Transcribing certificate details

sdl180 · Post by **sdl180** » 05 Mar 2009 12:15

I have been looking into my family tree for a couple of years, and chose to use Family Historian because of the flexibilty of the diagrams produced. I have found FH easy to use, but I have only just started to delve deeper into it's capabilities. I know I deserve having my wrists slapped for not recording sources when I started, but being a man, I tend not to RTFM until it is too late. I am now trying to input sources to the best of my ability.

I have no probelms in entering source information, but I am looking for advice from the vast knowledge of you guys, in the hope that once input, I don't have to go through the entire process again.

The thing that I am interested in doing is transcribing the content of the certificates. You might consider this as pointless, as I am linking a scan of the document itself, but I can see advantages of being able to run queries on the content of certificates.

I have created a source for the certificate, and have been entering the transcribed content in the 'Text From Source' box. I can then run reports and queries giving the content. However, in my first attempt, I entered each item of data, followed by a carriage return, so that it looked good in the text box, and is comes out great in reports, but I am struggling to get it to appear in a query. I can get the first line to appear by adding the 'Actual Text' attribute to the query, but it just shows the first line. I have tried numerous alternatives to get more lines of text.
As a second attempt, I put all of the information on a single line, which does come out in a query (albeit with limitations in number of characters), but it doesn't look as good in reports.

I am probably wasting my time with the transcriptions, but as some of the certificates are difficult to read, and some of them contain wrong information, I would like to record it.

Are there any other nutters that bother to transcribe certificates?

Does any one know how to get the second line of 'Actual Text' to appear in a query?

Can anyone offer some advice before I get further into the 300ish certificate I have?

Thanks

Steve [confused]

ID:3489

sdl180 · Post by **sdl180** » 05 Mar 2009 16:42

I have found out how to do it, but would still appreciate advice if anyone has any.

Steve

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 05 Mar 2009 19:08

I presume you have found the GetLabelledText function. Which I find ideal for accessing this sort of information in Notes.

sdl180 · Post by **sdl180** » 06 Mar 2009 07:01

Hi Jane,

Yes I did find the GetLabelledText function, which worked a treat.

Regards

Steve

Tombaston · Post by **Tombaston** » 07 Mar 2009 09:49

I also transcribe certificates, but I store the text in the Actual Text field. I use a narrative style that I have developed, for example I transcribe marriage certificates based on this template:

Marriage Certificate for the registration district of Faringdon. Marriage solemnized by Banns in the Parish of Hatford in the County of Berkshire on 28th January 1857 between Thomas Baston and Harriet Eldridge, certificate number 17. Thomas Baston was a bachelor of full age, working as a Labourer and living in Buckland. Harriet Eldridge was a spinster of full age, working as a Labourer and living in Hatford. Fathers listed as John Baston, a Labourer and Richard Eldridge, a Labourer. They were married in the Parish according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of England by James Hearn, Rector of Hatford. The witnesses were Charles Wheeler and Elizabeth Eldridge.

I transcribe as close to the original wording as I can. I also add notes if it adds something. For instance in the certificate above I have a note to say the rector spelt Harriet with one t, but she signed with two. On Harriets death certificate, she died in child birth and the informant was another woman in the same village who was listed as a laundress in the census three months before. I have added a note here that this woman may have been acting as a midwife.

The reason I transcribe is once I have spent hours deciphering the handwriting I dont want to have to go through it all again. It also provides a faster route to the information than having to look at the image. At the moment I have probably only transcribed about 25% of my certificates in this manner. Maybe one day there will be a GEDCOM BMD program to help me.[wink]

I had not looked at GetLabelledText before, maybe I need to investigate this. If I end up re-entering all this data then so be it. I have already changed my census information from one source per year to one source per census record previously. It is long and tedious to do, but you actually find where you entered things in error in the first place (not that that is a good reason to redo it).

Cameragirl · Post by **Cameragirl** » 19 Apr 2009 16:50

I am very interested in this particular query but don't fully understand how I would go about running it? I cannot find the 'GetLabelledText function'which Jane mentions. I am not an expert database user so find the queries area difficult to understand, other than just running the standard queries. I always enter the data from certificates in the Text From Source box, but had not even thought of producing a report from this information. I would love to have a go at it. Many thanks for a very useful forum. [smile]

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 19 Apr 2009 20:15

Cameragirl I think the function was a 3.1 add in so make sure you have 3.1.2, if not you can download it from the link at the top of the front page.

Cameragirl · Post by **Cameragirl** » 21 Apr 2009 18:15

Many thanks Jane - I will check I have correct version. [smile]

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