* Merging Facts & Other Questions

[USMC7312]

Hi,

Can you merge facts? If so how?

On another note, what or how does FH treat events different from attributes? I noticed that upon importing my GED it created my custom facts from the other app. It looks like it created one event and one attribute for each?

[Jane]

With out more details of the application you came from it's difficult to be sure why both have been created. It's possible your GEDCOM contained both sorts.

If you have a licence for Family Historian you can use the Change Any Fact Tag Plugin to convert to your preferred option.

[tatewise]

When you ask "Can you merge facts?" do you really mean Facts or do you mean Fact Type Definitions as listed in Tools > Fact Types?

It is not possible to merge two Facts into one Fact.
What would happen if they both had say a Date and Place that were different?

You can use the Change Any Fact Tag Plugin as Jane said, to convert chosen Event Facts into chosen Attribute Facts and vice versa. Then the unused Event Fact Type or Attribute Fact Type definition can be deleted, leaving just the other, and the 'merge' has been achieved.

FH honours the GEDCOM formal specification for Events and Attributes.
They are almost identical, except that an Attribute can take a value, whereas an Event cannot.
e.g. The Occupation Attribute has the job as its value, the U.S. SSN Attribute has the security number as its value.

Many products do not enforce that difference, so when imported to FH those Facts without a value are assumed Events whereas those with a value are assumed Attributes and that may lead to Facts of both types with same name.