Family Historian User Group

I had a strange problem today. I was looking at the Events tab for an individual and there were three census events listed. One of the census events didn't have the source linked to it - the others did. I did a sample check of other individuals' events and there was no problem with the links. As the source was created uisng the GEDCOM CENSUS editor I was surprised at the missing link. I got out my paper copy of the census in question and all the ten individuals on that return had no link to that census source. I subsequently linked them manually.

As the GEDCOM CENSUS editor was used to enter details of this particular census source, I was wondering if I may have exited the CENSUS program too early on that occasion, i.e. enough to create the census source but not link to that source. Incidentally I entered these census details several months ago. Has anyone seen this problem before?

Regards, Martin.

ID:1458

It doesn't seem possible to me that Gedcom Census would miss the source citations out. The line of programming code that creates the census event for a person is immediately followed by code to create a citation linking to the source. If you exited Gedcom Census too early then your file would remain untouched and also the source itself is added later than the citations.

The only theory I can come up with would involve you at some point deleting the source itself (hence losing the links) and then recreating it. Have you used your file with any other applications other than FH and Gedcom Census?

Regards

Nick Walker
Author of Gedcom Census

Thanks Nick. No I haven't used the file with any other applications. Also I don't remember deleting the source at any point. However, I've just been looking at the 'last updates' column of my sources. A few weeks ago I decided to link census scans with each census source (as created via the Gedcom Editor). Up until that point I just had the paper copy of the census return. I note that they were all done on February 25th & 26th bar one: the census source in question, which was updated on February 27th, i.e. one day later. Now, again I don't know what happened on that day but there would be appear to be some correlation between the two events. This might indicate that it's an isolated case.

Regards, Martin.

Did you use the Gedcom Census facility 'Attach images to existing sources' (in the Tools menu) to link the census scans to the image or did you do this manually in Family Historian. If you used GC then I'll have a look at the code to make sure that it is not possible for GC to lose the links in the way you've described.

If you didn't use Gedcom Census to link the images then I can recommend it as it does rename the image file (if required), load it in as a FH multimedia object, names it, dates it for you and links it the source in one easy step.

I initially attached loads of census returns by using the Insert picture to Source routines in FH. That would have been the case with the problem one. Since then I have been using the Gedcom Editor link facility with no problems. I now of course attach the picture at the same time as I create the census source in the Gedcom Editor.

The particular census return in question (with the missing individual links) had the relevant census return attached (which I had done manually rather than through the Gedcom Editor) - as I said, it was the individuals that were missing. The fact that the problem source was updated a day later than all the other census sources does seem a bit suspicious, i.e. something went wrong that day...

Regards, Martin.

OK well as I really can't see how GC could have done it, and as it just seems to be a one-off, hopefully it won't happen again. Please do let me know if anything like this happens. Quite a large number of people use Gedcom Census now regularly and I've not had any other reports of this problem.

Cheers

Nick, I think you're right - it's not the GC Editor that was at fault. It'll probably go down as one of those one-off computer problems that happens from time to time. Thanks for your help on this.

Regards, Martin.