* How to Automatically Order Source Citations

[David Potter]

Hi Forum

I am using AS to create all my FH data. I noticed today that when Citations are created they are not necessarily ordered correctly amongst already existing citations. I know there exists a way to manually order these but is there an automatic solution as handling this manually is a big task.

I already use the Re-Order Out of Sequence Data tool but this does not touch Citation records.

Many thanks..

David

[tatewise]

Hi David,
The difficulty is what criteria to use to automatically sort the Source Citations.
FH certainly cannot know what you (or any other user) prefer the criteria to be.
e.g.
Is it based on an alphabetic sort of the Source Title, or a chronological sort of the Citation Entry Date, or what?

AS only adds a handful of Source Citations each time, and sorting only matters where others already exist.
Also the order of the Source Citations is not necessarily important to some users.
So most users just manually adjust the order of the ones that matter to them.

The only way they could be sorted automatically would be via a custom Plugin programmed with your criteria.

[David Potter]

Hi Mike

Thanks for the quick reply. I guess I have Data Housekeeping OCD I was thinking of using the Citation Entry Date as the ordering criteria, but I take your point about how important this is.

BR

David

[tatewise]

Some users employ Diagram > Boxes > Conditions that test the first Source Citation to add an Icon to a Box if a BMD Certificate has been cited. So in that case the BMD Source Citation must come first before Baptism/Burial/Census citations, otherwise the condition to test all Source Citations becomes unwieldy.

[mjashby]

David,

I think you've just help highlight the difficulty in determining what is the 'correct order'. In my case it would be 'strongest' evidence item first, no matter when that was found/recorded, with other being treated as 'supporting' evidence, e.g. for a marriage event I would use this as my own 'guide', but others might well differ:

1. 'Church' or other 'institutional' record of the Marriage, i.e. a copy of the 'original' source document.
2. Copy of Local Registrar's/GRO Marriage Certificate (if a Photocopy)
3. Transcription of Certificate details (e.g. certified manuscript copies, which may contain copying errors)
3. Local Registrar's Index of marriages (which can be more accurate and detailed than the GRO Index)
4. GRO Index Entries
5. Other Marriage Indexes, e.g. Family History Society Indexes, FamilySearch, Personal Transcripts, which can all contain errors.
5. Census Records, Birth/Baptismal records for children etc. (which only suggest that a marriage may have taken place).

Mervyn

[David Potter]

Thanks All

I can now see how complex this could become. I'll park it for now. But thanks indeed for the suggestions.

David