Family Historian User Group

Is there any possiblity that in the future the Lookup Missing Census Facts could also check if there is a Census Family Fact for individuals please, rather than including them in the results report?

I know many on here don't think its a good idea to use the standard Census Family Fact, but I have found that without it the Narrative Reports are far too repetitive and much longer than otherwise would be needed. It is, of course, a Standard Fact in Family Historian.

Nicola

You might think this an unhelpful suggestion, but I get round the interminable repetition of censuses in narrative reports by excluding the census facts altogether. However, I would point out that I have used all the census columns to populate all the other facts such as residence, occupation, birth etc., so the census pretty much repeats all the other facts anyway.

Just to be doubly explicit - the census facts are there - I can query them - I just don't print them.

I have looked into this again, and due to some other recent refinements, it seems quite straightforward to not only add Family Census Events, but also all other Family Facts. Those can then take part in the home or abroad decision on missing Census dates.
Expect to see this change in the next version.

Just bear in mind that Family Census Events are not supported in other utilities such as Ancestral Sources, Census Report, some Queries, etc.

Adrian, I do agree standard Census statements can be repetitive. I'm using the note sections to expand the detail, including occupation because I don't like the way the occupation attribute appears in Narrative Reports, so while there is some repetition its not as bad and in any case, I'm using the Census Facts to "pad out" the reports and make them a little more interesting to read. While I've still got standard Census Fact sentence templates, ultimately these may get revised further once all data is added to the tree. Up until last year, my trees only tended to include the standard BMD/CMB facts and probate details but decided was a bit too boring as I did have the rest of the data saved which had been used to construct the tree.

Mike - that would be great if you could add it to the plugin, it will mean I can check further for missing facts without having to wade through many that do exist. I don't use Ancestral Sources because I find it just as quick to enter the details myself because of the need to expand the note sections and obviously AS doesn't allow for Census Family Facts to be added, or it didn't last time I looked. I don't tend to run queries but will bare that in mind should I decide to. Thanks.

Try ATTACHMENTS Lookup Missing Census Facts Plugin Version 3.9.2 Date 07 Apr 2016.

This version:

• Now considers all Family Facts in both its Census Event check, and the home or abroad checks.
• Sorts all Facts internally in case they are not in Date order, to speed up searches for Census Dates.
• Fixes the problem that Lookup Web Page columns with Dates did not sort correctly.

[ATTACHMENT deleted as Lookup Missing Census Facts Version 4.0 Date 15 Apr 2016 is now in the Plugin Store.]

Well done, Mike! Many thanks.

Thanks Mike. I've run a couple of tests and working great. Now I don't get such long result lists.

Much appreciated.

Nicola

One slight anomaly and its probably because its a custom fact. I have a family that emigrated to New Zealand in 1926 and have a custom Emigration Family fact for this (for reasons I've mentioned previously). The plugin obviously doesn't recognise the fact so has thrown them up as having a missing 1939 Register Fact. I'm assuming if it was a standard Emigration fact, this wouldn't happen?

Also, would there be any way of being able to run a check against multiple country Census Facts at the same time please? I've several people who have some Census Facts from the UK and then others from the US or Canada after they emigrated. If I run the plugin against them I obviously can only have it check against one set of Census facts, which means, whichever is selected, there will be missing Facts shown in the results which aren't missing because they have an Fact for another country's Census.

Thanks

Nicola

Nicki, if the Plugin ran a check against multiple countries, you would get all the missing Census reports for all the countries for all the Individuals, because they are rarely on the same day.

Use the home or abroad feature to avoid missing Census reports. It does not matter what type of fact you use, but it must have a simple Date that is exactly the same as the Census date, as explained in the Help & Advice. So to avoid the 1939 Register missing report the Date must be 29 Sep 1939.

The Plugin is not clever enough to work out where Individuals are by using Emigration and Immigration facts, etc. Anyway, they may have returned to the original country on holiday at the time of a Census in that country.

OK fair point. You've answered another question I had about whether it checks for a full date or just the year. In the case of US census, I'm assuming you are using the dates shown in AS? Unfortunaely I have found that the actual schedules often show different dates depending on where they were taken as I've not come across many that were the same date for each census year. I suspect this was just because the Enumerators couldn't collect the information on a specific date because of the size of the population. That is unfortunately going to cause me a few headaches but I shall have to bare than in mind and probably avoid running against the US Census search.

I just wondered whether, if it was only checking Facts for the year, it could check for, eg, either 1881 or 1880, and then if one or other of them appeared as a date of a Fact, it wouldn't report that Census being required in the results. I suppose the only problem there would be that it couldn't then make suggestions as it wouldn't know which countries' Census to suggest, but it would at least tell you that you had a missing fact. Could it also check for the word Census in the Fact title, which would remove the possibility of checking other Fact types from those years?

Or would that be something that could just be done with a query within Family Historian instead of a plugin, but would need to check for Family Census Facts too? I like the web based results option rather than having to keep switching windows in FH. To be honest, I'm more interested in checking for the missing Fact itself rather than getting suggestions to look at, I can do that myself by manually searching the sites.

Obviously, I don't know whether that is feasible or how complicated that would be, but it would remove the problem of having to run the check against different countries, which will obviously cause problems when someone has emigrated during the available Census years even if they return. I unfortunately do have a number of sidelines who emigrated to either the US or Canada during that period, and often then emigrated again to the other so have the Census Facts for three different countries over the course of their life.

Thanks for what you've done to update the plugin, I do appreciate it.

Nicola

The Plugin checks the specific Census Date used by AS and documented widely as the official date.

If on a Census Date there is a Census Event with a Place name for the chosen Country then the Census is NOT listed as missing.

If on a Census Date there is any Fact whose Place name does NOT mention the chosen Country then the Census is NOT listed as missing.

Note that the Web Search Page composes quite sophisticated search criteria including Place and DoB with range, household relations such as parents for youngsters, and spouses for older people.

If you only want a missing Census report then a Query might suit you better. There are several in fhugdownloads:queriesindi|> Downloads and Links ~ Query Type: Individual for checking Census Events, although to include both Individual and Family Facts a Fact Query may be easier. You could then customise the Dates and Countries to suit yourself. Good Luck.

While I can see the benefits of the query, unfortunately with four fairly large trees (the largest being just under 26k), I don't think the query reporting functionality is really practical with little filtering available and a huge list of results. I appreciate that a query could be run against specific Facts, but its still going to return everyone in the tree, unless there is someway of filtering as part of the query and that is probably far beyond my ability to work out at present. The plugin obviously helps but will still involve a lot of filtering and researching because of the overlap with some overseas. I may just have to run Narrative Reports regularly to check who has a missing Census Fact, something I've been doing anyway. Just hoped there may have been a more simple way to double check which Facts I still had missing.

Queries do have very extensive Row filters as illustrated in the downloads I referenced, so they would only list the missing Census facts similar to the Plugin, but you could check whatever Dates/Years you prefer and cover multiple Countries.

I shall have to get my thinking cap on to work out what to do.

Lookup Missing Census Facts Version 4.0 Date 15 Apr 2016 is now in the Plugin Store.

This version includes Family facts such as Census (family).
It is more tolerant in Place name checks by being case-insensitive, with any or no preceding and succeeding space characters.

I have studied the way the Plugin performs Date and Place checks:

When checking Census (CENS) events, it only requires the Date of the fact to match the date of the Census, and only for the fields provided. So as a minimum the Year must match. Also the Month must match if provided, and the Day must match if provided. The Place name match succeeds if no Place field exists, or it matches a Census locality keyword, which is usually a country.

When checking home or abroad, the fact Date must match the full date of Census, and the Place field must exist and not match a Census locality keyword, for the person to be considered abroad at the Census and thus it is not missing.