Family Historian User Group

I am not FH user but have trialled FH4 in the past.

Does FH5 have a means of determining that data transferred into a particular field has come from a similar field in the source software?

I know from trialling quite a number of software programs that I have a problem with marriages being marked as divorced which are not and are not shown in my current PAF5 software as divorced. This occurs even in transfers not requiring GEDCOM. PAF5 use began with a GEDCOM from Family Tree Maker in the last century.

Can FH5 report on "mismatched" fields?

Without seeing the Gedcom exported from PAF it's difficult to know what might be confusing other software. It's possible you are getting "blank" DIV lines in your gedcom file. If so they are easily removed after the import by using a query to find the divorce facts with no date or place and deleting them.

The other possibility is that there is a Status set against the couple which again needs deleting, which can be done in a similar way to that above.

I am not sure what you mean by mismatched, but using queries it's normally possible to track down any problem entries and remove them. So for example find all the couples marked as divorced, but with no divorce fact.

alananne asked:

Does FH5 have a means of determining that data transferred into a particular field has come from a similar field in the source software?

In FH, any imported data in a particular field will always come from a similar field derived from the source software.
Importing from PAF to FH requires the use of GEDCOM file format, so FH can only use the GEDCOM fields provided.
How PAF populates these GEDCOM fields with data is determined entirely by the PAF software.
If PAF misuses any GEDCOM fields, then FH can do nothing about it, and your concerns should be directed to the PAF support group.

However, as Jane said, once your data is within FH, then there are numerous tools that allow it to be reviewed and corrected as necessary.

Can I clarify the extent of the GEDCOM reference.

One trial of alternative software was Ancestral Quest which allowed a transfer of data without using GEDCOM. The particular problem with Divorce not showing in PAF5 but appearing in AQ was repeated. This seems to eliminate GEDCOM as the source of the problem.

If you want a second trial, to see if you get lot's of divorced people you can request a trial extension from support at family-historian.co.uk.

Jane wrote:If you want a second trial...

Thank you, but no.