* Newly added child will not sort according to birth date

[woodr2011]

When I add a new child to an existing family group within the Focus window, the new child always appears on the bottom of the list of children rather than in the correct order according to date of birth, and he or she remains there (at the bottom). Is this a setting?

[tatewise]

This is a recurrent question. See FHUG Knowledge Base Sorting Children, Spouses & Facts into Date Order.

[woodr2011]

This is a recurrent question. See FHUG Knowledge Base Sorting Children, Spouses & Facts into Date Order.

Thank you, Mike. I am quite surprised that one would need to prompt the software to do this sort of thing. The default sorting of children by birth order is a standard feature across the board with genealogy apps.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Duplicate postings (18312)

[mjashby]

@woodr2011

I'm surprised that you you believe the default in other applications is to automatically sort the order of newly entered children, eg. both Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic do exactly the same as Family Historian, i.e. leave it to the user to reorder children if/when necessary and provide similar methods to apply any changes.

Mervyn

[ColeValleyGirl]

@woodr2011

I'm surprised that you you believe the default in other applications is to automatically sort the order of newly entered children, eg. both Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic do exactly the same as Family Historian, i.e. leave it to the user to reorder children if/when necessary and provide similar methods to apply any changes.

Mervyn

Mervyn, you're right: RootsMagic 8 behaves the same as FH . I've checked using my copy.

I don't have a copy of FTM but all the documentation I can find on line also says you're right.

Gramps doesn't do it either.

Legacy does, but has more drawbacks than advantages IMO.

Perhaps OP can tell us which genealogy apps they know of that support default sorting of children by birth order.

[woodr2011]

@woodr2011

I'm surprised that you you believe the default in other applications is to automatically sort the order of newly entered children, eg. both Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic do exactly the same as Family Historian, i.e. leave it to the user to reorder children if/when necessary and provide similar methods to apply any changes.

Mervyn

Mervyn, you're right: RootsMagic 8 behaves the same as FH . I've checked using my copy.

I don't have a copy of FTM but all the documentation I can find on line also says you're right.

Gramps doesn't do it either.

Legacy does, but has more drawbacks than advantages IMO.

Perhaps OP can tell us which genealogy apps they know of that support default sorting of children by birth order.

OP will respond to that question with great pleasure! The Master Genealogist is an excellent example. I am fully prepared for the obligatory refutation and denigration of my response

[tatewise]

With all due respect, you said:
"The default sorting of children by birth order is a standard feature across the board with genealogy apps."
The others have suggested that it is not a standard feature across the board and your only example so far is the obsolete unsupported product TMG.

[ColeValleyGirl]

The Master Genealogist is an excellent example.

Thanks. So now we have two applications identified - TMG and Legacy. You might want to update your Wish List request with those examples, and any others you know of. I think the FamilySearch tree orders automatically by Birth date (but that's a shared tree so am not sure it's a valid comparator); don't know about the other online trees. Family Tree Builder has some sort of hybrid approach, as far as I can tell.

Within what are -- or used to be -- major desktop applications, it does seem as if there are two approaches with traction: automatically ordering by birth date (Legacy, TMG) and ordering by entry date (FH, RM, FTM). Which approach an individual prefers almost certainly depends on the application(s) they used before they came to FH.

[ColeValleyGirl]

the obsolete unsupported product TMG.

To be fair, Mike, TMG was a major application for many years, so I would say it's a valid comparator.

[ColeValleyGirl]

And while I remember, there's a related Wish List request here: Re-order Events by Date as a preferential UI setting (19990).

Work to refine the Wish should be done there and not here.

[woodr2011]

With all due respect, you said:
"The default sorting of children by birth order is a standard feature across the board with genealogy apps."
The others have suggested that it is not a standard feature across the board and your only example so far is the obsolete unsupported product TMG.

Mike, are you sure that you want this comment to stand?

[wildbill]

I often read similar discussions and I would agree as births occur is a chronlogical order they should be sorted that way.

I read users of other software who would be angered by such a change but I've always been afraid to ask why they would wish children to be sorted in a non chronological order in case it was some LDS preference.

My previous software did not automatically calculate relationships either so it was requiring more and more manual intervention, I like customization but not requiring it as a default.

[AdrianBruce]

... I read users of other software who would be angered by such a change but I've always been afraid to ask why they would wish children to be sorted in a non chronological order ...

Yes. Sort of. Those of us who have supported commercial systems have probably seen a case or two when a system's defaults have changed in a - we thought - perfectly logical manner. And then the complaints come in and I for one have said, "But what you're asking for is stuuuuu.... Oh, hang on, I see what you're using it for. And I can see how you're better off with the old methods." Therefore, our gut feeling is - "Never change the defaults".

I can, in fact, see one case why I'd not want children to be in birth order - which is when children have been "taken into" the family for non-birth reasons - step-children or adopted children, for instance. Some people might want birth order even then, others might want (step and birth) children grouped in their original families... Not too difficult to arrange an over-ride of the default birth order, but it has to be identified and thought about.

[ColeValleyGirl]

I read users of other software who would be angered by such a change but I've always been afraid to ask why they would wish children to be sorted in a non chronological order in case it was some LDS preference.

Like Adrian, I have circumstances in which I do not want Birth order, but something else. As I said to woodr2011 on Facebook, where he also was wondering why anybody wouldn't want birth order:

I have a number of families with unknown/un-named children (placeholders for children whose existence is implied by the existence of grandchildren whose parents are unknown, or children who existence is inferred from a census count of children who died). I always want them to be at the end of the family, and in an order that I specify manually. Other people might want their direct ancestor to show up first in the family... I don't think you can assume that date order is a universal preference.

Adrian's example of grouping children in a blended family by their birth family is another good one.

our gut feeling is - "Never change the defaults".

Especially if changing the defaults forces existing users to have to change the way they do things and/or destroys years of hand-crafted data entry/ordering.

I have no objection to birth order being an option (selected by a preference, and by default off). It would allow everybody to carry on working the way they want to work. New users who come from a product that uses birth order can turn it on and get the behaviour they're used to. Existing users can turn it on if they want to work in a new way, or leave it off and preserve their way of working and their data. I probably wouldn't vote for it on the Wish List, but am happy to create the request when it's been properly worked through.

I could take slight offence at the implication that anyone who doesn't want birth order is in someway weird, but I'm sure that wasn't what was intended. And I'm always deeply suspicious of a justification that is essentially 'Everybody else does it this way! So you should do it too...'. It tends to make me want to verify the 'everybody' part of the justification. I'm much more amenable to an argument that says: 'Some other people do it this way; it would be nice of the product supported it. ' To be fair, the New Wish List request is worded more like the second argument.

[tatewise]

To put this in context. Earlier versions of FH did not auto-sort newly entered Facts into chronological order.
The latest versions of FH do sort newly entered Facts but also have a Tools > Preferences > General > Advanced... option to enable and disable that feature.

What woodr2011 is requesting is something similar for auto-sorting newly entered Children and Spouses, but with a similar option to enable and disable the feature such that all users are satisfied.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Mike, Bill didn't ask for anything -- I think you mean woodr2011. Clarification of what is being requested belongs in the New Wish List forum...

[KFN]

An important reason for not automatically sorting children by birth order (by date) is when you don’t have an exact date or any date for some or all of the children.

For example: A couple could have two children in a year but you don’t know the day or month, but you could know the order! Ordering by date when adding additional children could mess up your known order. Also, Because GEDCOM does not store time as part of the date, twins could be messed up when you know that one was born before the other?

It is possible that you enter an approximate date For example Before 1920 for two or more of the children based on an old census that had no age entry, you could know that one child was older than the other because you also had a source that indicated one was an “older sibling”.

[Mark1834]

I noticed one strange inconsistency while playing. I entered three children, born in 1918, on 1 Apr 1920, and after 1920 (I know they were last but don't know the exact date).

The Records Window sorts births in the wrong order, putting "After 1920" as earlier than 1 Apr 1920. This is by design, as missing date elements default to the earliest value and qualifiers are ignored. However, <F9> -> Sort children by birth date puts them in the correct order!!

[tatewise]

One solution for coping with Children and Spouses without suitable Dates is the same as for sorting Facts without Dates.
Give their Birth and Marriage events a Sort Date, which takes precedence for sorting purposes.

Similar rules to sorting Facts with identical Dates would no doubt apply to Children and Spouses.
If several Facts have the same Dates (or no Dates) then their current order is retained when sorting is applied.
So once twins with the same Birth date are arranged chronologically they would stay in that order after sorting.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Wouldn't that involve creating a blank Birth fact potentially without any sources, Mike? So it wouldn't help those of us who don't create dummy or unsourced facts. (And yes, I know, we can be certain that everyone was born.... assuming of course that we're certain they existed, which may not always be the case).

More generally, I think we've seen enough examples of when sorting by Birth date is not appropriate (for some users in some circumstances) that the refugees from other programmes who have never had that option can now understand why FH users like it; and we know that -- special cases apart -- sorting by Birth date is often used. And I haven't so far seen any disagreement that an option to automatically sort by birth dates would be a reasonable thing to have, as long as it wasn't the default option.

Can I suggest we put our energy now into refining the Wish List request?

I noticed one strange inconsistency while playing.

Are you going to report hat inconsistency to CP, Mark?

[Mark1834]

No point- I’ve already reported the Records Window anomaly and CP aren’t going to fix it (“it’s always been like that and if we changed it users will complain”), so the only other option is to break the Focus Window sort as well!

[Rusty]

It doesn't really worry me what order children are entered in as about once a week or when I remember I use the 'Re-order out-of-sequence Data' option under the 'Tools' tab, I do check each one before I confirm the re-sort but it only takes a couple of minutes and 'job done' until the next time.

[Gowermick]

It doesn't really worry me what order children are entered in as about once a week or when I remember I use the 'Re-order out-of-sequence Data' option under the 'Tools' tab, I do check each one before I confirm the re-sort but it only takes a couple of minutes and 'job done' until the next time.

A simpler way, is to do it as you go, using the Up/Down arrows on status bar (to right of Binocular)

[fhtess65]

I often read similar discussions and I would agree as births occur is a chronlogical order they should be sorted that way.

I read users of other software who would be angered by such a change but I've always been afraid to ask why they would wish children to be sorted in a non chronological order in case it was some LDS preference.
<SNIP>

Because it's not always possible to find exact dates for births even when one knows order of birth, so that means if the software decides for you, you will end up with a list that shows some people out of order. Being able to decide the order yourself is preferable if you have a family where you know some, but not all, exact dates of birth.