* 1939 Register

[Johnr65]

Did I dream this? Before I reset my PC, when I entered the dob's of the people on the 1939 Register on AS, it added the 1939 Register as a source on the FH windows for the people?

[NickWalker]

If you want this to happen even if the individual already has a birth recorded then make sure this setting is ticked:

image.png (14.66 KiB) Viewed 1084 times

[Johnr65]

I guess I must have ticked it before.

[tatewise]

John, since you have reset your PC and reinstalled AS it has probably reverted to all its default settings.
They may not be how you had those settings before the PC reset.

To preserve the AS settings it is important to use its Tools > Backup A.S. Options... command.
Then after a PC reset, you can use its Tools > Restore A.S. Options... command to restore them.

[Johnr65]

Yes I know that Mike only too well and I'd thought I'd done that but obviously used the wrong back up. How do I get to revise the 1939 census back to accept the birth dates because as it is, it doesn't.
My problem seems to be that I keep back ups of nearly everything on my D drive which 2TB storage as opposed to C which only has 500GB.

[NickWalker]

How do I get to revise the 1939 census back to accept the birth dates because as it is, it doesn't.

John you have a frustrating habit of just asking a question in a minimal number of words without any explanation as to what you mean, no screenshots, etc. Then we have to ask more questions and eventually you get an answer. Why not just give the details at the start so you get help more quickly and so it doesn't cause as much work for us to have to ask you to explain?

The 1939 register/census in AS accepts birth dates without needing to modify anything. You need to select Type: Register, Region: England and Wales. There is a birthdate column - you type the date of birth into that.

image.png (36.61 KiB) Viewed 625 times

Your question suggests that it won't let you type a date into that column. But I'm guessing that isn't what you mean. If you ticked that option I showed you in my first response in this thread then when you click Save it will ask if you want to update the existing birth fact for the individual even if they already have one recorded.

So can you give a detailed explanation as to what you mean by "the 1939 census doesn't accept birth dates"

Nick

[Johnr65]

The reason I ask a question by using a small amount of words is that I don't type very well so longer sentences mean more errors!
When I enter a person on the 1939 it accepts the dob in the main body of AS but when I press the 'save' button it directly saves it and I'm sent back to FH, it doesn't stop in btween?

[NickWalker]

That suggests you haven't ticked the 'Offer to Create Birth Facts' and/or '.. Even if existing birth includes date and place' options. I showed a screenshot of that in my first reply.

[Johnr65]

That is true but how do I change it?

[LornaCraig]

John, just use Tools > Options > Census settings and tick the box next to the text Nick highlighted in his screenshot.

[Johnr65]

It doesn't seem to work, so I tried restoring the AS backup that I had in My Documents, hopefully that will work but something strange has happened, why is it saving gedcoms as well?

Screenshot 2024-02-20 135431.png (72.52 KiB) Viewed 401 times

[jbtapscott]

If you look at Tools\Options\General Settings there are three Folder settings including one for Backups. Hover over the Backups detail and a popup explains that a copy of the Gedcom is made before AS processes any entries in to FH.
The Help for that page also states: "Backup Folder: When changes are saved to the family history GEDCOM file a backup copy is saved to the folder specified here. By default only the most recent 10 backups are retained. This number can be changed. If set to 0 then all backups are retained."

[Johnr65]

When I've backed up the AS settings before I've never seen a list of gedcoms beneath it? Why would I need gedcom back ups?

[jbtapscott]

I would suggest it is a safety feature - as far as I recall, it has been there since I first started using AS some years ago!. Before AS updates the FH Gedcom, it takes a copy so that if there are any problems with the update there is a fallback solution. Personally, I have it set to only generate 4 backups and I include their deletion in one of my early morning batch jobs (because by then I will know AS has updated FH okay).

[NickWalker]

I would suggest it is a safety feature - as far as I recall, it has been there since I first started using AS some years ago!. Before AS updates the FH Gedcom, it takes a copy so that if there are any problems with the update there is a fallback solution. Personally, I have it set to only generate 4 backups and I include their deletion in one of my early morning batch jobs (because by then I will know AS has updated FH okay).

Yes AS has always automatically backed up the family history file before changing it and by default keeps the 10 most recent backups. I wanted to know that if anyone ever complained that a bug in AS had damaged their file that I could always help them to recover using the backups. Personally I don't really see much point in deleting these files. GEDCOM files are only text so don't take up much space. 4 backups probably take up less than the space taken by 5 images and I'm sure many of us take a lot more pictures than that on our phones each week. Disk storage is so cheap and plentiful nowadays that there isn't a great need to worry about the space this takes up.

[Johnr65]

However, this is a novelty for me as this is the 1st time I've seen this occurrence.
Anyway I restored this backup and it still doesn't do what I wanted?

[NickWalker]

Please can you paste a screenshot showing your settings on the Census settings page under Tools and Options.

[Johnr65]

Not to worry, it seems to be working OK now since I restored my previous AS settings.