* Citations from TMG

[E Wilcock]

I have with some trepidation today opened one of my own family Projects from TMG 9 UK final version.

This is potentially a permanent move as there is potential overlap with a Project I run in fh.

I first read the FAQ advice and carried out maintenance on the TMG Projects. I copied the Project appending the letters fh and then opened it in a new fh project, NAMEfh.

Am I correct in thinking that the only problem has been with citations? I have few in this Project but found some to inspect.

My first example citation was not a page reference but a note to say that the source provided evidence for the day and month of the birth. It was in the field Citation Detail - a habit of mine to use only that citation field in TMG. Presumably I should have put it in TMG field Citation Memo.

It appears in fh in the Text from Source field.

The meanings of the labels given to source fields in fh are far easier for me to understand and use correctly than those in TMG. But the existence of additional fields, means that a lot of my TMG citation info is now in the wrong place.

An example - an Australian Marriage Index provides my general overall source and the text of the entry (citation detail) is likewise now in Text from Source. It is indeed text copied from the on line index for that entry, tho not the marriage record itself.

The same happens with UK BMD index entries . All my case by case citation references to page and volume number arrive in the fh field, Text from source. Ideally they should be in fh field, Where within source.

Does this matter and is there anything I can do to move them en masse? It looks odd in report output but could be easier to correct there using Word?

When ex-TMG users talk about cleaning up their data, is this what they mean and what other data do they clean up?

[dewilkinson]

I used the Plug-In 'Move Citation Text Fields' to move citation detail from 'Text from Source' to 'Where Within Source' and it worked like a dream. I also used the Plug-In 'Change Any Fact Tag' to tidy up some bespoke TMG Tags.

Other tidying up things I have been doing include, amending sentence templates particularly for my bespoke TMG Tags, entering ages in the age field, making dates from BMD read as Qx yyyy as FH then handles them better, using the occupation field, using FH's mapping, adding relationship indicators such as illegitimate... I am doing many of these as an ongoing project when I come to a person rather than a mass exercise as I have ~25,000 people and it would take a long time.

I don't know what you have done with Places and Addresses, I just use Places for simplicity.

Hope that helps you.

[tatewise]

The Move Citation Text Fields Plugin is not in the Plugin Store but found in Importing citation details (12745).

Beware that it performs the moves unconditionally on all Citations, so if required only for a subset, then it will need to be modified to offer some selection criteria, but it is not clear what those might be.

[E Wilcock]

Thank you for these replies. I apologise that I didnt find the previous long discussion with Jim Byram and others. I have now read it and it is very useful.

Thank you also Mike for pointing out that the universal moving of TMG data from the Text in source to the Where in source field wont always do what the user intended.Especially true in my case - where I have been inconsistent, sometimes using that field just for pasting in the page and volume reference in an index (including carriage returns) or a page reference to a census and at others typing in any old information. Even whole newspapers reports.

I may return to this. When I have more time. My instinct is that it is easier to handle in fh than in TMG - fh is so easy to search and I can see that a search for any source records which include the word page, p. or vol. brings up a list, and will allow me to go through and reposition the info. or part of the info.
My data entry is so haphazard that I couldnt suggest dependable criteria for your plug in Mike.
But it has been a great help to me to read the expert discussion on this.

[E Wilcock]

I would appreciate some further advice on this Mike. And to know what you would do in my situation. There is no urgency. But my fh Project (1700 people now) may have some overlap with a Project I created in TMG.

The project has been brought in from TMG with about 1400 people. A fh text search shows about 320 individual records which include the word page.

However the page details are not all in the Text from Source field. Reading the gedcom in Notepad, I can see that there are records where the page and volume number is correctly in a PAGE subfield.

I am assuming that the citation data that is correctly imported to fh was originally entered in either Pedigree (DOS) or Generations, the software I used before I turned to TMG.

But it could date back to the time when I made a separate source entry for each instance (i.e. did not lump sources).

The majority of my page and voume citations are in SOUR DATA TEXT

I am confused about how GEDCOM represents citations. I failed to write a query for source records.

Blundering around, I see that each citation is part of the individual record (not the source record) I wonder if there any way to write a custom query that could identify which records have Page in the Text field but the PAGE field is nul? I did not succeed in doing this but I am not experienced at locating the fields.

A selected list (from running a query) would allow me gradually to go through one by one making the correction. This is currently my preferred solution.

As far as I can see the only situation in which the misplaced data becomes annoying is in the FH Report output. The page and volume numbers are headed Text from source.

I realise one can edit the text output, but is there any way of asking fh to omit this field heading in reports? Under report Options for Sources there doesnt seem to be any way to suppress Field names. But again I may be confused.

Opened in Rootsmagic my source page references from TMG seem to arrive in the Title field. Not correct, of course, but the report output reads OK as the volume and page number simply follow the title. But it wouldnt make sense to move my data from the text field to title in fh.

I would appreciate knowing what other TMG users have done and what Mike and others from fh would do in this situation.

[tatewise]

I suspect the main reason you have not been able to write a Query for Citations is that most Citations are attached to Facts and not Individuals, so you should use a Fact Query rather than an Individual Query. However, some Citations are attached to Individual records, or Family records, or elsewhere. Also there may be multiple instances of Citations, and that adds another dimension.

So I have adapted the Move Citation Text Fields Plugin to move Text From Source fields to Where within Source fields, but only if it contain certain words. To make it as reliable and useful as possible, please tell me what key words you want to trigger the move?
e.g.
"page "
"p. "
"vol. "
Do they always have a space character afterwards before the page/vol number?

[DavidNewton]

I can give you some answers.

First, PAGE is the GEDCOM tag for 'Where within Source' and is probably the correct place for volume and page numbers of GRO indexes etc. the SOUR.DATA.TEXT field is the 'Text from Source'. As far as I know, and I would be happy to be wrong, it is not possible to remove the Text from Source field heading in reports. I find this an irritant also and because I am only using FH I put all the text from source details into the note field which comes without a header in reports. If you are moving data between various family tree software programs this might create some problems.

Rootsmagic deals with imported sources and citations by producing three formats: Footnote, Short Footnote and Bibliography made up of the various parts of the source and citation. As far as I know there is no options as to what goes where.

Regarding a query, as Mike has said not all citations are attached to facts but for those that are the attached query will list those with a Text From Source field and a blank Where Within Source. It will at least give some idea of the extent of your problem.

David

CitationDetails.fhq

(1.04 KiB) Downloaded 214 times

[toriljoy]

So I have adapted the Move Citation Text Fields Plugin to move Text From Source fields to Where within Source fields, but only if it contain certain words. To make it as reliable and useful as possible, please tell me what key words you want to trigger the move?
e.g.
"page "
"p. "
"vol. "
Do they always have a space character afterwards before the page/vol number?

I am also a TMG refugee and reading this topic with great interest. Being from Norway, I would suggest these triggers
" side "or " s. "
" nr. " or " nr "
"linje " or " l. "

Since different languages will require different triggers, perhaps this could be a choice?

[E Wilcock]

This is all very useful. Thank you both. Again it is going to take me a bit of time to get back. But dont think I am ungrateful please.

I have 14 Projects in TMG and had not intended to bring my TMG work into fh. But the reality is that after two months non stop data entry in fh with help from Mike and others, I found it hard to go back and enter records and sources in TMG.

Mike, I dont think using your plug in to move the text to the Where in Source field is going to work (as per the previous thread on this) because I have misused the TMG fields and written in notes or pasted in text which exceed the field length allowed in fh. In others I have pasted in newspaper reports, followed and not preceded by the page number.

I think I need to carry out a custom query search, and correct each record on the list by hand. Or possibly I could go through the list editing the instances where, due to my misuse, there is extra text in the field and then use your plug in to move the cases where there is only a vol and page number reference or (in the case of censuses) the HO file number page reference.

[Valkrider]

There may be another way to do this if you feel like trying it.

The free Notepad++ programme will allow you to edit your gedcom file. Needless to say this should only be done on a copy not your master file. This is a plain text editor with excellent search and replace features. It may well be possible to use these features to convert your long lines etc into the correct tags.

There is also a free plugin for Notepad++ called GedcomLexer which is worth adding if you are going to use it for editing Gedcom files.

[tatewise]

I would advise against using a text editor such as Notepad++ unless you are thoroughly conversant with the Gedcom format.

Unfortunately, as I suggested earlier, there is no obvious way of creating a suitable Query for Citations.
Citations can appear in so many different scenarios with multiple instances that no Query can find them all.
You need to use a Plugin to list the Citation details, but don't panic as there is one already.

One technique is to start in the Records Window on the Sources tab.
Then click on the Record Id column heading to sort into Record Id ascending order.
Now you can work on one Source at a time, and note the Record Id so you know how far you have got.

Select the first Source record to be reviewed and run the Where Used Record Links Plugin.
That will list every Citation of that Source with full details of where it is used, and its Where within Source, Text From Source, and Citation Note fields.
You can then click on those fields to open the Property Box and Sources For pane to make the changes required.

When all those Citations are OK, move on to the next Source record in the Records Window and repeat the process.
Keep track of the Record Id to log your progress, so it can be completed piecemeal.

FYI: There are very few fields in FH that have a length limit. However, only a few fields allow multiple lines of text, and for others any very long text is a bit awkward to edit.

[E Wilcock]

Just to let you kind people know. I have run a Fact query and have a lovely list now of all instances where the Text from Source Field includes the word Page. And which can be re-run to exclude the records I have edited.

The vast majority are b,m, d and census. One can sort the fact types and pick out the exceptions and edit them. Most of my exceptions turned out to be Military giving a page and date reference to the London Gazette. A few were shipping lists.

Where b.m.d. indexes are concerned, I see I have combined page references with any name and age information from the indexes. Copying and pasting in from Ancestry e.g. the Name as entered in the Index, surname of spouse or date of birth from death indexes.

Edward J B Smith Spouse Surname: Brown Date of Registration: Jan-Feb-Mar 1949 Registration district: Chelsea Inferred County: Middlesex Volume Number: 1a Page Number: 798

Strictly speaking Mike would this info need splitting, rather than moving to the Where in Source field?

But I also notice that one needs to take care moving the information manually. If I have pasted the info directly from ancestry with carriage returns, and then copy it after viewing in the opened up text pane, which has (for example details altered)

Date of Registration: Jul Aug Sep 1967 Registration district: Salisbury
Registration county: Wiltshire, Dorset/Somerset
Volume Number: 5c
Page Number: 452

then pasting the above into the correct Where in source field, the info is truncated. I get just the first line.

Correcting by hand I have reduced the list to 134 instances of Birth Marriage and Death and am content to leave them. Or to use the plug in.

I know I have one particular family project where I have pasted in a great deal of information from newspaper archives now on line. But most of my work should be as simple as this.

By the way - tho I opened my gedcom in Note pad , no I will not edit the Project in note pad - I dont know enough about GEDCOM structure to create a PAGE field hither and thither. There used to be a time when even opening a gedcom in a microsoft editor added extraneous info and could cause a problem. I didnt mean this import to be my permanent one, but having edited and corrected it, I hope my earlier Note pad examination did not damage the Project.

[tatewise]

toriljoy requested different trigger words for my proposed Plugin.
See Citations from TMG (14565) in the Plugin Discussions Forum for a working solution.