Places – Conversion of Place Details to Places #places #placedetails #update

So you have your Place List all nicely structured having worked through and split Places into Places and Place Details and it all seems ticketyboo. Now you need to export your database to some other website or software which does not support the way RootsMagic exports Place Details and POOF! – you’ve been caught in another proprietary feature trap. Wouldn’t it be nice if RootsMagic had an option in Export for Place Details and Place to be combined and outputted as standard GEDCOM PLACes recognised by every GEDCOM compliant program? Until that happens, here is a possible workaround that modifies the data in your database.

Places-ConvertPlaceDetailsToPlaces.sql rev 2015-05-15 changed EventTable.SiteId backfill from -1 to 0 and test from <>-1 to >0; correcting either an original error or responding to a change in the RootsMagic value for an event not having a Place Detail.

Combines Place Details and Master Place into Places. This script should run with any SQLite3 manager having a (fake) RMNOCASE collation. One of its effects is to set a flag in the combined Places that the following script can use to reverse the combination.

Places-UnConvertPlaceDetailsConvertedToPlaces.sql
For those combined Places with the flag set by the first script, this one splits the Place into Place Detail and Master Place. The flag disappears if the combined Place has been edited so such Places can only be split manually. Also, if the Master Place has been deleted or its name modified, then the Combined Place is not split by the script, except, possibly for those Master Places that are a substring of the original, in which case, the result will be a bit of a mess. This script is really an UNDO to provide an escape if you inadvertently ran the first script on your master database, not on a copy, and have no backup.

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