Locations

 

The location fields each hold up to 100 characters.  Since many locations will be repeated, there are a few shortcuts to speed up your work.  If the location has been entered previously, then type the first three or four letters in the location field and then press the F8 key.  A list of matching locations will pop up and you may use the up and down arrow keys to pick the one you want and then press enter.  This will guarantee that you are consistent in the spelling of the locations and that will result in a savings in disk space.  Some disk space is used for every unique location, however, once a location has been entered, it does not take any more disk space to have several people use the same location.  (To modify an existing location, see below.)

 

Another shortcut is to use the CTRL keys to have the program remember commonly used names or locations.  Using the CTRL key routine, you can enter a location by pressing just CTRL+SHIFT plus 1 key.  

 

Another shortcut is that you may enter a quote or ditto mark in a location field and the program will copy into that field whatever location is shown in the field above.  For example, if you enter the birth location as Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan, and then move down to the place of death, you may enter either  "  or  '  as the first and only character in that field and when you push enter, the field will show Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan.  When you use either the  "  or  ' , the program will duplicate the closest non-blank location field above the one you are entering.  

 

Another shortcut when entering locations is = (the equal sign).  When you enter = in a location field, it will make the location equal to what that same field was for the last person you entered or displayed.  For example, if you are entering data for a wife, and she was born in the same city as the husband, you may enter = for her place of birth.  When you push Tab, it will display the same location that you entered for the husband.  This is handy for times when  "  would not work because there are other locations directly above that are different.  If several children were born in the same location, you may enter = in the birth location and it will duplicate the location for the previous child that you entered.  You may use = to duplicate any of the main five location fields from the previous person entered (birth, baptism, christened, died, buried.)  Remember that " will copy whatever is currently above on the screen at the time, whereas = will duplicate from the same location field from the previous person you entered. 

 

To modify an existing location for everyone that uses that location, go to the main screen of Brother's Keeper, and then pick File, Locations, Change globally.