Family Historian User Group

In my tree I have a lady (A) who married, and subsequently divorced a man (Z). She then had a brief relationship with another man (Y) which resulted in a child, and finally some time later married a third person (X).

My problem is with the Individual Narrative Report. Her marriages to Z and X are shown in the correct chronological order, as is her divorce from Z, but the relationship with Y is not - it shows as a sentence that appears at the end of all other Individual events for her (and in the same paragraph). I thought changing the Marital Status from the default "blank" to "Never Married" or "Unmarried Couple" might have an effect but all it did was change the wording to "She had a relationship with Y".

The Marriage section at the bottom correctly shows "Y and A had the following children:"

The only way I have found to correct the chronological sequence is to actually enter a Marriage date for A and Y and alter the Fact sentence, but this means that I now have an incorrect Fact (a Marriage) which I suspect will have repercussions on other reports / aspects of the application.

Am I missing something?

I think that is an annoying bug that should be reported to Calico Pie.

Clearly FH understands the order of the Family records, because it gets the latter details of the partners and children in the correct order, and changes that order if the records are rearranged.

Similarly FH lists Children in their database record order even if there are no associated Dates.

So FH should narrate the relationships with partners in the 1st paragraph in the order of the Family records too!

BTW: Tools > Re-order Out-of-Sequence Data has no effect.

In the meantime you could create a custom Family Event such as Liaison with a date and appropriate sentence.

Thanks Mike - I'll flag it up with Calico Pie

Just to complete the story, FH Support have advised:

".....
The Individual Narrative report is laid like this (by default):

1. Paragraph about the main person
2.1 Paragraph about their spouse
2.2 List of children

The last two repeat if they have multiple spouses. For example, if they have 3 spouses, A, B, and C, it gets laid out like this:

1. Paragraph about the main person
2.1 Paragraph about their spouse A
2.2 List of children with spouse A
3.1 Paragraph about their spouse B
3.2 List of children with spouse B
4.1 Paragraph about their spouse C
4.2 List of children with spouse C

Of course, some of these paragraphs will be blank (skipped) if there is no information about a spouse, or no children.

Paragraph 1 introduces the main person - and mentions all the known facts about them. One thing that looks bad is if a spouse has no events associated with them, so doesn't get a mention at all, and then later a list of their children appears. Readers think "who is this person that they had children with?" To avoid this, we will auto-generate a sentence about a spouse, in the first paragraph, if necessary. This is the "She had a relationship with Y" sentence. But we can't put a date to it because we haven't got one. You can prevent this sentence appearing by unticking "Auto-Generate Sentences if Missing Facts" in the Main tab of Report Options for this report. But in my view, Mike Tate's advice is a better solution. Person A did have a relationship of some kind with Y. Surely you ought to have a fact of some kind recording this - shared between them in the Facts tab? This would have to be a custom fact, because there isn't a standard one that fits. 'Liaison' sounds OK - or 'relationship' maybe. If you add this fact, everything ought to come out as it should:
A married Z. A divorced Z. A had a liaison with Y. A married X.
She and Y had the following children:

....."

I only have a couple of people this applies to, so have gone with Mike's suggestion of a new Family Event "Liaison" and this has given me the required appearance on the report. I have not looked at the impact on other reports yet, but as the INR is the one I use the most I'm happy!

I cannot follow the logic of their answer, and you may wish to put this too them.

They say they can work out the order of Paragraphs 2 and 3 and 4.

But then say they cannot work out the order of the Sentences in Paragraph 1 because they have no Date to use!

So how did they correctly work out the Paragraph order?
I suspect they used the order of the Family As Spouse (FAMS) records in the Individual record.
Surely whatever logic was used can equally be applied to the Sentences in Paragraph 1.

If all the Spouses have no Family Events then the Sentences are in the correct FAMS record order, albeit currently grouped at the end of the Paragraph 1.

HOWEVER, each Family As Spouse entry could be temporarily assigned a Date based on other associated Facts such as the Marriage/Divorce Events in adjacent Families and the Birth/Baptism Events of any Children. Then that Date could be used to order the Auto-Generate Sentences if Missing Facts.

The solution of unticking Auto-Generate Sentences if Missing Facts is not ideal because it removes other useful sentences.