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I inherited a Family Tree of over 21,000 ancestors created on a MS Windows computer using an app called PAF. Instead of the media files being located within a single folder they were scattered all over the drive - many no longer linked to PAF. Many had truncated DOS 8.3 names and others had very ambiguous names like George. It was a large task to consolidate, rename, and re-link the Media file (the process is still ongoing).
14 tutorials and more to come...
The places were also a mess (I did not realise how many ways a place name can be misspelled & abbreviated). I also had to make them hierarchical and add GPS however many were ambiguous or missing segments of the place locations (eg St Mary's, Ipswich). Abbreviated names were very ambiguous too (Main St., Linc. could be several different places in different countries). So I had to make all of the Places Hierachical within a correctly structured Place Tree, Expand addresses adding & inserting missing segments), unlink & reattach Media to the correct segment in the place name, all while resolving all of the ambiguous place names that I could. There are tens of thousands of these so this process is also ongoing.
I will add more tutorials as I find how to solve more of these problems.
Tutorials in the Clean Up (Media) series are:
- Media Folder & Family Tree:
Media objects have bad links, Media folder is chaotic - clear out your old (absolute) paths and re-link objects (many re-link themselves):
Split into three tutorials:- 1A Clean up your Gramps Media Folder ready for re-linking your Media Objects;
- 1B Using Media Manager to Edit Paths - allowing you to do bulk changes;
- 1C Fix your Media Paths manually.
- Remove Duplicate Media Objects:
Sometimes when I am attaching media to a person’s record I forget or do not realise that the Media Object already exists – so I create another Media Object that uses the same media file. This can cause many problems – if information (like Notes, References, Citations etc) is attached to the first copy of the Media Object this information will not linked to the person that has the second copy of the Media File attached (like having different versions of the same text file being edited differently). This can be fixed by using the Media Manager or one at a time. - JPEG versions of TIFF Objects:
TIFF files are great for editing while JPEG files are great for viewing (specially on the web for apps like webtrees). If you only have a TIFF Media you can create a JPEG Media Object with all the same links - then you can have both options. - Rename then re-link Media Files:
When you rename a file in your Media Folder the link within your associated Gramps Media Object breaks. Here is how to fix this and give your Media files meaningful Titles. - Generic: Extract (Media Files) from a Drive:
Media files can sometimes get lost on a great big drive. There is a way of not only finding out where all of the media files are hidden, but also copy them to a single location and it is built into the Finder.
Tutorials in the Clean Up (Places) Series are:
- Hierarchical Place Tree Conversion:
I will select a single Place entry like Teape Street, Silkstone, Ipswich and convert it into Hierarchal Place Tree structure. I would normally fill in additional details about the Places as I edit a Place (like Date, GPS, Notes, etc) to save me going back and doing it later – however this is meant to be a quick tutorial just about the topic. - Expand an Address – using Gramps Clipboard:
I have many addresses that are a single Place Object (flat – highlighted in red) – instead of being in a tree structure (hierarchical – highlighted in green). The hierarchical places are much more useful and efficient (I can link information reverent to each place in the tree (people, images, GPS data,...).
However even when it is in Tree format there are often sections of the address missing. Eg: Bungendore, New South Wales, Australia. There is no region – and it is not a Place that has been created in the Family Tree. So I need to insert the region between the town and state. This can be done using the Gramps Clipboard. - Fix a Place Tree & Re-attached Maps:
When I went to change the name of a map of Enoggera Parish, I found that it was attached to its containing Shire and that the Parish was not a Place in my Family Tree. So I had to Create a Place called Enoggera link the Shire to it then transfer the Map link from the Shire to the Parrish. Sounds like fun? - Fix Ambiguous Place Names:
My family Tree has thousands of Places in the database, many of which are very ambiguous. I once found a place (that I was certain was in England but, upon looking into it, I found that it was in USA. Many places in Australia, USA, New Zealand, Canada have place names that originated in the UK. There is an Ipswich USA. Churches with the same names also exist in places with the same name. I can often work out which it is by a simple technique.
Tutorials in the Clean Up (Events) Series are:
- Participants:
Some of my Events do not make the use of Roles to add Participants to my Events. Instead each group of Participants (eg: Witnesses, Usher, etc) are listed as a separate Event under the real one. These 'false' Events need to be deleted and included within the one Event as Roles. - I will add more as I discover more problems that require a Clean Up.
Tutorials in the Clean Up (Notes) Series are:
- Fix Bad Imports:
If may seem strange but the GEDCOM Standard (first released in 1984) has many variations. This is due to a combination of two factors: infrequent standard updates and app developers wishing to add additional features that the current standard did not include. There are some sites that offer an online tool that standardises your GEDCOM file but even these do not have the ability to convert all of the variations from other apps. So some have to be fixed manually.