Family Historian User Group

I am trying to make my TMG education tag fit with FH - I have 15 Principal roles in TMG for Education, so I must change.
In FH listed in Fact Types I have (after import):
1. Education, Attribute, with an OK sentence
2. Education, Event, undefined (not in a fact set) with a lousy sentence.
Of course my import from TMG uses the 2nd education sentence.
I know I can redefine the sentence from Nbr 2However -

Should I be using the Education as an attribute?
How do I get the system to use the Attribute education & not the Event education?
What have other TMG former users done?

Thanks for the help

Linda Reinfeld

In standard Gedcom the Education fact is an Attribute and TMG seems to be misusing it as an Event.
I am not sure if that can be changed in TMG.
The solution in FH is to use the Change Any Fact Tag Plugin.
Select the Source Tag for the Education Event and the Target Tag to Standard and Education.
You may have to experiment with the Source Tag setting to find Education but it is NOT in Standard Tag Set.

For what it's worth, I have two education type facts.

The standard fact with name "Education" is an attribute and in my set-up I have altered the label to read "Education level". This matches the GEDCOM spec'n, which has

EDUC <SCHOLASTIC_ACHIEVEMENT>

and

SCHOLASTIC_ACHIEVEMENT:= {Size=1:248}
A description of a scholastic or educational achievement or pursuit.

In other words, the idea of the GEDCOM EDUC is that it's an attribute that gives the level of attainment at the end of someone's education, such as "Degree level" or "Grade 5" or...

What this doesn't cover is the event of being educated at any point (or over any period) in time. For that concept, I created a custom event named and labelled Educated. Its sentence is

<para>{individual} was educated {place} {date}< at {address}>.

This tends to get used for those entries in the census where someone is described as being a scholar. No data there about the level of their attainment (and, of course, given their education is only part way through, nor could there be). Instead, I just record that they were being educated on that date. If I get data about what school they attended and for how long, then I'd use this.

I offer this idea up in case you feel, like me, that there are 2 sorts of concept related to education that you want to cover.

If you want to go down that road then you can define the Education Event in Tools > Fact Types and correct its Sentence.

Thanks for the feedback on the education tag.

I discovered what was happening - I had identified the GEDCOM tag in TMG as EVEN. When I changed it to EDUC, the education tags imported as attributes.

I see that when an education tag is imported as an event looking at the property box, at the bottom half, the first field is Education, but that is greyed out. When education is imported an an attribute, that field is available for input. However, my data doesn't seem to fit the model for an attribute (the fields end up in different places), so I will probably stick with the EVEN type. I would like to understand what problems I might encounter if I go that route. What benefits are there in having an attribute? I can actually make the sentences work either way....

Thanks Adrian for your comments. We don't have 'scholar' in our census (!) but the 1940 census identifies the highest level of education, 4 years high school, 2 years college, etc. Looking at all my education data, I will definitely create at least two tags, with 'attend' and 'completed' (where you don't know what school).

Thanks for the help.

Linda

Syntactically, the only difference between an Attribute and an Event is the one you spotted.
An Attribute can have a value describing the attribute, whereas an Event cannot.

Typically an Attribute applies over a period of time, such as Occupation, Possessions, Religion, Physical Description, etc.
Whereas an Event occurs on a specific day, such as Birth, Marriage, Census, Death, etc.

You also need to consider the distinction between Standard and Custom facts (Events & Attributes).
Standard facts are well defined in the Gedcom specification and usually recognised by all genealogy products.
Custom facts are perfectly valid and usually imported by products, but there meaning is undefined.
Your FH experience is a perfect example.
The Standard Education Attribute is instantly recognised by FH and has a predefined sensible Sentence.
The Custom Education Event is imported but you must supply the definition via Tools > Fact Types which plays a similar role as the TMG Tag Type definitions.

I am not clear about your statement that "the fields end up in different places" because apart from the Attribute value all the fields should be identical for both Attributes and Events. Can you give an example of the misplaced fields.

Mike -

Thanks very much for your clear explanation. I'm not too worried about adding sentences for custom facts. I think I will keep education as a custom event.

In testing this problem, I tried adding data to the fields in the lower half of the properties box. They did not correspond to where I would add fields in TMG, and since I am importing over 700 education tags/facts I wanted to keep my structure if possible. I'm thinking of the future, when I start adding data into FH & not just importing.....When education was an attribute the data I put into my memo field ended up in the Education field. When education was an event the data from the memo field ended up in note. As far as I can tell, this is not a problem with FH at all.

Thanks for the time you have taken to help me with this. I'm sure it will help with other tags.

Linda Reinfeld

I think I have an explanation for the memo field scenario.

I suspect the TMG Memo for Education is effectively the Education value I mentioned, which in TMG is allowed for all Facts (whether Attributes or Events).
When imported to FH as an Attribute the Education Memo/value is entered into the Education value field.
When imported as an Event, FH does not allow an Education value so its default action is to add it to the Note field, and probably raised an exception report saying that is what it had done.

Hi Mike -

I don't have any UDF data and therefore (I think) no exception report. Tools/Uncategorized Data/Find Uncategorized Data - created a list which has 0 records. The data just went into the Note field,

Linda Reinfeld

UDF are something that will also cause reports, see glossary:udf|> Uncategorised Data Fields.
But other exceptions get reported too.
See if Window > Log Files lists any Reports.

Mike -

No log files either. But you don't have to look into this any more, I am satisfied that I know what is happening now (for this one problem). I think you will hear from me again, though....

Thanks for the help

Linda