Places

What Is a Place?

Autocomplete Place Names

What Is the Places Sidebar?

Tracking the Usage of Places

Places Settings

Recording Notes About Places

Assigning Geo Codes to a Place

Using the Geo Code Place Window

Assigning Geo Codes for All Places

Pinpointing an Exact Location

Using Your Web Browser to Get an Exact Location

Mapping a Place

Mapping Multiple Places

Searching in the Places Sidebar
Editing Names of Places

Merging Places

Using the Place Menu

Typing Letters to Select Places in the Places Sidebar

Reverse Place Name Sort

Sharing the Places Sidebar (Reporting, Printing, Emailing, etc.)

Sidebars

The List Window

What Is a Place?

As you learned elsewhere, an event has a date and a place. A place is the location of an event. Places are entered and edited in the Edit Person and Edit Family panels.

Reunion has an internal database that keeps track of all your places, making it easy to enter place names quickly and consistently. At any time, you can edit, rename, add, and delete places in your family file. You can retrieve geographical coordinates and see a map of any place. And you can create maps of multiple places with connecting lines showing the geographical movement of a person during different events in their lifetime.

Autocomplete Place Names

As you enter or edit places, you'll notice a drop-down list of place name suggestions. This list provides a shortcut for entering places. For example, if you have lengthy place names in your family, you only have to type them once. Each time thereafter when you begin to type the name, Reunion will show a drop-down list of places based on the letters you've typed.

Use the arrow keys on the keyboard, or your mouse, to select the desired place from the drop-down list. The entries in the list of suggestions are based on the places in your Places sidebar, explained in the next section.

Autocomplete is always enabled for place names.

What Is the Places Sidebar?

The Places sidebar provides a handy tool for analyzing and utilizing your place entries, making it easy to...

To show the Places sidebar, click Places in the Sidebar list.

To show places in the List window, where there is more room to see longer place entries, click the List button (in the bottom bar, under the Places sidebar).

Drag and Drop From the Places Sidebar

You can show the Places sidebar anytime. One of the best times is when you're entering events for people or families in Edit Person or Edit Family. In this case, you can drag and drop the appropriate place directly into a place field. Similarly, in the family view, places can be dragged and dropped into fields appearing under the husband/wife.

Different Sections of the Places Sidebar

The Places sidebar has two sections.

The top and bottom portions are resizable, vertically, by dragging the horizontal bar between them. To make the Places sidebar wider, horizontally, either resize the Reunion window by dragging the lower-right corner, or drag the divider between the family view and the sidebar.

The three items in the bottom section are listed and described below.

  1. Usage: a list of people whose record includes the selected place. Each line contains a name, birth and death dates, and the event name (such as "birth," "death," etc.) that includes the selected place. Learn more.
  2. Note: a field to record notes (free-form text) about the place. Learn more.
  3. Geo: a field for geographic coordinates (aka geo codes) for the selected place; a button to retrieve those codes from Google; a button to exclude a particular place when you search for places with no geo codes; and a button to create a list of places in your family file that do not have geo codes assigned to the place. Learn more.

Tracking the Usage of Places

To see all the events that happened in the same place (for example, all the birth and death dates in "Hegins, PA")...

  1. Click Places in the Sidebar list to show the Places sidebar.
  2. Select the desired place in the top section of the sidebar. Use the search box at the top to help you find a place, if necessary.
  3. Select the Usage tab in the bottom section of the Places sidebar.

You'll see a list of people whose record includes the selected place. Each line contains a person's name, birth and death dates, and the event name (such as "Birth," "Death," etc.) that includes the selected place.

By default, the Usage list is sorted by: last name, first name, event. The sort order can be changed by clicking on the Name or Event column headings.

Click any name in the Usage list to navigate to a person's record in the family view.

Mark or unmark people in the Usage list by clicking the Mark check-box buttons in the first column of the list.

The green Marking Shortcuts button, in the bottom bar (under the Places sidebar), is described here.

If the List color mode is set to Color lists by sex, you'll notice color coding (by sex) applied to entries in the Usage list.

To show (in the Results sidebar/list) the people whose records include a selected place, click the Find button (the little magnifying glass) in the bottom bar, beneath the Places sidebar.

Note: the Usage list that appears under the Places sidebar is limited to 7,500 entries. Thus, if a particular place is used in more than 7,500 different events, the Usage list will appear empty and the text "More than 7500 events use this place" will appear under the Usage button. In this case, clicking the Share button (to print, report, or email the place list, with usage) will include all events that reference the place.

Places Settings

The information that appears in the the usage list for each person can be changed by clicking on the Settings button, the gear icon below the usage list.

There are several options that appear in the Places Settings window to allow the information displayed with each person in the usage list to be changed...

Recording Notes About Places

To record notes (free-form text) about the place...

  1. Click Places in the Sidebar list to show the Places sidebar.
  2. Select the desired place in the top list.
  3. Select the Note tab in the bottom section.
  4. Use the Notes scrolling text field to enter text relating to the selected place entry. Alternatively, you can paste or drag-and-drop text into this field (including text clippings from the Finder). Place note fields are limited to 2,500 characters.

Perhaps a bit of history or demographics regarding the place would be appropriate for this particular Note field.

When the Places sidebar is shared and it includes "Places and Usage," or includes only one selected place, the place Note field will be included in the report.

Assigning Geo Codes to a Place

The geographic coordinate system enables every location on planet Earth to be specified by a set of numbers: latitude and longitude. In Reunion, these are expressed as decimal degrees.

geocode

To enter, edit, or retrieve geo codes for a place...

  1. Click Places in the Sidebar list to show the Places sidebar.
  2. Select the desired place in the top section of the sidebar.
  3. Select the Geo tab in the bottom section of the sidebar. The following items will appear...

Error Messages from Google

The Google Maps Geocoding API imposes limits on the number of geolocation requests. Exceeding the limit will result in an error message...

geotag

If Google Maps cannot find or recognize a particular place, the following message will appear...

Using the Geo Code Place Window

The Geo Code Place window appears when you're attempting to retrieve the geo codes for a single place. This happens when...

The Geo Code Place window shows a list of possible matches (provided by Google) to your place entry. It also shows a map, on the right side, to help you identify the place.

If you see the correct place in the list of locations, select it and then use one of these buttons...

Pinpointing an Exact Location

In the Geo Code Place window, shown above, the pin point can be moved (by dragging it) to an exact location — for example, a home, farm, cemetery, etc. — and then retrieve the geo coordinates of the exact location of the moved pin point. The more you zoom in (on the map) the more precisely you can place the pin point. When the pin point is exactly where you want it, click the Get Coordinates button.

Using Your Web Browser to Get an Exact Location

There may be times when you want to record a place entry in a way that confuses the automatic geo code locator — situations where the automatic geo code locator simply can't decipher or locate a particular place.

For example, the automatic geo code locator can't decipher: "Tapley Cemetery, Blaine, Aroostook County, Maine." However, using Google Maps (in your web browser) has no problem with the same entry.

In these instances, you can record the place exactly as you prefer in Reunion and then use Google Maps (in your web browser) to find the exact location and get the coordinates. Follow these steps...

  1. Control/Right-click the exact spot or address in Google Maps.
  2. From the pop-up menu that appears, select What's here?
  3. Click on the coordinates that appear in the upper-left corner and the coordinates will then appear in the Google Maps search box.
  4. Select and copy the coordinates in the Google Maps search box.
  5. Find and select the place in Reunion's Places sidebar.
  6. Paste them into Reunion's Geographic coordinates field.

Assigning Geo Codes for All Places

To help you find geo codes for all places in your family file...

  1. Click Places in the Sidebar list to show the Places sidebar.
  2. Be sure the Geo tab is selected in the bottom section of the sidebar.
  3. Click the Show places with no geo codes button.

This will open the Geo Code Multiple Places window. It's similar to the Geo Code Place window, described above, except that it adds a column on the left which lists all the places in your family file for which you have not yet assigned geo codes.

Using the Geo Code Multiple Places window, you can work through your places and assign geo codes to each place at your leisure. As you click places in the list on the left, any potential matching locations in Google's database are listed in the center column. And, when one of the locations in the middle list is selected, a small map will appear on the right. If you come across a place for which you do not want to attempt to match, click the Skip button. This button will remove the place from the list (of non geo coded places) and has the same effect as checking the Never Geo Code button, described above.

Click Close when you're finished geo coding places, or when you need a break. If you've upgraded from an older version of Reunion (earlier than Reunion 10), or imported lots of data, and you've got a truckload of non-geo coded places in your family file, there's no need to process them all at once. Work periodically on geo coding your places and you'll be amazed how quickly you get them done.

Mapping a Place

To show a map of a place, click the Place menu button (the little appearing next to the place entry) and choose Map this place.

To change settings for the Places sidebar, click the Settings button in the bottom bar, under the Places sidebar. The Places Settings window will appear and it offers the choice of using Google or Bing for maps. The mapping of multiple places is supported in Google, not Bing.

Mapping Multiple Places

To show maps with multiple places for one person, choose Map all places for this person in either of these spots...

  1. In the family view, click the button inside a Person button.

  2. In the Edit Person or Edit Family panel, click the Place menu button (the little appearing next to the place entry).


Note: Map all places for this person only works for places that have geo codes.

When multiple places are pinpointed in Google, clicking a "pinpoint" on the map will reveal some information about the event...

Multiple places can't be mapped for multiple people.

Searching in the Places Sidebar

To find a particular place, or a group of places...

  1. Click Places in the Sidebar list to show the Places sidebar.
  2. Type some text into the search box at the top of the list.

It's not necessary to type complete place names or words. You could, for example, search for "Hanover PA" by typing: "han" into the search box. The searching methodology is to look for words that begin with the text typed in the search box.

There's no need to use capitalization or letters with diacritical marks in the search box. Case and diacritical marks are ignored when searching.

Do not use quotes (single or double), apostrophes, or other punctuation marks in the search box.

As you type in the search box, the list of places will reflect the letters and words that you type.

For example, if you type "york" into the search box, then any place entry that contains the word "york" (could be the name of a street, city, township, county, state, etc.) will appear in the list. Places not matching the search text will not appear in the list.

The more words you type the more the list is filtered.

Editing Names of Places

As you view the place list, you may notice inconsistencies and spelling errors in your place entries. To edit or correct the spelling of a place name, double-click the place in the Places sidebar (or click the Place menu button and choose Edit name). This will open a Rename Place window showing you the current spelling and providing a field for making corrections. When you're finished, click Change and the corrected place spelling will appear in every place field in which it was used (in the current family file).

Editing names in the Place List only affects text in place fields (the place component of an event field). Other fields, such as note fields, memo fields, fact fields, etc., are not affected.

Editing names in the Place List does not affect the Changed Date field for people whose records contain events with the edited places.

What happens to geo codes when a place is renamed?

If a geo coded place is used for only one event in a family file, then the geo code for the place will be deleted if the place is renamed in the Edit Person or Edit Family window and the place is renamed to a place that is not currently in the family file.

For example, let's say "Lancaster PA" has been geo coded and is used only one time in the family file (one event, for one person). If you're in the Edit Person panel for that particular person and change the birth place from "Lancaster PA" to "Pottsville PA" (which is not used anywhere in the family file), then the new entry for "Pottsville PA" has no geo code.

When places are renamed in the Places sidebar, geo codes are not affected.

Merging Places

If you see multiple variations of a place name and you want to consolidate them, just drag the place name that you want to change and drop it onto the place name that has the correct spelling/wording/punctuation.

For example, let's say you have these two places...

If you decide that "Frederic County MD" is the correct wording for the place, then simply drag "Frederic MD" and drop it on top of "Frederic County MD."

The Rename Place window will appear (described above).

Merging places does not affect the Changed Date field for people whose records contain events with places that are affected by merging.

Using the Place Menu

The Place pop-up menu provides some handy shortcuts. The items in the Place menu vary, depending on whether or not a place is geo coded. If a place is not geo coded, then the first item is Get geo codes for this place.

Earlier in this chapter, most of these items were explained in context. However, here's a summary...

The Place menu button appears in two places...

Typing Letters to Select Places in the Places Sidebar

To jump immediately to a particular place in the Places sidebar...

  1. Be sure the Places sidebar is "active" — i.e., it's visible and there's a selected/highlighted place in the upper list.
  2. Begin typing the desired name. For example, if you're looking for "Troy" and your place list has 3,000 entries, you can type the letter "t" and the list will jump to the first place whose name begins with "t." If you type "tr" quickly enough, the list will jump to the first place whose name begins with "tr." Similarly, if you type "troy" quickly enough, you'll select the first place whose name is "troy."

Reverse Place Name Sort

At the top of the Places sidebar, you'll see a button called Reverse place name sort. Checking this button will sort the list by evaluating place names backwards. Each place entry is parsed into comma delimited items and then alphabetized, item by item, in reverse.



How does this work? Let's say you have lots of places in New Jersey entered in your family file. In the normal sorting of the place list, the entries would be sorted by city, township, county, town, municipality, or whatever came first in each entry. Thus, NJ entries would be scattered around the place list. However, if you reverse the sort order using the button shown above, all places in New Jersey will appear together in the place list — as long as you ended each entry in New Jersey with ", NJ."

Reverse Place Name Sort   Normal Sort
Home of Leroy Brown, Ocean City, NJ
Sea Bass Co., NJ
Angiogram Hospital, Waterville, NJ
Zebron, NJ
NJ
 
Angiogram Hospital, Waterville, NJ
Home of Leroy Brown, Ocean City, NJ
NJ
Sea Bass Co., NJ
Zebron, NJ