After importing your data from another program, such as Family Tree Maker, Legacy Family Tree, you will have to do cleanup, which is to be expected. In order know which citations have been worked and which are waiting to be worked, place a “1-” at the beginning of the Citation Name. Then after the Citation has been reviewed and cleaned up remove the “1-”. This way, it is easy to know what has and has not be cleaned and worked.
For example, a citation to be worked would be “1-P001-US1930VA-Henrico County, Brookland, ED 0002, Page 24B, FHL 2342181” and after it is worked “P001-US1930VA-Henrico County, Brookland, ED 0002, Page 24B, FHL 2342181”
This is a simple way of know what is remaining and what has been worked. The same can be used with the Sources as well.
Well I found my sources and citations highly undesirable when first moving from FTM (via GEDCOM) to RM. That said I decided to rebuild them from scratch using mostly TEMPLATE SOURCE (that I tweaked for my preference). That is not something most users would want to do.
There are ways via Search and Replace to fix some of that – and use of (SQL)Sqlite would be another option, Those options have some risk if you make mistakes – make sure you have multiple backups.
I don’t see how you can distinguish those that have yet to be worked on from those that have been done when the names are identical. Maybe I misread or you misspoke how you proceed with the renaming. You speak of choosing a citation to be worked on and prefixing it with “1-”. Now you have only one with that prefix out of many. Once finished, the only Citation with that prefix loses the prefix. Now what?
I’m a sample size of 1, but I tend to work this problem by people rather than by source and citation.
In my case, the cleanup is that I started by having a gazillion free form sources, many or most of which came into my RM database via unwise GEDCOM imports when I was starting out with genealogy 30 years ago. I’m gradually and manually converting all those sources and citations to sources and citations using templates. None of my free form source names start with the character * and I make all my sources names based on templates start with the character *. So it’s easy to tell them apart.
So I can make groups and do color coding and do searches based on the presence or absence of the * at the beginning of the source names. And in many cases, instead of fixing the sources I’m deleting the people because I really shouldn’t have imported them in the first place. And the approach of focusing on the people rather than sources and citations let’s me prioritize my work towards the more important people in my database rather than taking a more shotgun approach.
One advantage I have is that started putting the * at the front of new source names the same day that I started making all my new sources based on templates. Another advantage I have is that I can use SQLite. So I used SQLite to add a $ sign to the beginning of all the source names using free form templates. That makes them even easier to find. But I still prioritize and work primarily by people, not by sources and citations.
I am relatively new to RM10. I imported most of my data from Family Search & Ancestry. I am confused on what is best to use. Free Form source + citation or templates? I try and cut from Family Search the citation & then paste it into RM footnote using a free form. It’s messy not knowing how to name source & citation so I have been naming them the same name. ie source & citation names: Anna b Smith, US Census 1880, Omaha, Douglas, Nebraska, United States. I just paste the FS citation (https//www.familysearch.og…….) into the end of the footnote part but leave the Anna b Smith out. Then under citation details: citation name = I use the original source name to be the same (Anna b Smith, US Census 1880, Omaha, Douglas, Nebraska, United States.). I then type my own fact type sentence to tell who all names/ages/roles are that I found in the census. I also share this source with each family member in that census record. I am hoping I can use this for a report to print out for my family members.
Can you suggest to me if what I am doing is the best way or the hard way to be correct or to be able to give a genealogy report to my family members. Can you give me advice.
I also download records & add to media. I store all my data on an external drive.
I hope you are who I should contact. I just liked your response to the above question.
Because you are copying a citation in FamilySearch and pasting it into RM, there is no advantage in using templates, and indeed there is a big disadvantage. Namely, there is no place in any of the templates to paste a completed citation. A template is expecting you to enter all the little bits of information about the source into separate fields, and then the templates gathers the little bits together for you into a completed citation. But there is no place for you to paste the completed citation that you already have when you are using templates.
I suspect that someone is going to point out that you can actually override the completed citation created by a template by pasting or typing your own citation on top of it. And you can. But if you do it that way, there is again no point in having the template in the first place. You are simply undoing all the work it did.
So that leaves free form as your best option, and indeed I believe that leaves free form as your only practical option. But there are still some questions and options.
Do you paste all of the citation from FamilySearch into the Footnote fields, or do you paste part of it into the Footnote field and part of it into the Page Number field. It’s really a matter of personal preference. If you paste all of the citation from FamilySearch into the Footnote field, you are being a source splitter. If you past some of the citation from FamilySearch into the Footnote fields and some into the Page Number field, you are being a source lumper. In this case, I think my preference would depend on exactly what the citations from FamilySearch actually look like. Is there any obvious place to break the completed citation into two pieces? One of the pieces would go into the Footnote field and the other piece would go into the Page Number field. I suspect you might be happier using both the Footnote field and the Page Number field, but this is a decision you would have to make. Whichever way you do it, the citations will look the same in your printed reports even though they don’t look the same on your RM screens.
Using this method of creating citations in RM, it’s hard to think of a name for the sources that’s any better than the source name being the same as the Footnote field. RM will not do this for you automatically. You would have to paste the data into the source name yourself.
Using this method of creating citations in RM. it’s hard to think of a name for the citations that’s any better than the Page Number field itself. And if you decide to leave the Page Number field blank, then you would also leave the citation name blank. For free form sources, RM will fill in the citation name from the Page Number field for your automatically without you needing to enter it.
Whenever I see this comment, I always feel obliged to point out that when using external drives in this manner, they should be backed up just like data on your computer’s internal hard drive should be backed up. Your external hard drive is no more immune to corruption and failure than is your computer’s internal hard drive.
Hi Jerry Bryan:
Thank you for your prompt reply. You know your RootsMagic program.
I think you answered this question very well. I printed it off so I can study it more closely. I just received my book “Getting the. Most Out of RootsMagic 10”. I will read it & hopefully get a grip on sources, citations, footnotes, page number field & everything that a narrative report will need. It is a very good genealogy & family history software program.
I’m going to experiment with this:
Source name = US, Census, 1880, Omaha, Douglas, Nebraska, United States
Citation name=Anna b Smith, US, Census, 1880, Omaha, Douglas, Nebraska, United States
Page number=
Footnote= US, Census, 1880, Omaha, Douglas, Nebraska, United States “www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/…..”entry for Anna b Smith 49, head, with stepsons John 22, Frank 21….
Fact type=census
Fact Items
Note=not sure where this prints out
Sentence= Anna worked as a painter, she was from Hungary & her children were born in Nebraska.
Fact notes print at the end of the fact sentence. It’s like there is a variable called [Note] at the end of of the rest of the variables in the fact sentence such as [Person] and [Date] and [Place]. Except that there really isn’t a [Note] variable. Rather, there is a report option to print fact notes or not. So they print either for all facts or for no facts, depending on the option you choose when you run the report.