Maptitude P&E Tech Corner

I have voters whose street name starts with a number that were not found when I located voters. For example, a street is named 20 Mile Level Road (a sample address is 2906 20 Mile Level Rd). The streets layer has the correct house ranges and the name is spelled the same in both files, but the voter is not found.

Maptitude deals with most addresses fine, but you have found the exceptional situation -- one where the street name actually begins with a number. Under normal circumstances, MTPE will see the street address 2906 20 Mile Level Rd as 2906 Mile Level Rd (removing the 20). You can get around this with a clever trick. Maptitude will allow you to create a location index (Tools-Locate-Index Locations, see the Maptitude User's Guide for more) for your streets file. The location index can be set up to see the street number followed by the street name without doing the standardization (which is what removed the 20). This will create a new file with an .idx extension that can be used on the records that fall out.

Note that the addresses in voters file must match the streets layer exactly. For instance, If your voter file had the address "2906 20 Mile Level Road" but the location index [made from the streets file] had the street as "20 Mile Level Rd," the address WOULD NOT be located. Again, this is because geocoding using a street index does not standardize the addresses.

To use this solution you should do the following:

Create a location index

This should be done every time that you make ANY changes to your street file.

1. Make a map of the new streets as the only layer.

2. Choose Tools-Locate-Index Locations.

3. On the Settings tab, use All Features, and make sure the Range is set to Two Ranges.

4. On the Name Fields tab, choose the format Number followed by Street Name.

5. Everything else should be correct, so click OK.

6. Type in a name for the street index and browse to the directory where you saving your MTPE data. Click Save.

Use the location index to locate voters

You should only use the location index to locate voters that cannot be found with the streets file.

1. Switch to the Location Index by choosing P&E Mgt-Settings-Streets and changing Geocode to Choose Index File... and browsing for the file created above.

2. Click OK to close the settings dbox.

3. Geocode the voters as usual.

4. After geocoding the voters, switch to the streets file by choosing P&E Mgt-Settings-Streets and changing Geocode to Use Streets Layer and browsing for your streets file.

 

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