Family Historian User Group

Can anyone help me with my curiosity.

AS has a Census Auto-Text entry. The help file states.

Only one Census auto-text template is provided with Ancestral Sources. This has the title Default and just the type of source and year, place, address and the census grid. There isn't a great need for a variety of Census Auto-text templates as each census year has its own census template which ensures that a transcription of the census columns can be made. The rich-text version of this template will show the census grid in a table.

If I use the Census page in AS however, as far as I can see, every combination of coutry and year has a Census Template instead, and the user is not given the chance to select another template (without editing the template itself).

So in what circumstances would I want to use the Census Auto-text, and how would I be able to access it, seeing as each type eg Burial, Birth (other than Census) etc supplies its suggestions for Autotexts based on the type already selected.

I think you may be confusing two different things.

The AutoText templates appear, if selected, towards the bottom in the text section. The Census templates are used to define what columns should in the main entry part of the window for Census entries - these will normally be different for each Country / Year combination. The AutoText template for the Census includes, by default, the {CENSUSGRID} value which is, effectively, the grid of data that you have input (viz. the data input for each person in the Census grid). Depending on your AS settings, this could be inserted to FH as part of the Source record related to the Census.

That's exactly my point.

So if I want to use the Census Auto-text, how and where can I use it?

When you have selected Census you just select AutoText as you would for Births, etc. It will be populated with the content of the Census grid once you have input data, plus other values if you have made changes to the AutoText template - by way of example, I have modified the default AutoText for the 1939 Register so I can record in it the number of "closed" records in the household.

For my setup, this gets saved in the Text from Source field in the Source record

So if I want to use the Census Auto-text, how and where can I use it?

You already use it. The default autotext will be used when you click the Auto button unless you have more than one template defined. For Census the built in default looks like this:

{SOURCETYPE} {COUNTRY} {YEAR}=IF[{ADDR}%
Address: {ADDR}%]=IF[{PLACE}%
Place: {PLACE}%]

{CENSUSGRID}

So it shows something like:
Census England 1901
Address: 1 The Place
Place: Warrington, Lancashire

Then the contents of the census grid

Some people might, for example, also want to include the census reference code so could add another bit to the template for that. You would edit that under the Tools->Autotext Template Editor. In earlier versions of AS the template was just:

{CENSUSGRID}

I'll have a look at this shortly.

That explains it fully, Nick, but thanks also to jbtapscott.

Colin