Looking an address up¶

An owner’s address can be looked up instead of typed. You type enough of it to be recognised — 1200 new york ave washington — pick the right one from a short list, and the street, city, state, ZIP and country fill themselves in.

It is meant for the office, while entries are being processed. It needs the internet, so it is not something to rely on at a show site.

Item	Screen
Look up… button, beside the address	`frmAddressLookup`

The button is on the three screens where an owner’s address is edited: the owner panel of the entry screen, Add Owner, and Owner Maintenance.

Note

This is optional and it is not part of the program’s price. The lookup uses Google’s address service, which you sign up for yourself and which bills you, not the club. Until you enter a key nothing changes: the address fields behave exactly as they always have, and you can go on typing addresses by hand forever. See What it costs below — for ordinary office use the answer is almost certainly nothing.

Using it¶

Put the cursor in the address if you like — whatever is in the Street box is carried into the search box to save retyping.
Press Look up…
Type as much of the address as you have and press Search, or just press Enter.
Pick the right line from the list. Read it before you pick: a search for a street in Ottawa, Ontario will also offer Ottawa County, Michigan.
Press Use This Address, or double-click the line.

The dialog closes and the address is filled in. Nothing is saved yet — the record is filled in exactly as though you had typed it, so you can correct anything before you move off the record, and Escape still abandons it.

If nothing matches, or the service cannot be reached, the dialog says so and stays open. Close it and type the address by hand; nothing is lost.

What it fills in¶

Box	Filled with
Street	house number and street, e.g. 1200 New York Ave NW
City	the town or city
State / Province	the two-letter code
Zip / Postal	ZIP plus the four-digit extension where the service has one
USA / Canada	set to match the address

The country is set for you, and the State box switches between states and provinces to match — the same as when you click USA or Canada yourself.

Anything the service does not know is left blank rather than guessed at. An apartment or suite number is not part of what it returns; add it yourself after the address is filled in.

Note

United States and Canada only. Those are the only countries the program stores addresses for, so the search is restricted to them. If you pick something outside them the dialog refuses it and says so.

Turning it on¶

You need an API key from Google. Getting one is free and takes about ten minutes, but the sign-up is built for software developers and says so at every turn. What follows is the shortest path through it.

Three things are worth knowing before you start, because each one surprises people:

You will be asked for a credit card. Google requires one on the account before it will hand out a key, even though ordinary use here costs nothing. It is not a subscription and there is no monthly fee. See What it costs.
Two separate services have to be switched on, not one, and the program needs both. Miss either and the lookup fails at a different point.
A key by itself does nothing. Creating the key and switching the services on are separate jobs, and it is easy to do the first, think you have finished, and get a refusal.

Step by step¶

Go to console.cloud.google.com and sign in with a Google account. A personal Gmail account is fine.
Create a project. If this is your first time, Google offers to make one — accept, and call it whatever you like (Trial Secretary, say). The name is for your benefit only. If you are dropped somewhere without the offer, the project picker is the drop-down at the top left, with New project in it.
Set up billing when asked. There is a Billing entry in the menu at the top left if it does not prompt you. Google may offer a free trial credit; accept or ignore it as you like — it makes no difference to what follows.
Switch on the two services. In the search box at the very top of the page, type the name of each in turn, open it, and press Enable:

Type this

Then press

Places API (New)

Enable

Geocoding API

Enable

Warning

Take care over the first one. The list also offers a Places API without the (New), which is the previous generation and will not work here. If the search half of the dialog later refuses with a message about Places API (New) not having been used in your project, this is why — come back and enable the one with (New) in its name.
Create the key. In the same search box type Credentials and open the Credentials page. Press Create credentials at the top, and choose API key. The key appears in a box — a long string beginning AIza. Copy it.
Restrict the key before you close that box, by pressing Edit API key (or opening the key afterwards from the Credentials list). Under API restrictions choose Restrict key and tick the two services from step 4. Save.

This matters more than it looks. An unrestricted key that gets loose can be used for anything Google offers and billed to you; one restricted to these two can only look addresses up.
Paste it into the program. Open Look up… on any of the three screens, put the key in the box at the bottom, and press Save Key.

Type this	Then press
`Places API (New)`	Enable
`Geocoding API`	Enable

The search half of the dialog turns on and the explanation disappears. The key is remembered; you will not be asked again on this computer.

Note

Give it a minute. Google says a newly enabled service can take a few minutes to become usable. If the first search refuses, wait a moment and try again before assuming something is wrong.

If it refuses¶

The dialog repeats whatever Google says, which is written for developers. The useful translations:

The message mentions	What to do
Places API (New) has not been used in this project, or PERMISSION_DENIED	Step 4, first row — and check you enabled the one with (New) in the name
REQUEST_DENIED, or not authorized, when you press Use This Address but the search worked	Step 4, second row — the Geocoding API is not switched on
API key not valid, or invalid	The key was mistyped or truncated. Copy it again from the Credentials page
Billing	Step 3
could not reach the address service	Not Google — this computer has no internet, or something is blocking it

The two halves fail separately, which is the quickest way to tell them apart: if the list of suggestions appears but pressing Use This Address fails, the search service is fine and it is the Geocoding one that is missing.

Where the key is kept¶

On the computer you entered it on, for the Windows account you entered it under. It is not in the data file.

That is deliberate. The data file moves between clubs and machines, and gets sent to other people; a key kept in it would go along and be billed to you.

Two consequences worth knowing:

It survives upgrading the program. Installing a new version does not disturb it.
Every computer needs its own. Setting it up on the office machine does nothing for a laptop. Use the same key on both if you like — paste it into each — or leave the laptop without one, in which case addresses there are simply typed by hand.

To stop using the lookup, clear the box and press Save Key with it empty. The dialog goes back to explaining itself and the address fields behave as they did before.

What it costs¶

Google bills the key holder by usage, with no monthly fee and no minimum. Each address you look up is roughly two calls — one for the search, one for filling in the address.

As of August 2026 the two services the program uses each allow 10,000 free calls a month, counted separately, and the allowances do not have to be shared with each other. An office processing entries would have to look up several thousand addresses in a month to reach that.

Note

Google’s prices are theirs to change, and this page is only as current as the date on it. The authority is Google’s own pricing page for the Maps Platform. If usage does ever go past the free allowance, the charge is a few dollars per thousand lookups.

You can put a cap on it. Google Cloud lets you set a budget on a project and mail you when it is approached, and a daily quota on each API; either is a sensible precaution if leaving a key on an office machine makes you uneasy.

When it will not help¶

No internet, no lookup. The dialog will report that it could not reach the service. The address fields still work.
A brand new address — a house on a street built last year — may not be known yet.
Rural routes and PO boxes are recognised inconsistently. Type them.
It does not check an address you already typed. It only fills one in. There is no “is this address right?” button.