* Settings Question for Citation Notes when Exporting to FTM 2019

[MFriend]

Hi Folks:

I am using the latest version of FH 7. A while back I imported my FTM 2019 database into FH 7 and with the help of Mike Tate was able to move all the weblinks that I have in FTM 2019 into the notes section for each citation in FH7 like below:
https://ibb.co/0KWQ4FV

My question now is, is there a way to control when doing an export where the citation notes in FH 7 go? Right now they go into the note section of FTM 2019 like below:
https://ibb.co/44DGKkn

I'm just using FTM 2019 as a means to upload my updated tree (hopefully every few months) to Ancestry.com
So here is the issue: FTM 2019 does not seem to upload the citation note to Ancestry. So the link gets lost on upload.
My question is: Mike's export plugin has a ton of features. I looked at it but maybe I missed it..... is there a way to export it to the citation text section (or the web address section) of the citation so it will get uploaded /saved with the citation on Ancestry?

Thanks for any help

Matthew

[tatewise]

Hi Matthew.
Yes, it should be possible to adjust the weblink URL for upload via FTM to Ancestry.
I suspect the Plugin Move Note URL to Rich Text Web Link action needs to be reversed prior to export from FH.
Although I thought that the Export Gedcom File plugin effectively already does that.
But maybe FTM/Ancestry don't like the Weblink: prefix or the " string quotes " around the URL.
If you edit the Note either in the exported GEDCOM file or in FTM to remove those, does that solve the problem?
i.e. It would help if you can manually edit and experiment to find a solution that can then be automated, otherwise, I am having to try and double guess the solution since I don't have FTM to experiment with.

An alternative approach is to export and upload directly to Ancestry instead of via FTM.
i.e. use the Export Gedcom File plugin with GEDCOM Export Mode set to (ANC) Ancestry Family Tree.
Please try this first.

You may also be interested in Synchronizing Your Tree With Ancestry to Exploit Hints.

[MFriend]

Hi Mike:
I agree that reversing the action of the Move Note URL to Rich Text Web Link may be the only way to go.
I tried removing the "weblink" part of the URL and it doesn't get uploaded. In fact it appears that nothing gets uploaded that is in the notes section of the citation. Here is a pic of the link... and what results in ancestry:


If I click on the "Edit citations" box the notes section, etc are just blank:


After reading what does and does not get uploaded to Ancestry from FTM I got on live chat with FTM. The support person was not sure and was going to ask one of the developers (citation notes do not show as not being synced with ancestry).

I appreciate your help Mike

Matthew

[MFriend]

Mike:
Just got an email back from FTM chat. The engineers said that the citations notes are the same thing as the "Reference Notes" and so are not synced. She said there is a bug that FTM shows it needs to sync after a citation note is updated (even though it won't sync citation notes).

I added the "Text From Source" box to my citation entry and it uploads correctly to FTM then Ancestry.


Uploading a plain gedcom to ancestry after exporting from FH7 would strip all the media. If there was a way to reverse the move note plugin, or a way to move anything in citation notes to whatever the "Text From Source" type is called that would be awesome

Matthew

[tatewise]

Matthew, can you go into a bit more detail and clarify what is required, as your description seems to go various ways.
i.e. Please describe the manual process in detail and show that the weblink gets uploaded to Ancestry.

1) Add Text From Source
You say: "I added the "Text From Source" box to my citation entry and it uploads correctly to FTM then Ancestry."
Are you saying the Note https weblink gets uploaded correctly simply by adding a Text From Source field?
How are you exporting the GEDCOM file such that the upload retains the Note weblink?

2) Reverse Move Note Plugin
I thought you effectively tried this technique yesterday but it did not succeed?

3) Move Note to Text From Source
If this was performed the rich text Note would become rich text Text From Source.
Is that what you mean and does that upload the weblink?

[MFriend]

Hi Mike:
1. Anything that is added to a "Text From Source" box when exported to FTM will get uploaded to Ancestry.com. So if I copy the link to the Text From Source box, it will get uploaded when synced to Ancestry. If I export the gedcom to import port it into FTM (I only use FTM so all the media will get uploaded) using the Export Plugin, then all the links have the "weblink" in front of it. If I export to FTM using the built in FTM gedcom export that comes with FH7, the weblink before it is removed and just a regular "http://..... " link is exported (so the link is still there, just without the <weblink>.

2. If there was a way to do the reverse of what the move note to text does ( so move it back to a webtag which had an _link in front of it then webtags do get uploaded. I don't know if that is possible though to reverse it.
So looking at the pic below everything in the visible boxes will get uploaded correctly to Ancestry. The "Text From Source" note gets added to the box labeled "Citation Text" in FTM. The "Web Address" url when exported to a gedcom is what the "Move Note to Text From Source" plugin currently moves to the citation note in FH7.
.

What would be the best final result would be if the citation note was moved/converted back to the _Link web address , but I would be very happy if it was even moved to a FH7 "Text From Source" note as that would allow the URL to be uploaded to ancestry. I hope that makes sense

[tatewise]

Thank you for reminding me about the _LINK connection.
The conversion from _LINK to NOTE is performed by the FH import process, not the Plugin, so I had overlooked that.
Therefore, simply reversing the Plugin only gets back to a plain text NOTE weblink and not to the _LINK tag.
It is almost impossible for a Plugin to change a NOTE tag into a _LINK tag within the Project.

However, the Export Gedcom File plugin is designed to operate directly on the GEDCOM file so it should be possible to get it to convert a NOTE weblink to the _LINK weblink. Let me investigate...

[MFriend]

Thank you for your time Mike, I appreciate it.

[tatewise]

Matthew, please find attached Export Gedcom File Version 4.5.1 Date 30 Jun 2021 in ZIP file format.
It must be downloaded and right-click Extract All... used to obtain the .fh_lua file which when opened will install into FH.
[ Attachment deleted as superseded later. ]

When you run Export Gedcom File choose the (FTM) Family Tree Maker 2019 mode.
Check on the Extra Options tab that Subsidiary Note %d NOTE on the right is set to Weblink to _LINK URL ( FTM ).

Hopefully, the exported GEDCOM will upload the Citation Web address URL to FTM.

[MFriend]

Mike !!!!!!

Your amazing!!!!

Thank you so much! The change worked perfect. Now it will be very easy to export a gedcom every few months and upload to Ancestry with all the links, attachments and everything in place. The links, citations, everything show up perfect on Ancestry!

Thank you very much!

Matthew

[tatewise]

Excellent. The next published version in the Plugin Store will incorporate that change.

Currently, it only adds the _LINK URL to Citations where the Note has a Weblink.
If you discover any other scenarios where _LINK URL would help, or any other improvements, then let me know.

In the case of FTM, which is quite expensive, I rely on user feedback so I can adjust plugins to handle its GEDCOM dialect.
Many other products have a free version, which makes my task easier, although sometimes paid for versions have extra features where again I rely on user feedback.

[MFriend]

Thanks again.

The export process did give a couple of errors but still copied the URL's just fine. I went into the gedcom and compared the line numbers given for the errors to see what they were. On a couple of the citation notes (out of thousands with links) I had put a sentence or two of text. The export correctly copied the link ok, but gave the error because of the extra text. Once I removed the extra text from the two notes, it exported perfect. If someone were to try the process that had entered a lot of notes into the citation notes they might get worried.

If you ever need someone to test something for you in FTM 2019, feel free to ask me : )

[tatewise]

What exactly did the error reports say?

The Note would always have at least the word Weblink: followed by the URL, so what causes the error?
Is it the excessive length of the text in the Note, or is it that it has CONT tags or CONC tags, or some unusual character?
Does any of the Note text actually appear in FTM or Ancestry?

What might be a workaround?
Move the text from the Note to the Where Within Source (Citation detail?) or Text From Source (Citation text?) field?

[MFriend]

Hi Mike:
I believe it said Error 1 and then gave the line number(s).

I 'fixed' it by going to the line number specified, saw the ancestor and text involved, went into FH7, deleted the extra text and it exported/imported into FTM with no errors.

So I thought I would reverse the process to get the error again... I added text but got no error on import into FTM. (I tried varying amounts of text, I tried changing the link, nothing I tried would cause the error again! (Even tried putting other text before the link) Very weird. From what I can tell, it is working perfectly correct.

The extra text that comes after or before the weblink shows up in the FTM citation note so nothing is lost.

After testing so many different things, I did eventually find one thing that will give an error (but I don't think this was the issue when I did the original import into FTM but maybe it was with my memory): If there is more than one weblink in the citation note, it will give the "error 1 : Invalid level number". Only the first weblink is copied into the url field (since it can only hold one). Both links will still show up in the citation note in FTM so no data is lost.

This is the error:

Line 96905: error 1 : Invalid level number. Line ignored.

Nothing is lost and it would be expected to give some kind of error since the Web URL box in FTM will only hold one URL, so I don't see this as worth worrying about.

Matthew

[tatewise]

If you wanted to get back to the erroneous version of the Project try using File > Backup/Restore > Revert to Snapshot... and choose a Snapshot Taken just before you deleted the problem text.
You can later revert to the current saved Snapshot.

It might also be interesting to see the exported GEDCOM around the SOUR & NOTE & _LINK tags that might explain the invalid level number error.

[MFriend]

okay, here is the info after doing a revert:

Error(s):

Line 107438: error 1 : Invalid level number. Line ignored.
Line 144758: error 1 : Invalid level number. Line ignored.

Line 107438:


Line 144758:


How the text was displayed in the citation note for Line 107438:


Code from line 107438:

Code: Select all

TEXT Name: 	James H Bolyard
5 CONT Gender: 	Male
5 CONT Spouse: 	Amanda E Bolyard
5 CONT Child: 	Laura B Bolyard
5 CONT FHL Film Number: 	827561
5 CONT https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=2537&h=151224537&indiv=try
3 NOTE Weblink: "https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=2537&h=151224537&indiv=try" 
4 CONT  
4 CONT Ancestry.com, West Virginia, U.S., Births Index, 1804-1938 (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011), Ancestry.com, Name: 	James H Bolyard Gender: 	Male Spouse: 	Amanda E Bolyard Child: 	Laura B Bolyard FHL Film Number: 	827561. Webli
4 CONC nk: "https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=2537&h=151224537&indiv=try."
3 _LINK https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=2537&h=151224537&indiv=try" 

Ancestry.com, West Virginia, U.S., Births Index, 1804-1938 (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011), Ancestry.com, Name: 	James H Bolyard Gender: 	Male Spouse: 	Amanda E Bolyard Child: 	Laura B Bolyard FHL Film Number: 	827561. Weblink: "https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=2537&h=151224537&indiv=try.
1 RESI
2 DATE 1880
2 PLAC Reno Magisterial District, Preston, West Virginia, United States
3 MAP 
4 LATI N39.627448
4 LONG W79.944397

[/size]

So what it looks like I had done with these two notes was paste at some point a citation into the note after the links. The citation(s) both had "_links" / urls as part of the citation.

Hopefully that provides the info you need. I saved the gedcom incase you need more info

Matthew

[tatewise]

Thank you, I think I know what is going wrong.
The plugin is getting confused by the multiple " string quotes " in the Note text when it was only expecting one pair around the Weblink: "URL" but that should be easy for me to fix.

[tatewise]

Try the attached Export Gedcom File Version 4.5.2 Date 02 Jul 2021 in ZIP file format.

It should cure the problem with multiple " string quotes in the Note text.
It should also handle plain text Note URL after import from FTM before Move Note URL to Rich Text Web Link is run.

[MFriend]

Thanks Mike

Worked great, no errors when exporting the old project.
Thank you for all your hard work.

Matthew