change the fact that I'd still have to correct them all, one by one, does it?

[Zurga]

Ancestris assumes you put in the GEDCOM a list of juridictions separated by comma.
I know no software able to put in the correct juridictions an alone value representing different values.
So you can modify the GEDCOM directly and modify one by one all the values to add corresponding commas
Or you can use the Table of Places to move, with the mouse, a value from a column to another and affect all the corresponding elements in your GEDCOM corresponding to this place.

It's up to you.

Zurga

[mother10]

Hi,

Last year, when I started to use Ancestris, I had the same problem.
Because of the "freedom" the old program gave me when entering places, the Gedcom that was exported turned out to have a lot of problems when importing it to Ancestris.

All place information, name, zipcode, province, country, was in 1 field. Written down in no format at all.
So Ancestris had no way of knowing what that fieldcontents contained. Just as Zurga said.

My advice would be to first make sure there is a proper PLAC statement in the Gedcom header of your files.
Read this page about it:
https://docs.ancestris.org/books/user-guide/page/places

Think about what you want inside the format, maybe something like:

1 PLAC
2 FORM neighbourhood, postal code, city, county, state, region, country

When that is done, do as Zurga said. Go to the table of places, and look in what column Ancestris put your information.
With your mouse move the contents to the correct column.
Split up the contents if it looks something like "abbey of surrey in Northern England". Make sure to change that into what it should be in the correct columns.
When you have done that for all places you have, you can ask Ancestris to look up the places on the map for you.
Hopefully most of them will then be found and have map coordinates.

The others you have to do by hand.
Yes a lot of work.
I had to do around 800 of them.
Thanks to the "freedom" my old program gave me.

Now I am very glad I use Ancestris. It keeps the Gedcom standard for 100% so no more problems with information that might be lost, or mis-interpreted.

You said you had 2 gedcoms. Ancestris allows you to have 2 files inside it. That way, correcting a place in 1 file, you might find a similar place in the other and can correct it at the same time. But make sure you know in what file you are working.

Hope it helps a bit

regards,
Mother10

[pdp11]

Thank you, that does help, indeed. This is still a lot of work, but I can see a purpose and structure now; it eluded me before.

But I think I'd try something different first. Im not sure yet about jumping ships, I still learn and try Ancestris out. So I don't want to invest much time at this point before I make my decision. So I thought, for now, I'd process my gedcom files to remove the PLAC records altogether and import those modified files to check whether the tree comparison does what I expected. If it does, I'd know how to clean up the locations/places, thanks to your advice and the story you shared. So, thank you for that.

[mother10]

Hello,

Well I would say, dont base your conclusion of using Ancestris yes or no, on the fact that the tree comparison does work.

Because you might get errors because of importing problems from MyHeritage.

I got a lot of errors when I imported a file from my old program into Ancestris.

So I studied the docs (in English, while I am Dutch)
There were no Dutch docs last year, so I decided to translate the guide into Dutch.
That did not only give me a Dutch guide, but it also helped in being convinced I can do with Ancestris anything I want.

And when there might be things missing, the team is more than willing to help you.

Here and there I added extra screenshots and explanation in the translation.
So if you look in the Dutch guide and have that translated page by page by Google, you might find more info here and there.

Maybe this will do the trick for you:
https://translate.google.com/?sl=nl&tl=en&op=websites

Enter the url of the Dutch page and it will translate in English.
Translation might not be optimal, and screenshots stay Dutch, but it might help you.

Just jump over to Ancestris, use version 12, not 11 (that one is missing a lot of new features.)

I created a little index page here:
https://docs.ancestris.org/books/gebruikershandleiding/page/indeling-van-hoofdstuk-hoofdmenu-en-vensters
It has the names of the English pages right after their Dutch names, so you might be able to get to the page you want. (use onpage search for that)

Not all pages are translated yet, but 80% is done.

Have fun!!

Mother10