* Breaking a SOURCE into smaller elements

[rodit]

I am looking for assistance with the following problem. Over the years I have been adding to my wife’s family in New South Wales, using as a source “NSW BDM” which I have used for Births, Marriages and Deaths. I now have some 2000 entries - all using the same Source. (This has also been used in some cases as a Naming source, usually when spouses have been added to a marriage record).
Recently I decided to re-organise and created the following sources: “NSW Birth”, “NSW Marr”, and “NSW Death” as Generic Indices. I thought to use the “Replace Selected Sources” Plugin on the NSW BDM source, but this changed EVERYTHING. When I use the “List All Citations for a Selected Source” Plugin, the above list of 2000+ is generated, and one of the columns, described as Description, listing BIRT, DEAT, MARR and NAME.
Is it possible to use this descriptor reference as one of the elements of a query so that the “Replace …..” Plugin will enable me to just replace the “NSW BDM” source which contains that reference with the relevant ‘new’ Source?
If not I will have to change them all manually!
Hopefully
Roger

[tatewise]

Roger, as always with such problems it helps us enormously if you can post exactly what options you chose in the plugin.
Presumably, you chose NSW BDM as the Old Source and NSW Birth as the New Source.
But what ... contains criteria did you use to identify just the Birth citations?
The idea is to filter the Citations such that only Citations for Birth are moved from Old Source to New Source.

What exactly do you mean by this changed EVERYTHING?

[arthurk]

I don't think I can offer any detailed advice myself, but this sounds very similar to the issue I asked about in relation to the England & Wales GRO Index, in this thread:

GRO & FreeBMD sources - how to demerge B, M & D (20346)

The advice I received was very helpful, and there's a link to a plug-in (by Mike) that did the job automatically. However, it would probably be wise to let Mike comment on whether this is the right tool for what you're planning.

[tatewise]

Yes, that plugin should work to cater for the situation where nothing in the Citation differentiates the type of fact.
i.e. It uses the Birth, Marriage, Death, etc, fact to determine which new Source record is required.

[rodit]

Gents
Thanks for your replies. I had scoured the Forum for a similar thing, but "Demerge" was the word I should have looked for.
Arthur: That is just what I was looking for.
Mike: When I said EVERYTHING, every NSW BDM source got changed to NSW Birth so I had a little panic, got back to square 1 and put in my question.
I will get to it over the weekend.
Thanks again to you both.
Roger

[arthurk]

Glad it was helpful. I'm not sure why I put 'demerge' as a more obvious word might have been 'split' - but then you'd have got all the discussions about splitting and lumping. I don't remember thinking about that when I started the thread.

Anyway, the solution that I was offered worked perfectly for me. Note that the thread also offers help on how to re-order the title of the source, and towards the end on how to edit the plug-in to deal with differently named BMD-type sources, which I think you'll need (I used GRO Index, and then repeated with FreeBMD). As always, try it out on a copy of your project first to make sure it does what you're expecting.

[rodit]

Worked perfectly. I had to change to "NSW BMD" and the relevant bits (thus learning a very small bit about LUA programming), but thanks again to you both.
Roger