Addresses Master list: Help

Every address that is referenced in the family tree is recorded in the Addresses Master List. This way all of the information collected about a particular address is in a central record. This, in particular facilitates ensuring that particular addresses are always identified in the same way.

An Address record can be used for one of three purposes:

As a more detailed alternative to a Location record. A Location record contains an unstructured line of text identifying the place where an event took place, or a fact was observed. An Address record breaks the identification of the place into its hierarchical component parts, and also permits associating additional contact information, such as telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.
To record contact information for an individual in the family tree. This should be used cautiously. For example using a formal contact list application provides advantages, such as integration with address label or bulk mail creation applications. Furthermore placing personal information of this sort in the family tree may expose it to an unintended audience.
To record contact information for a repository, such as a library or archive, which provides public access to source documents that are referenced by the family tree.

You get to the Addresses Master List from the Family Tree Top Level Services web page. When you first enter the Addresses Master List web page the display is empty, because you have not defined yet which kinds of addresses to display.

You use the "Pattern" field to search for addresses based upon their textual representation. Technically the value you enter in this field is a regular expression pattern. The following are just some of the ways you can use this pattern.

Ordinary text, particularly text containing only letters, digits, and spaces, matches anywhere in the address. For example entering "Michigan" will match all addresses that contain the text "Michigan". The match ignores the case, so this will also match "michigan" and "MICHIGAN".
The period '.' matches any single character. You can use this any time you do not know, or care, about what character is present at a particular spot in the address.
The caret '^' (shift-6 on American keyboards) matches to the beginning of the address. For example to find addresses that start with "New" enter "^New", as just entering "New" matches addresses that contain the word "New" anywhere in the text.
The dollar sign '$' (shift-4 on American keyboards) matches to the end of the address. For example to find addresses that end with "USA" enter "USA$".
The asterisk '*' (shift-8 on American keyboards) causes the immediately preceding character to match zero or more repetitions. This is most commonly used with the period to skip over any number of characters that do not match. For example the pattern "Mi.*USA" matches any address that has the text "Mi" and later on the text "USA" with any number of arbitrary characters in between. For example it will match addresses containing "MI, USA" and "Michigan, USA", as well as "Mississippi, USA".
There are many more options which you can experiment with.

You must also specify which kinds of address records are to be displayed, by clicking on the checkboxes associated with the three kinds of addresses. Note that unless you are the master administrator of the family tree you cannot view mailing address records from this dialog, in order to preserve the privacy of the individuals. However if you are an owner of the associated individual you can view and edit the address record for that individual from the edit Individual page.

Each of the addresses displayed on this web page shows the unique numeric key of the address, and the address text as it is displayed in reports. The numeric key is a link to a web page that displays the details recorded about the address, and if you are authorized to do so, permits you to edit those details.