* Marriage dates

[MartinPage]

Does anyone know how to order marriage dates by day and month? E.g. I would like to see something like this:

1 Jan 1981
1 Jan 1983
1 Jan 1987
2 Jan 1933
2 Jan 1947
8 Jan 1881
8 Feb 2001
...and so on.

If you try and do it in the records window with an (ordered) marriage date column, you get dates in chronological order, not the format I would like, which of course makes sense.

So where the full date is known I would like to order them by day and month as per the above example. I suspect it can be achieved using the Query function and hopefully someone has done this before.

Regards, Martin.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Take a look at the Birthdays (All) standard query, which should give you a good start (obviously you'll need to modify it to use Marriages instead of Births, but it should give you an idea how to go about it.

[tatewise]

Yes, the trick is to create separate columns for Month and Day and Year.
Then Sort each column in Ascending order.

Ensure that you use the marriage DATE:MONTH_NUMBER and NOT DATE:MONTH_NAME.

You can also include a column with the full DATE and make the other three columns Hidden.

[MartinPage]

Thanks for the replies. Although I've had FH since about 2002 I haven't really dabbled in Queries. I tried editing the Birthday Query and I got all the dates correct but somehow got the children of the married individuals rather than the individuals themselves! Anyway I have the FH manual so I'll have to gen up on everything to do with Queries.

Martin.

[tatewise]

Martin, what exactly are you trying to achieve?
Is it a list of dates in calendar order with the spouses alongside?

If so, then you are best starting with a Query of type Family because that is where the Marriage Event is stored with its Date and it is easier to get to the Husband and Wife individuals from there.

It is probably not so much understanding Queries as understanding the FH database (Gedcom) structure, because that is what the Queries interrogate, and if you don't appreciate the database structure then writing Queries gets tricky.

[MartinPage]

Tatewise: this is what I would like the column headings of the Query to look like:

Day/Month..........Male spouse.............Female spouse.............Year

The first column of 'Day/Month' (marriage date) e.g. 23 May, should be in ascending order.

The reason for me wanting such a list is that today would've been my parents' 80th wedding anniversary. I duly posted the wedding photo on Facebook, which prompted a lot of interest. As I have other family wedding photos in my possession, I thought I might also post those photos on their respective anniversary dates. So a nice ordered list day-by-day through the year would give me what I want.

Hope that helps. Martin.

[tatewise]

OK, so as I said, you need a Query Type: Family which can be set on the General tab or when a New Custom Query is created, in order to query the Family records where Marriage, Husband & Wife are saved in the FH GEDCOM database. A good name for the query is Marriage Anniversaries and is very simiar to the existing fhugdownloads:contents:wedding_anniversaries|> Query:Family ~ Wedding Anniversaries.

On the Columns tab you need to create 6 columns derived from the Fields on the left:

1. Month No. is %FAM.MARR[1].DATE:MONTH_NUMBER% with Sort: Ascending and Hidden
   It is derived from Family + Events + Marriage + Date :MONTH_NUMBER and crucial to get the months in correct order and avoid sorting in alphabetic name order (but is hidden).
2. Day is %FAM.MARR[1].DATE:DAY% with Sort: Ascending similar to above but with :DAY
3. Month is %FAM.MARR[1].DATE:MONTH_NAME% similar to above but with :MONTH_NAME
4. Husband is %FAM.HUSB[1]>% fom Family + Husband>> linking to male spouse
5. Wife is %FAM.WIFE[1]>% from Family + Wife>> linking to female spouse
6. Year is %FAM.MARR[1].DATE:YEAR% with Sort: Ascending similar to above but with :YEAR

That may need further refinement to cater for same sex partners.

As it stands the Result Set would include all families even if there is no Marriage Date.
So the Rows filter tab must use Exclude if on %FAM.MARR[1].DATE:DAY% where it is null to exclude those without a Day number.

[MartinPage]

Thanks Mike, I'll check that out.

Regards, Martin.

[tatewise]

BTW: Martin, please update your FHUG Profile that shows on the right of your postings.
Click your username MartinPage top right and choose User Control Panel.
Then on its Profile tab, select Family Historian V6.2 (or whatever version you have) and scroll down to Submit.

Also, I know you have been using FH since V2, but it may be a good idea to review how_to:key_features_for_newcomers|> Key Features for Newcomers to bring yourself up-to-date with the latest features.

[MartinPage]

Hi Mike. No, I have got the latest version on FH - I've always kept up-to-date. I'll amend my profile shortly.

Anyway, the Query worked and I've now got the marriage list I need - many thanks.

Regards, Martin.