I am creating a genealogy book and thought I was almost done. I pulled in my ancestry.com files to roots magic. I noticed reading the narrative reports that the text generation for place of Residence (mostly from census reports) was off. I found a way to fix most census information from 1920-1940 adding “()” to make the txt flow better. Unfortunately, other Residence information and similar information show up with a “)” in the middle of the text generation.
I really do not want to go through all my my ancestors and remove the “)” where it does not belong. I already did this once to validate the information was correct; I should have checked the text generation then, but I did not do so.
Is there any way to filter just for Residence facts so I can clean this up?
Bummer!!! You could do a fact report-- go to publish then All Reports and Charts–click on FACT LIST-- LIST TYPE-- looks to see if one of the other options is better–otherwise use PEOPLE WITH A FACT-- Select RESIDENCE FACT ( include private facts) and generate report-- it will give you a list of names that use the fact-- you can save the report BUT have to change each one–one at a time–it would help if you could somehow eliminate the ones from 1920-1940 if you are sure they are correct…
you could also do try FIND EVERYWHERE-- top of page-- hopefully you can just use ) in the Find part or Residence and )-- you still have to edit them BUT it a list you can edit from there…
Was going to original suggest something like this BUT noticed a lot of times when @thejerrybryan suggested this he had to include several lines to get the results…
I really don’t know what you mean by TEXT GENERATION-- if you mean notes, you MIGHT try this
It MIGHT work with just the 1st line BUT then I think you would get all those that have ( ) in it also— just not sure it will work either way…
If you don’t mean it’s in the notes then try picking an option where it MIGHT be or just Residence…
Here are the issues more clearly. This is for the fact Residence. I had to fix the census for 1910-1940 and add the parentheses to make the sentence structure work better. I am calling that text generation.
For other Residence facts not from the 1910-1940 censuses, because of the above parentheses changes, there is an extra “)” after the word lived. That is the problem
Okay–now I understand-- you have a problem with the fact sentence–it’s now okay on the census info BUT not on regular residence facts…
Quite frankly I would just move the description to the end— it would remove the ) in the regular residence as your description field would be empty and nothing will show up ( unless you want to put an occupation there) and still have the info you want in the census info…
So your Census would now say Aaron “Harry” Kauffman lived in Philadelphia Ward 39, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA in 1920. Relation to Head: Head Residence Marital Status: Married.
Believe the following will work BUT you MIGHT need to tinker with it a bit…
[person] lived<[PlaceDetails]><[Place]><[Date]>.<[desc]>
You will note that I put a period after date and you need to put a period after desc outside the brackets— Reason I say tinker with it is because I normal can NOT get mine to work right UNLESS I have a SPACE between the >< I was also always told that Description had to be desc BUT yours works and that Person was with a capital P-- but yours works and you got his full name included…
You MIGHT also try
[person] <[desc]> lived <[PlaceDetails]><[Place]><[Date]>.
Then your Census would read
. Aaron “Harry” Kauffman Relation to Head: Head Residence Marital Status: Married lived in Philadelphia Ward 39, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA in 1920.
Something like either would fix your problem all at once and I see no problem with the flow of either…
Do you have a test database to try out things? IF not, maybe start a new test file and drag and drop a few of the people with these different kinds of residence fact-- census and others into the new database to experiment on till you got it just the way you like-- then copy the sentence into your regular residence fact in your other database.
MAKE SURE BEFORE YOU CHANGE ANYTHING IN YOUR REGULAR DATABASE TO BE SURE YOU BACK-UP THE DATABASE!!!
Good Luck
BTW-- Since you have already changed the resident fact, it’s NOT going to matter on how you change it now BUT wanted to tell you that the next time you tree share up to Ancestry and then back to RM9–Ancestry MIGHT send the residence fact as a new fact or it MIGHT consider it as CUSTOMIZED FACT and send it back with the sentence gone-- message will be Need to DEFINE Sentence— Another reason to have a test base as you can send it up to Ancestry ( by gedcom maybe) then send it back to RM 9 to see WHAT if anything changes-- when it sent my customized facts back with define sentence-- all my info was still there so that when I put the sentence back in, it came back…
Will also note that IF you shared a fact with anyone-- Ancestry does NOT SHARE THE FACT–so all shared facts are gone when you tree share the file back to RM 9
And Ancestry does NOT accept place details–so your place details do NOT COME BACK WHEN YOU TREESHARE A FILE…
Basically why I don’t bother with tree share BUT in your case, you MIGHT consider just replacing the file on Ancestry with a new file since you have already changed the residence fact-- maybe you will get lucky and nothing will change-- Sorry
If you want the sentence to read the way you have it you need ro move the ) in your template. You have it in the place. It needs to be after place details. <[place:detals])> <[place]>
It is not just a simple case of moving the ) bracket in the template, the ) bracket needs to be included only if the leading ( bracket is added by the [Desc] field.
This is what I believe the syntax of the sentence template should be : [person] lived< ([Desc]>< [PlaceDetails]><?[Desc]|)>< [Place]><[Date]>.
That should work but it does put Place Details inside the parentheses with the Description while it has no parentheses when Description is empty. Do you want that inconsistency?
I wouldn’t, but I just provided a solution for the OPs original problem, they would need to reconsider how or when to include the required parentheses from what actual data they are using.
Thank you so much for you recommendations. The first optioned works with just a slight amount of “tinkering”. You can see where I had to put the second period.
It would have taken weeks to update my entire data base otherwise. I am not concerned about the ancestry sharing piece; I just want the narrative reports in publisher to flow.
