* Is it possible to merge Facts?

[NickiP]

Is there anyway of merging two Facts by copying the details of one Fact into the Note section of another Fact please?

Following on from my other post on missing dates on census, my relative has created a number of extra facts relating to birth/marriage/death which include the BMD reference in the PLAC field. Not sure why but it was done originally in FTM2006. The extra facts are called different names but aren't really needed or ideal. To try and resolve the issue, I was wondering whether it would be possible to automatically copy the PLAC record from one fact into the Note section of another and delete the other Fact. Its not 100% satisfactory but would get rid of the issue. The problem again is we are talking about a tree that has over 30k individuals so its not an easy task to do manually.

Is this possible at all please?

This isn't the half of it she also has extra shared Facts for marriages named Residence (Marriage) and Witnesses with simply either the names of the witnesses in the PLAC field or the address at the time of the marriage in the PLAC field. Not sure how this could be fixed other than by manually copying the data and adding to another Fact and deleting the extras.

Why or why did FTM2006 have to allow people to do this.

Nicola

[DavidNewton]

Nicola

Although it does not help to solve the problem the explanation of why it occurred may be in the FTM section on this page

http://www.tcgr.bufton.org/tcgpcomp.htm

and is connected with GEDCOM export from versions of FTM prior to FTM2008

David

[tatewise]

Yes, most of that is possible with a Plugin or two, assuming the details are fairly consistent.
Again, some representative snippets will help to analyse the problems.
If you can confirm that all instances of the problem use a common format, then the Plugin task is much easier.
Since you are IT literate, you will know what I mean.

FTM is something of a rule unto itself, and it does not export its details to the best Gedcom fields!

[NickiP]

Thanks David and Mike for the replies.

Yes I agree Mike FTM seems to be a bit of a law unto itself and its interesting that different versions are treating the same custom data from 2006 in a different way.

I've had a response from my relative regarding a full gedcom of her tree and, as she has visitors arriving at the end of the week, this isn't likely to appear until towards the end of next week now. When I have the file, I'll have a look through at the custom Fact fields she's been using and see whether there is much consistency. There may be some but I doubt it will be universal. I currently only have copies of parts of it that are a few years old, these are the parts that we share, so I can't guarantee that the examples will be the only occurences or whether there is any consistency.

I'll post some examples when I have the full file, hopefully towards the end of next week.

Nicola