I was excited when I saw the new feature in the v8.1.6.0 changelog: New: Can now share facts with multiple people at once
Unfortunately that feature does not allow us to pick the role. I’ve defined multiple roles in my RM8 database, e.g. “Family” and “Witness”. When I use the new feature it does not give me the opportunity to select the role I want for the shared fact. It just defaults to what is for me, inevitably, the wrong one. Then I have to go into each shared fact and change it. If this gets improved it will be a welcome feature.
After clicking on “Select” you are presented with a new screen where you can change the person, role, or add a note for each person sharing the fact. On mac, clicking on the role provides a list box when there are multiple roles defined. I assume Windows works the same way.
The big problem is that you cannot create a new Role from this screen if you are adding a person in your database. If, however, you just add a name then there is the option to add/create a new role.
I think it should also default to all the people in the household for that person. I know it won’t meet all needs but for census and residence it would be a time saver.
There could be several reasons why members of the family may not have been present - away, left home, not yet born, etc. If there isn’t already an easy way, perhaps it would be better to be able to bring up a list of all the family members and just be able to select in one go those present, and then maybe also allocate each of their roles from a list of the possible roles.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean here so perhaps I’m on the wrong track. In UK the census form should show the people who were in the particular residence on a stated night. I have situations where, for instance, the wife has gone home to Mum as she is about to have another child and only Dad and the older kids are shown on the census form. The wife is shown on her parents’ form and this is as it should be. Are you suggesting that the default position is that the wife should be shown at home? Also they may not have been referred to as “sleepovers” back in the day but people were known to stay overnight at a friend or relations house where they would be enumerated on census night.
I’d also prefer they stay in the order entered (In the case of a census - usually by age) instead if auto alphabetizing people (or being able to sort them in any order we choose)
When you go to add the people you are sharing with you get a list of all the people in your database so then you have to go find each person that you want to include. This can be quite painful if you have a lot of ancestors with the same name. All I am saying is give me a list of the spouse and all the children for the person for who you are sharing the fact then you can select the ones that actually need to be included.
Actually, I just found the solution. When the list of people come up, select a parent then Mark families using the using the parent with spouse option then just delete the people that you don’t want to share with.
Fun fact: adding a bunch of people at once set their role to WITNESS, when you are changing the role you don’t need to accept each change, just go through your whole list and then click the check mark and they will all show updated.
I am attempting to replicate what you describe but don’t see how you can mark families while sharing a fact with multiple people. Can you describe in a little more detail, and/or post some screenshots? Thanks.
Very helpful! I completely missed the “Mark” button. I thought it was just an instruction to checkmark the people below that I want to designate. I appreciate you taking the time to layout the screenshots. Thanks Larry!
P.S. I still wish RootsMagic would address my original question. It seems like it would be so simple for them to add a Role selection dropdown on the Share Multiple screen, just as they have already done for the Share with an individual screen.
Not sure how it would work with multiple, as the selected role would be applied to all the shared people. Trying to have a drop down role for each selected individual would be cumbersome. And you get that anyway once you are back to the main Share screen.
True it would apply the same role to everyone. But it’s already doing that now. It’s just choosing the wrong role, so I have to go in and change every single person anyway. Alas. Thanks again.
