Over some 20 years I have been accumulating a large database of New England based families. I am transcribing fewer books and not doing as much individual research as I once did. Now I am going through the index, surname by surname trying to find missing birthdates from my entries by comparing my names to FamilySearch. I am finding some individuals do not have a recorded birth date in the list but do have a date in an unacceptable format on the data entry screen.
Is there any way the program (RM7 or RM9) can produce a listing of dates that do not sort correctly into the program because I entered them incorrectly.
Those are known as “text” dates and are easily found using an outboard sqlite query. Within RootsMagic, I’m not so sure what you can do as I’m away from the computer. Check whether there is an option in the Fact List report. Another would be to check whether the Search criteria for Any Fact has a filter for text dates. A third might be to sort the People List view on a given fact’s date. I would expect the text dates to cluster separately from the valid dates.
I would probably do it by using People List View, making sure the view includes a column for the birth date, and sorting by the birth date column. There are several good ways to do it as Tom described.
I ran this report last night and corrected a lot of dates that had been imported as either French or German. Just save as an Excel file and checked them off as I went through the list.