* Multiple professions

[fredf]

I have searched unsuccessfully for an answer to how to handle multiple professions for an individual.  

A person may have been a merchant for many years and then became a stockbroker.  One of my family members was an engineer and later became a physician.  

Is there a standard way of noting this in FH?



ID:2493

[Jane]

Use the Event Tab you can enter as many occupations for any person as you want.

[fredf]

Thanks, Jane.

[ADC65]

I have a follow-up question which maybe someone will be able to help me with.

The 'Occupation' field on the 'Main' tab of the Properties Dialogue Box appears to auto-populate, presumably when an Occupation attribute is set. I find this a bit annoying since frequently the first occupation I set for a person is rarely the one I would use in that field (an example would be entering 'Scholar' from a census entry).

This field does not appear to update on subsequent occupation attribute entries, nor does it appear to take the occupation with the most recent date. This field then populates a number of reports so I am always having to remember to change or delete the contents (which then sometimes reappear on updating the occupation attribute again ... argh!)

Is there any way I can turn this behaviour off? (FH's behaviour, that is, not mine, which is always bad.)

[Jane]

That field shows the first occupation listed.

As you know for diagrams you can select the first or last occupation easily or show all recorded ones. So the one on the property dialogue can be ignored really. I don't enter any information via that field as I can't enter dates, places etc which I can do on the Events tab.

There is a wish list item to allow a 'preferred' event to be selected as the default. So vote for that if you really want it.

[JonAxtell]

A simple workaround to the problem of which occupation is the one shown on reports and diagrams by default is to move the preferred occupation to the top of the list of occupations. This does make one of the occupations out of order in terms of dates, but that only matters really for dateless events/attributes.

The method is to go to the Events tab and press the button that looks like a bulleted list called 'List in Order' (a bit of a misnomer since pressing it allows events to be placed in any order, but anyway). When the button is selected the two buttons with arrows to the right of it are enabled. Select the occupation in question and using the arrow buttons move it so that it is the first occupation.

[ADC65]

Thanks both for the replies.

I currently use the 'List in Order' function anyway as I prefer a list which puts all the Residences in date order followed by all the Occupations in date order - I find this easier to scan through when doing research. I have to admit this is becoming a bit unwieldy as I add more censuses though.

One thing I haven't tried, and maybe you will be able to answer this - if I manually type in an occupation, will FH overwrite this if I subsequently add an Occupation attribute to the top of the list?

Thanks again for your help.

[Jane]

satyricon said:
One thing I haven't tried, and maybe you will be able to answer this - if I manually type in an occupation, will FH overwrite this if I subsequently add an Occupation attribute to the top of the list?

If you overtype the one on the Main tab this will replace the first occupation field, which will be the one it displayed.

As long as you use the Events tab you have fine control over all the occupation entries.

[ADC65]

Jane said:
If you overtype the one on the Main tab this will replace the first occupation field, which will be the one it displayed.

Thanks Jane, that's cleared up what I needed to know.