When entering new ancestors or editing an existing one I have only ever used a small subset of the available fact types. Life would be easier if the 8-10 facts I commonly use were at the top and I didn’t have to scroll to find them.
It would be useful to be able to assign a priority to each fact so that they can be presented in that order. I checked the “Official Guide” but could find no reference to this. And I raised a question with the technical support team on whether this was possible but I failed to make my wishes clear, so this is a second attempt at raising the matter.
FYI … something similar was requested a few years ago. Renee never commented, so I don’t think it was ever picked up as something they might work on. Doesn’t invalidate your request, but thought you’d like the insight.
They are alphabetized for consistency since Your subset may be different then others.
First - when entering New people, you can customize the Add New Individual screen and add various Facts.
Second - you can Design New Fact and basically make a “copy” of your needed Facts. THEN put an * before the name and they will be listed first in Facts. You will have to play with getting the copies sentence, etc correct.
I agree that the fact type list is a very real friction in the RM user interface. For the most part, I get around it by using the search box.
Having a Favorites feature or something in that vein to put frequently used facts at the top of the list would certainly be very helpful, and probably it would be something that would be pretty easy for the developers to implement. If it were implemented, it would surely be an issue that it would be a database specific feature where a new database would not have your Favorites defined. That might or might not be a factor that holds up such an implementation.
I have a pretty strong dislike for RM’s Add Person screen. I’m probably in the minority on this one. I know that a lot of RM users love the Add Person screen and work to customize it to meet their needs. But it doesn’t support couple facts such as Marriage and Divorce. And it doesn’t support important data such notes, citations, and media. As a result, I enter as little data as possible into the Add Person screen and switch over as quickly as possible to the Edit Person screen where I can do my real work.
I do a little bit of naming my own user defined facts in such a way that they go to the top of the list. But you can’t really do that with built-in facts such as Birth and Death. And an alternative Birth or Death fact with an alternative spelling would not be recognized for what they really are by other genealogy software, and really, not even by RM itself.
I did that by prefixing the FactType Name with the numbers. But you cannot edit the built-in Fact Types through the RootsMagic user interface. I did that using a SQLite editor directly on the database.
Note that the Name in the Edit Person screen was unaffected by having changed it in the database; it’s hardcoded in the software. And the unnatural order for the Death and Burial events on the same date was likewise unaffected. One might expect that, in most areas of the program, there would be no impact.
Does that break anything? Maybe. I haven’t tested beyond a GEDCOM export and import to a new database and the only (and expected) loss was that the Name in the Fact Types List reverts to the original. That’s because the FactTypeTable in a new database is generated afresh from the hardcoded values for the built-ins and only the user-created custom fact types are imported into it from GEDCOM or directly from another RM database.
Had an idea that in theory should work but who knows … create a few “dummy” boy 1, boy 2, girl 1 girls 2, etc records that have the Facts you’d like to use.
Then when you want to add an actual person use one of the “dummy” ones and enter correct info. Facts already there
That’s good! Avoids digging into the database in ways that RM Inc does not support.
Maybe just create one such dummy person leaving gender undefined. Export it to a GEDCOM. Then when in the working database and need to Add Person, import the shell person into it. Or create the shell person in a new database from which you drag and drop it into the working database.
That would work well for Individual Fact Types but Family Fact Types such as Marriage won’t come over without having two shell people having the desired Family fact.
And it doesn’t facilitate adding preferred facts to existing person records or those created through other imports and interactions with TreeShare and FamilySearch.
