On the Edit Person screen, the data for Burial looks like this, with the Place and Place Details:
But on the Fact Details, view, Detail is blank:
Can this be fixed? It would make things easier since it doesn’t show here:
FamilySearch has this by design. RM doesn’t show it so it doesn’t give the false impression it can be uploaded. FamilySearch doesn’t want place details on Family Tree. You can add them in your notes. I put them in the reason statement. To see them you will need to click on the Edit RootsMagic person button.
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My understanding was that around 2019 or so FamilySearch changed their policy and now they do support and want place details on Family Tree. Except that they don’t have a separate field for place details as does RM. So they expect the place details to be a part of the place field.
I originally embraced RM’s place details when they were introduced into RM4. But a year or so later I came to realize that much other genealogy software didn’t support a place details field, so I moved my place details back to the main RM place field. Otherwise, my place details were lost when my data was transferred to software other than RM. That approach has served me very well ever since.
Ancestry also doesn’t support a place details field, but TreeShare does support an option called Upload place details as a part of the place field. I wonder if it’s time for RM’s Family Tree interface to support the same option for Family Tree. Doing so would not require any changes to the Family Tree API by FamilySearch. It would simply require RM to concatenate the place detail field and the place field before sending the data to Family Tree, just like RM already does for Ancestry.
Because I don’t use RM’s place details, I don’t know if TreeShare reverses the process and splits place details from place when it moves data from Ancestry back to RM. As for me, I can’t imagine any future time where I would be willing to take the risk of using RM’s place details. I will continue to enter place details into RM’s main place field.
The following article is dated 2023, but I really do think that the FamilySearch change to support place details took place in 2019. How do I enter a cemetery name or burial plot into Family Tree?
The FamilySearch article also suggests entering cemetery plot numbers, but it does not recommend including plot numbers in the place field. Rather, it recommends including plot numbers in a custom fact. That’s more or less what I do, except that I almost never actually have plot numbers because hardly any of the cemeteries I research are commercial cemeteries with plot numbers. So I have a custom fact called Burial GPS where I enter GPS coordinates that I get from a handheld GPS device which is very accurate. I suppose I could also get the GPS coordinates from my iPhone, but the handheld GPS device is much more accurate.
The GPS coordinates can then be printed in reports for family reunions or published to the web. They can be typed into Google Maps or any similar mapping service and a pin will be placed very precisely on the burial site. Or if you have a handheld GPS device, the device can be used to walk to the coordinates. You can even get pretty close to the site for many cemeteries by entering the coordinates into your car’s GPS device. Such devices usually go by place names, but I have never met one that wouldn’t accept GPS coordinates.
I do not find RM’s geocoding feature to be of any value in recording GPS coordinates for burials. The first problem is that a plot number would have to be included in the place field or the place details field, and I simply don’t have plot numbers most of the time. Without a plot number, every burial in the same cemetery would have the same GPS coordinates. The other problem is that RM’s GPS coordinates are not printed in reports nor published to the Web. So I have a solution that works for me, but it uses a custom fact rather than RM’s geocoding feature.
GEDCOM doesn’t have a place details field. RM therefore places the place details field into GEDCOM using the ADDR tag. That’s a very clever solution to an impossible problem. The clever solution is not wrong exactly, but it often is not recognized by software other than RM itself.
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Okay, so I get why it doesn’t show on the FamilySearch Person Tools, but why shouldn’t it show on the FamilySearch/RootsMagic Fact Details? That is a purely informational view, as indicated by the ‘Circle i’ icon.
Ed
I have reported possible changes to FamilySearch and their position on place details to development. They can look into it.
Thank you for everything you do, Renee! It is all much appreciated.
Ed