I have created a fact-type (RM11) and want to globally change the content of the “description” field for this fact conditionally on the content of this field. I haven’t found any way to do so. Can anyone give me a hint.
There isn’t a global change option for the description field. You will need to manually change them. You can create a group with everyone with that fact type to help process them.
Internally, RootsMagic only offers individual edits via Find everywhere.
Externally, you could utilize an SQLite-aware utility -or- Mark a group of people with that fact-type, export them via GEDCOM, edit the exported GEDCOM via text editor search and replace, then re-import them for use of Duplicate search & merge tool to make all changed duplicates into primary persons.
1 Like
@marcelma what exactly does the description say and what do you want to change it to? Is the description exactly same for each and every person-- for example under description say I had put
The 1841 United Kingdom Census was taken at the local Church on Monday June 6 1841 starting at 6 pm..
and wanted to change it by leaving out local Church and putting Sunday instead of Monday..
If the description is EXACTLY the same for each and every person , you could go into the fact, UNCHECK description and then add what you wanted to change to the sentence…
In the 1841 United Kingdom census, [person] was enumerated <[PlaceDetails]> <[Place]>. The Census was taken on Sunday June 6 1841 starting at 6 pm..
note that the info under description is still there, so that if you ever wanted to go back to what you had, you could turn it back on-- if you wanted to use description for something else, you would have to erase them all…
@kbens0n – the only way I could get info under description in a particular fact to show up was to use Advanced search ( in RM 11) and you can edit from that search
In my earlier quick test, any “explicit” phrase of characters can be searched for in Find everywhere. The resulting list does not take one directly to the particular fact. It merely lists each person with that phrase for Edit, where the custom fact must be selected/edited.
Yea, this is what I found out as well. So this possibility is definitely not there. What a pitty. I have been thinking about external tools, but the last time I tried to re-import a GEDCOM file and merge duplicates into primary persons I deeply messed up my database, had to manually check piles of records and there are still inconsistencies showing up months later. There is too much “black box” going on in the back and forth.