* AS Not Creating Census Entry

AS allows faster and more convenient creation of source records for Family Historian.
Post Reply
avatar
ileat
Silver
Posts: 6
Joined: 11 May 2003 16:55
Family Historian: V6.2

AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by ileat »

I've used AS for some time without an issue, but it's just failed to create a census entry in FH with the associated multimedia and source records or facts. The log file entry below shows that AS believes it has successfully created these things but none appear in my project file against the relevant individual. However, AS has successfully copied the census file to the correct 1871 Census project media folder.

Created multimedia record ID: 1594: Census UK 1871 RG10/1896 F42 P17(Media\1871 Census\Sydney Mills 1871 Census.jpg)
Created source record with ID 2802, Title: Census 1871 Box, Wiltshire RG10/1896 F42 P17 (Sydney Mills)
Added link to multimedia object ID 1594
Individual record Sydney MILLS [7806]
Added fact Census
Added fact Occupation

Have I done something wrong?

Thanks,

Ian
User avatar
tatewise
Megastar
Posts: 28341
Joined: 25 May 2010 11:00
Family Historian: V7
Location: Torbay, Devon, UK
Contact:

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by tatewise »

Hello Ian.

Did you invoke AS by running the Ancestral Sources Data Entry Plugin from your FH Project?

OR did you choose the Project from within AS? Are you sure AS updated the correct Project?

In the Log what File: path is given for the Project? Is it what you expect for your main Project?

In your FH Project is the last Media Record Id = 1593, and the last Source Record Id = 2801 ?
Is the Sydney MILLS Record Id = 7806 ?
If the answer to an of those is 'NO' then they are not the same Project.

Do you have a duplicate Project that AS has updated instead of your master Project?
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
User avatar
LornaCraig
Megastar
Posts: 3190
Joined: 11 Jan 2005 17:36
Family Historian: V7
Location: Oxfordshire, UK

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by LornaCraig »

(Edit: Mike' reply arrived while I was writing this)

If you have more than one individual in your file with the same name you might find it has been linked to the wrong individual, i.e. you selected the wrong one in AS by mistake.

You say that AS has copied the census file to the correct 1871 Census project media folder, so it must have used the right project. In the FH Records Window , Sources tab, can you see the newly created Source record? (Click on the Updated column heading to bring the most recent to the top of the list). How many links does that Source have? Select the Source and use View>Record Links to see which records it has links to.
Lorna
avatar
ileat
Silver
Posts: 6
Joined: 11 May 2003 16:55
Family Historian: V6.2

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by ileat »

Apologies I should have mentioned this in my original post. I don't use the plugin. I run AS outside of FH and it selects the default project file, i.e the one which contains Sydney Mills. I didn't know how to include a screen shot of the log file but it shows the name of the correct project file. There is only one Sydney Mills in the file.

I've looked at both the list of source and media records sorted by id number and the two numbers shown in the log file would have been the next in sequence, but neither is present.

Thanks for helping.
User avatar
tatewise
Megastar
Posts: 28341
Joined: 25 May 2010 11:00
Family Historian: V7
Location: Torbay, Devon, UK
Contact:

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by tatewise »

That is particularly unusual :?
I don't recall that problem being reported before with so much convincing evidence of it being the correct Project.
If you repeat the process do the records get updated correctly?
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
User avatar
LornaCraig
Megastar
Posts: 3190
Joined: 11 Jan 2005 17:36
Family Historian: V7
Location: Oxfordshire, UK

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by LornaCraig »

Was FH open at the time you made the entries in AS? If so, when you went back to FH you should have seen a message saying the file had been modified by an external application (AS) and asking if you wanted to re-load it in FH. If that happened, did you say 'yes' to reload?
Lorna
User avatar
tatewise
Megastar
Posts: 28341
Joined: 25 May 2010 11:00
Family Historian: V7
Location: Torbay, Devon, UK
Contact:

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by tatewise »

The only other remote possibility is it may have fallen foul of the new FH Snapshot feature.
I wonder if it is possible for FH to take a Snapshot of the GEDCOM while AS is updating it, so the changes only get applied to the saved Snapshot copy.

To check out this theory, open the Project's data folder and its Snapshots subfolder, i.e.
...\Family Historian Projects\<project>\<project>.fh_data\Snapshots\ where <project> is your Project Name.
Open the .fhss file with the latest Date modified using FH and check the records for the expected changes.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
avatar
ileat
Silver
Posts: 6
Joined: 11 May 2003 16:55
Family Historian: V6.2

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by ileat »

Mike - The change had not been made to the snapshot file. I have now tried entering a different census entry. That worked fine and used the same id numbers as shown in the Sydney Mills log file. So I tried him again and this time it worked ok.

Lorna - I always check after each census page entry that AS has correctly updated my FH project file. I remember that the reload prompt was slower than usual in coming up but it did appear eventually. I'm pretty sure I responded to the prompt but now I'm started to wonder whether I did or not. I know I subsequently shut down FH to see if that helped and when I restarted it I did get a prompt to reload which I did respond to but that made no difference to the Sydney Mills entry.

So perhaps I can put this down to user error. If so my apologies for wasting your time.

Thanks to both of you for your speedy advice.
avatar
ileat
Silver
Posts: 6
Joined: 11 May 2003 16:55
Family Historian: V6.2

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by ileat »

I reluctantly accepted that it must have been a user error the last time I reported this problem, but I've managed to recreate it and I can confirm that I had responded to all reload prompts.

So the first log file entry shows this:

Created multimedia record ID: 1830: Census UK 1881 RG11/2020 F9 P9(Media\1881 Census\John & James Biggs 1881 Census.jpg)
Created source record with ID 3041, Title: Census 1881 Swindon, Wiltshire RG11/2020 F9 P9 (John & James Biggs)
Added link to multimedia object ID 1830
Individual record John BIGGS [10533]
Added fact Census
Added fact Occupation
Individual record Sarah HOLDER [10567]
Added fact Census
Individual record Frank BIGGS [10568]
Added fact Census
Added fact Occupation
Individual record Ellen BIGGS [10569]
Added fact Census
Individual record Alice Lilian BIGGS [10570]
Added fact Census
Individual record James BIGGS [10537]
Added fact Census
Added fact Occupation

The second one shows this:

Created multimedia record ID: 1830: Census UK 1881 RG11/2032 F7 P7(Media\1881 Census\Frederick Biggs 1881 Census RG11_2027_2032-0980.jpg)
Created source record with ID 3041, Title: Census 1881 Lacock, Wiltshire RG11/2032 F7 P7 (Frederick Biggs)
Added link to multimedia object ID 1830
Individual record Frederick BIGGS [10571]
Added fact Census
Added fact Occupation

The second update worked fine but the first has not been applied and you can see that the multmedia record and source record ID mumbers are identical in each case.

After each update I said yes to the update prompt. I didn't close down AS or FH in between the two updates.

In between the earlier failed update and this one I have updated over 500 entries using AS without an issue.
User avatar
NickWalker
Megastar
Posts: 2597
Joined: 02 Jan 2004 17:39
Family Historian: V7
Location: Lancashire, UK
Contact:

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by NickWalker »

You always need to make sure you've pressed save in FH before swapping over to AS because FH will occasionally auto save if there are changes that haven't been saved. I can see a potential scenario where FH might autosave a fraction of a second after AS has saved and before FH notices the change. So in this scenario, AS determines your last source ID is 3040 and so your first entry is saved into the file in AS with ID 3041 and then immediately overwritten by FH. AS then reloads the file and the last source ID is 3040 and so again the next entry uses 3041.
Nick Walker
Ancestral Sources Developer

https://fhug.org.uk/kb/kb-article/ancestral-sources/
User avatar
tatewise
Megastar
Posts: 28341
Joined: 25 May 2010 11:00
Family Historian: V7
Location: Torbay, Devon, UK
Contact:

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by tatewise »

Presumably, in that scenario, the Facts (Census & Occupation in this example) will get obliterated too.

So apart from using Save, the alternative is to close FH while using AS.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
User avatar
NickWalker
Megastar
Posts: 2597
Joined: 02 Jan 2004 17:39
Family Historian: V7
Location: Lancashire, UK
Contact:

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by NickWalker »

tatewise wrote: 11 Jun 2020 09:20 Presumably, in that scenario, the Facts (Census & Occupation in this example) will get obliterated too.
Well yes of course! I was just using referring to the source id to illustrate how this could happen.
Nick Walker
Ancestral Sources Developer

https://fhug.org.uk/kb/kb-article/ancestral-sources/
User avatar
mjashby
Megastar
Posts: 719
Joined: 23 Oct 2004 10:45
Family Historian: V7
Location: Yorkshire

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by mjashby »

I have also noticed this occasional 'behaviour', which at first I thought might have been associated with working in a Virtual Machine (VM), where it seemed to occur more often and VMs can suffer with 'timing issues'. However, a Family Historian 'save' prior to commencing the preparation of each Ancestral Sources entry, combined with lengthening the Family Historian autosave time from say 5 to 10 mins (or whatever time it usually takes a user to complete and save an Ancestral Sources entry) seems to have eliminated the problem for me. This seems to correspond with the possibility of an event clash scenario Nick has outlined, i.e both apps occasionally attempting to interact with the FH GEDCOM at the same moment in time; and also not totally dissimilar to the 'live' cloud backup issues some users have occasionally experienced where Family Historian can be temporarily prevented from saving changes.
avatar
MyTuppenceWorth
Newbie
Posts: 1
Joined: 11 Jun 2020 10:02
Family Historian: V7

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by MyTuppenceWorth »

Newbie here.

Just a thought, could this problem just be something simple, like the & symbol in the filename.
User avatar
tatewise
Megastar
Posts: 28341
Joined: 25 May 2010 11:00
Family Historian: V7
Location: Torbay, Devon, UK
Contact:

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by tatewise »

Ah!!!!!!
This is another important benefit of using the Ancestral Sources Data Entry Plugin because it enforces a Save of any outstanding changes before launching AS. Therefore, AutoSave is not invoked.

If in AS you perform a series of data capture and Save operations that update FH without closing AS what happens?
FH raises a popup prompt to reload the GEDCOM and that is accepted by the user.
So theoretically FH now still has no outstanding data, so AutoSave should not happen.

Is this then a totally safe process as long as the user does not edit in FH before continuing with AS?


@MyTuppenceWorth ~ No, filenames have no impact.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
User avatar
NickWalker
Megastar
Posts: 2597
Joined: 02 Jan 2004 17:39
Family Historian: V7
Location: Lancashire, UK
Contact:

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by NickWalker »

FH is the problem I think because it autosaves, whereas AS only saves when you click the save button and even then it does a final check that the file hasn't been updated before writing the file.

In my testing I have definitely had FH autosave unnecessarily when I'd already saved and not edited anything but only once or twice - I would notice that because AS spots the change and reloads. But I've never been able to reproduce it and there's no point reporting something like this unless you can prove it. However, it is also easy to forget you've made a change before moving over to AS and then it suddenly autosaves in the background. I'd suggest that lengthing the autosave is not the answer because that makes it more likely you'll forget to save in FH and then lose some work if you add an entry in AS before autosave triggers.

As Mike says the safest thing is to close FH before you move to AS. His plugin also forces the save which may be useful.
Nick Walker
Ancestral Sources Developer

https://fhug.org.uk/kb/kb-article/ancestral-sources/
avatar
ileat
Silver
Posts: 6
Joined: 11 May 2003 16:55
Family Historian: V6.2

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by ileat »

Thanks for the advice. I will try that.
User avatar
Jane
Site Admin
Posts: 8508
Joined: 01 Nov 2002 15:00
Family Historian: V7
Location: Somerset, England
Contact:

Re: AS Not Creating Census Entry

Post by Jane »

The only extra I can think of where data would be changing in FH would be if you had the mapping open and it was geo-coding this would update Place records and trigger the AutoSave.
Jane
My Family History : My Photography "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."
Post Reply