I’m still using RootsMagic 8 and one thing that’s always bothered me is the way endnotes work in the Family Group Sheet. Even though I tick the box to “reuse endnote numbers”, I always end up with the same sources repeated.
Doing some reading around, I think I finally understand why now. The way I use it, I have one source being one certificate. I have multiple citations for that source, e.g. one citation for the mother’s name, another citation for the father’s name, etc. The source template I use only has fields at the source level, nothing at the citation/detail level, so the footnote, short footnote and bibliography text is the same for all citations. I use the “Detail Comment” on the citation for notes.
When I generate a Family Group Sheet, under sources I set:
Citation Type: Endnotes
Print research notes: unchecked
Print comments: unchecked
Reuse endnote numbers: checked
Use “Ibid” in duplicates: unchecked
Combine citations for a fact: unchecked
I think what’s happening, because they are separate citations, they get printed separately. However, I’m expecting them to be reused since the text that’s output is exactly the same (I’m not printing comments and there’re no detail/citation-level fields).
It looks like the way to make this work like I expect is to merge my citations and keep my notes somewhere else (or maybe just against that one citation that gets reused).
Like I say, I’m currently on RootsMagic 8. From reading this forum, it looks like 9 and 10 behave similarly. Does anyone know how 11 handles this?
The “Reuse EndNote Numbers” feature does not work the same way in RM8 through the RM11 as it did in RM7. In RM7, the feature worked based on the text of the endnote being the same. In RM8 through RM11, it works based on the citation being the same citation. This is the issue which has tripped you up.
The issue is not that your “Detail Comment” field is different for each citation per se. Rather, the issue is that you have different citations. It makes no sense in your use case to make all the Detail Comments exactly the same because you need the note to be different. But even if you did make the notes all the same just as a test, your endnotes would still be duplicated because they would be based on different citations.
As a note in passing, the Detail/Comment field does not contribute to the footnote/endnote, but it is at the citation/detail level. As you mention, that does prevent you from merging the citations that are otherwise duplicate.
If I may make a suggestion, let me describe how I handle a similar situation. I treat a single page of census as a single citation, no matter that how many people were enumerated with the family and no matter how many families were on the same census page. So I transcribe everybody on that page into the same note, whether the are in the same family or even if they are in different families. That "full page’ type of transcription then goes into the citation note. I actually use the Research Note rather than Detail Comment. But for the purposes of this discussion, that doesn’t matter. Both notes are at the citation/detail level. The two notes might as well be called Citation Note #1 and Citation Note #2.
On the Census fact note itself, I also include a transcription for the census entry. But on the Census fact note itself, I include include the transcription just for the one person - which is the effect I think you seek. My method may or may not meet your needs, but it’s food for thought.
For me, the larger issue is that the very useful and user friendly feature of RM7’s “Reuse Endnote Numbers” is missing in RM8 through RM11. I sure would like to get that missing feature back.
Thanks for confirming and clarifying. It’s some of your other posts on this matter Jerry that I found helpful in understanding what was going on.
Judging by the posts in this community, this is obviously something that’s been catching people out for four versions of the software now. I can understand the thinking behind basing the logic on the CitationTable table, but the problem is that people expect it to be based on the actual output . There needs to be an extra step in the generation process, after evaluating things like “display notes”, the templates, etc to then do a round of deduping - if the output of two endnotes would be the same, reuse it.
Have the developers engaged in any discussion on this over the years? I did try raising a support ticket in 2022, but the last I heard on it was that it had been passed to development - I was rather hoping they might have been able to fix it at some point in the last 4 years!!
Fixing this one issue alone would be enough for me to upgrade!!
