Family Historian User Group

Exchanging data between RootsMagic V7 and FamiyHistorian V 7.0.7 sometimes hits a few bumps along the way. FH has done a wonderful job of trying to be compatible with other vendors.

I don’t export any of the RM extra Details (RM specific).

I have also duplicated all my customizations (facts, etc) of RM into FH so that my RM facts find matching facts in FH.

RM puts out EVEN GEDCOM tags with a descriptor. FH does not agree with this and was rejecting the EVEN tags with descriptors but now accept them as INFO ONLY error messages. With FH V7 I was changing all the EVEN tags in the GEDCOM file to FACT tags before importing into FH. With the change to a FACT tag all the EVEN errors go away.

I still have one error where data is being rejected on import to FH.

Both RM and FH allow for adding shared persons either in the project or not in the project. This is an example of a person not in the database but data only.

Export without RM extras. The FH import fails:

GEDCOM File:
2 _SHAR
3 GIVN Benjamin G
3 SURN Dana
3 ROLE Witness

FH Import Log
l.6413 - EXCLUDED: invalid line : "2 _SHAR "
l.6414 - EXCLUDED BRANCH LINE: : "3 GIVN Benjamin G"
l.6415 - EXCLUDED BRANCH LINE: : "3 SURN Dana"
l.6416 - EXCLUDED BRANCH LINE: : "3 ROLE Witness"

The non-database person is left out. I could fix this by making all these people part of the database but not part of the tree. Is there any way around this?

The conversion of all EVEN tags to FACT tags is converting all custom Events to custom Attributes.
That certainly allows any exported EVEN Event with a value to become a valid FACT Attribute with a value, but also changes the conceptual meaning of those custom facts that are meant to be Events.
The TYPE tag following the EVEN tag gives the name of the fact, so could you inspect that to only convert appropriate facts from EVEN to FACT?

There is also an import option to put EVEN values into an _UNCAT field. I am developing the Change Any Fact Tag plugin such that when changing a custom Event to an Attribute it automatically moves the _UNCAT value to the Attribute value.

Regarding Name Only Shared Facts, the FH GEDCOM format is:
2 _SHAN Fred SMITH
3 ROLE Lodger
3 NOTE Fred only resided temporarily.

So you need to take the GIVN and SURN values and append them to _SHAN in place of _SHAR.

I may be telling you something you know already, but if you include the “RM-specific” option in the GEDCOM export, you can recreate your RM source templates and To-do list (both of which are discarded in the normal FH import) within FH. This restores the detailed granularity of RM sources that FH dumps in uncategorised data. Is that of any interest? Details are in this Knowledge Base article.

Mike - Thank you for all your work. you say you are working on a plugin to change facts. This sounds like something that I could benefit from and will try as soon as is available. I will also run some tests to see if the change from an event to an attribute will change what FH does even though the different type are meant to convey different meanings

I will also try changing the GEDCOM file to correct as you suggest for the shared people not in the database.

Mark1834 - When I was cleaning up my TMG data I reduced all my customizations to a minimum/ I tried to be as generic as possible so I think all my sources are defaulting to whatever FH has. I also have been using an external todo list as the ones in RM or FH don't seem to work for me. When I make a trip I usually want to have more detailed data and I want to sort it in many different ways. One such sort is by location in the order I am making the trip so I can just start at the top and the list lists everything that I want to find out in h=that location, not necessarily the location of an event or fact so I think I'm ok at this time.

I may be closer to my goal of losing no data in an export/import action.

The Change Any Fact Tag plugin already exists in the Plugin Store and is mentioned in Importing to Family Historian and Handling Uncategorised Data Fields.

It is just the feature to automatically handle the _UNCAT field that is new and is related to the Tools > Preferences > File Load/Save setting Move invalid data into note fields where possible which if unticked always moves EVEN values to the _UNCAT UDF.

I had forgotten that V3.3 of the plugin has already been published with the _UNCAT feature.