Family Historian User Group

Apologies if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find anything after extensive searches.

Is it possible to include multiple instances of a fact type into a single sentence for a narrative report?

For example, I have collated a number of Occupation facts for a number of my ancestors from various sources (e.g. marriage certificates, census entries, etc). Instead of having a single sentence for each Occupation fact, is it possible to include all Occupation facts into one sentence.

My idea would be something along the lines of "His occupation was recorded as a Labourer on 1 January 1899 and 31 March 1901"

Many thanks in advance

I would not like to attempt that, because there are too many cases to consider.

Remember there is only one Sentence Template applied to every instance of the fact, but does not know the instance number.
So not only must it somehow detect each %CUR_PRIN.OCCU[n]% instance where n can be any number, but also ensure they all specify the same Occupation, and also cater for when they are not the same.
Consider the general case where some Occupations only occur once, and others occur a few times, perhaps not consecutively, and all for the same Individual

The only possible solution would be for you to do the intelligent donkey work.
You would put the desired text in say the Note field, and get the Sentence Template to use that when it exists, but otherwise use the standard default template.
See the how_to:narrative_report_fact_sentence_templates|> Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates under Custom Fact Fields for ideas involving =GetLabelledText(...), where you could conditionally test the label exists and if so use it, otherwise use the normal template.

In cases where an individual has the same occupation recorded on several different dates I usually create a single instance of the occupation, with a date range if I am fairly sure they had the occupation continuously from the earliest to the latest date. I then cite each source against the single occupation, and if more explanation is needed I add details in the Note field explaining the various sources. In your example you could simply override the sentence for the fact in the Property Box to read "His occupation was recorded as a Labourer on 1 January 1899 and 31 March 1901".

Mike / Lorna

Many thanks for the prompt replies - much appreciated. Thought it may have been a bit too much to ask

I was thinking along the same lines as Mike, in that I use Custom Fact fields and include it in the sentence for the 'main' fact (i.e. Occupations recorded at a Census, etc), although Lorna's suggestion also makes sense and was something else I was thinking of looking at.

Many thanks again