Old RM Issues That Still Drive Me Crazy

RootsMagic
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1

I’m 99% sure that the situation I’m about to describe would have driven me crazy in RM7, and it’s still driving me crazy in RM9. So I don’t think it’s a new problem in RM9.

I have a family with a number of siblings, with the first two siblings having been born in 1956 and 1957. I found a death record for 2008 for the sibling who was born in 1957. By mistake, I entered the 2008 death fact for the sibling who was born in 1956.

I noticed the mistake right away. I fixed it by deleting the death fact from the sibling who was born in 1956 and by adding the same death fact to the sibling who was born in 1957. So far, so good, and this isn’t a big deal at all. However, …

The Living Flag for the sibling who was born in 1956 was turned off when I added the Death fact (correct), but the Living Flag for the sibling who was born in 1956 was not turned back on when I deleted the Death fact (incorrect). I had to turn the Living Flag back on manually. More importantly, I had to notice that the Living Flag was set incorrectly.

The death year was set to 2008 in the sidebar index for the sibling who was born in 1956 when I entered the 2008 Death fact. The death year was not set back to null in the sidebar index for the sibling who was born in 1956 when I deleted the incorrect Death fact for 2008. The only way to fix the problem was to run File => Tools => Rebuild Indexes manually. More importantly, I had to notice the death year in the sidebar index was set incorrectly.

Aside from all that, wouldn’t it have been nice if I could have just moved the Death fact from one sibling to the other instead of having to delete it and type it all back in again?

2 Likes
2

A more convoluted work around:

Instead of first deleting the fact, one can first delete the date and Save the edit. Then delete the Fact. Then re-checkmark Living.

3

Both the request to reset the living flag and the death date in the index seem reasonable to me. The ability to move a fact also seems like an enhancement that users would value highly though I can understand if it needed to be treated separately since it could be a bit more involved.

I also noticed that if you just delete the date field in the death fact (without deleting the death fact itself) then the death year does get set back to null in the sidebar index as soon as you close the Edit Person window. So the index reset logic is partially there but not fully implemented in RM9.

4

I have notice undesired results with the living flag. However, implementing the correct reset logic to appear MOST users might get a little tricky.

Moving and/or copying facts from one person to another would be highly desirable. Similar correctly spouse on marriage would be useful as I have done the before – (everything correct but flip flopped spouses) – that require delete both and redoing both