Strange text in reports

RootsMagic
1

I’ve started playing with reports (finally) and just today am seeing something strange. I’m on a Mac and with both FGS and Narrative reports I’m seeing the text below before every single fact and name, when I save to a Word Doc. It does not do this if I save to a PDF. However, it wasn’t doing this 3 days ago–even when saved to Word.

{XE “South Carolina: Charleston” I B}

The strange line of text doesn’t show in the report preview, only once I’ve saved it to a Word Doc. So I’m thinking it must have something to do with my computer or Word, but I don’t know what. Any ideas? Thanks.
Kaye

2

The strange text you are seeing is an index entry (also called an XE entry) for a place index. When you are in Microsoft Word, the XE entries are usually invisible to you, but Word uses them to generate the name index and the place index.

Word allows you to click on the backwards P symbol in the ribbon to display all of its formatting codes. The backwards P is called a pilcrow. If you click on the pilcrow to display the formatting codes, Word also shows you the XE entries.

My guess is that you might have clicked on the pilcrow either on purpose or by accident while you are in Word. If so, click the pilcrow again to stop displaying the formatting codes.

The only other thing I can think of is that the Word document that RM creates for you has somehow or other become corrupted, and the XE codes look like actual text. In my many years of using RM and Word together, I have never seen that happen.

3

WOW! Never heard of anything like that. Learn something new every day!

I use the “backwards P”, as you call it, all the time. I call it the “paragraph symbol” and click it when I want to see the formatting in a document. I did activate it because I wanted to see why there was some wierd spacing in one of the reports. I have never had it show the ‘indexing codes’ before. I was trying to see why somethings were double or triple spaced. It is showing me the ‘backwards P’ as well as a symbol with two bars | | and a left bent arrow in between. That is what is causing my double and triple line spacing. I’ve never seen the | | with arrow either.

When I click the paragraph symbol, the strange text goes away as does the | | with arrow and the paragraph symbol. And all the formatting symbols.

Maybe it is something new in Word 365 that causes all those other symbols and strings to show. I’m used to keeping the paragraph symbol turned on. I can still see the space bar dots when it is on also. At least I can get rid of them all now. Thanks. I’m anxious to see what happens if I’m using Word normally rather than saving a report in Word.
Kaye

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Show or hide tab marks in Word - Microsoft Support

5

I also call it the paragraph symbol, even though the official name is pilcrow. It always shows the indexing codes if they are there. The indexing codes are there if you request them and they are not there if you do not request them. You request them via the Index option in the list of report options. It’s an easy option to miss because it’s usually scrolled off the bottom of the Settings screen for narrative reports.

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If you are using Word with the pilcrow turned on most of the time, then you will probably want to leave the Index option turned off because it tends to clutter up the report. The way I work most of the time is the reverse. I use Word with the pilcrow turned off most of the time, and I only turn it on for brief periods of time when I need it. And I always turn on the Index option in RM’s reports. So during those brief periods when I turn on the pilcrow in Word, have to ignore the XE entries.

6

Let’s return to your real problem, which is the extra spacing in RM’s narrative reports. It’s a real thing and it’s hard to get rid of. I call it excessive vertical white space, and I have written about it many times. It does appear when you save an RM narrative report as an *.docx file even though the excessive vertical white space was not in the original report. It also doesn’t appear when you save an RM narrative report as an *.pdf file. But I need to be able to edit an *.docx file before final printing.

First of all, you do have to look at your sentence templates. My sentence templates are very non-standard. I use point form sentences and I start each fact on a new line. So my experience with sentences templates is probably not applicable to other user.

Beyond that, I get rid of the excessive vertical white space by doing global replaces in Word. The excessive white space is caused by extra new line characters or paragraph characters that shouldn’t be there. I think I have posted before about exactly how I do it, but I don’t have time this morning to chase it down. Maybe I can find it this afternoon. The concept is to globally replace things like a paragraph character and two new line characters in a row with a paragraph character and one new line character, or whatever it takes. Once you get it figured out, it goes really fast because it’s global replaces.

One problem I still struggle with is that RM puts some of the XE codes on the wrong place. They are dangling in the transition space between people. The XE codes that are in the wrong place makes it very hard to make the global replaces work correctly. Another problem is that *.docx files produced by RM lose italics. This is important because of italics codes in many of my footnotes. As I said, I will try to follow up a little more this afternooon.

7

Thanks Kevin. Even though I use the show/hide the hidden formatting in Word all the time, I’ve never really looked it up. I appreciate this link that kinda tells me what I’m really doing and that I have some options. This will be useful. Thanks.

8

Ha! Thanks, Jerry. I’d never scrolled down and seen those options. I’ll be more aware next time. I will see if I can find your writings on the 'excessive white space". I’m glad your picked up on my REAL issue which is all this excessive white space. Some of it made no sense at all. That was going to be my next post. Thanks.
K

9

Here is a fairly recent thread about the problem of excessive vertical white space when RM’s descendant narrative reports are saved to Word format. I don’t know if I can find them all, but there have been similar threads for many years.

Excessive Blanks Lines in RM’s Descendant Narrative Reports

10

Thanks, Jerry. I had also found one from Sept 2024 that helps also. Sadly (or maybe happily) I understand this. I’m just not used to havining to go through all this to make the reports look like I want. I cry daily for TMG, even with all it’s issues!!!
K

11

Sometimes it’s easy to spot a new RM user who was a former TMG user from a mile away! :grinning:

I was never a TMG user, but out of a great deal of curiosity I did purchase a TMG license after it’s demise just to see what the big deal was with TMG. I never did anything with the license except play with it, and I found TMG to be very powerful. I learned just enough about it to be a little dangerous, and also to be able to give RM presentations to TMG users groups who were looking for TMG alternatives. I was able to produce halfway well informed comparisons of how certain kinds of things in TMG could be done in RM.

I found the TMG users to be excellent, both at doing genealogy in general and in using TMG. Working with the TMG users was a wonderful experience.

One of the big reactions I came away with from TMG was the way it was able to put narrative paragraphs together from multiple events. It wasn’t just a sentence by sentence, event by event, structuring of the narrative. TMG was able to construct coherent paragraphs.

That being said and not ever having been a TMG user myself, I was still stuck with the one event = one sentence model for constructing narratives. I finally became convinced that using this model, I would never ever be able to construct coherent narrative paragraphs unless I abandoned RM and other genealogy software and started using something like Microsoft Word as my primary genealogy software. But rather than doing that, I switched over to using point form sentences in RM.

On its face, using point form sentences my seem to be even more stilted than using the sentences that RM already produces. But in actual practice, I find the point form sentence structure to read much better than the standard RM sentences. Here is an example of a descendant narrative report produced by RM using my point form sentence templates.

Sample RM Report Using Point Form Sentences

Some time after I switched to using point form sentences with RM, a product was announced called GedSite. The author of GedSite was also the author of SecondSite, which was a tool from the world of TMG (but not from the author of TMG) that made excellent Web sites from TMG databases. The difference is that GedSite supports data from any genealogy software including RM. It doesn’t only support TMG data. And indeed, GedSite has special support for RM so support RM’s sentence templates and RM’s source templates.

Here is a sample page created from my RM data using GedSite. It is also using point form sentences. It’s just me, but I think the effect is very nice.

Sample Web Page from my RM data using GedSite

One key thing that Web pages provide that is very hard to simulate on the printed page is hyperlinks. For example, on the sample Web page I created from RM data for George Jackson Cox, you can scroll down to his burial information and click on the GPS coordinates. You will be taken to a Google Maps page with a red pin identifying his place of burial. You could use that map, not just to drive to the cemetery, but also to find his grave within the cemetery.

1 Like
12

Oh! Jerry! You understand me!!! TMG was so very powerful and flexible, I could always find a way to do what I wanted with my sentences and tags (facts). Although mine is still usable, it likes to just shut down on me at random times. I figure its just a matter of time before I won’t be able to open it again. I haven’t transferred my data over yet–still cleaning up. I’m working on new projects in RM10 to learn the program until I finish cleaning TMG and I’m comfortable with RM10.

I’ve never thought of using GEDSITE with RM. My personal site is created by John Cardinal’s Second Site from my TMG database. Originally I only had my Dad’s line on SS, but have attempted now to include my mom’s line. I haven’t gotten it all there yet but am slowly working on it. www.kayesquest.com

I do like your Narrative Report. I’m not happy with what I’m generating from RM. What are ‘point form sentences’? Or where can I learn about them? I was going to ask about concatenation, but from what you have written I doubt that I will have the ability to concatenate sentences for two or more facts.
K

13

RM users do periodically try to concatenate sentences, but I don’t know of any RM users that have every had much luck doing so. RM’s sentence template language is simply not designed for concatenation.

GedSite is also by John Cardinal. My observation is that TMG users still on TMG are mostly still using SecondSite even though GedSite supports TMG. Former TMG users who are now on RM or one of RM’s competitors are usually now on GedSite.

Point form sentences are like the following - just like in my reports. There are no subjects or verbs. I don’t know if there is any place to learn about them other than my examples.

Sarah Bryan.
Birth: 12 Jul 1848 in Sevier County, Tennessee.
Marriage: 5 Jan 1861 in Sevier County, Tennessee, Sarah Bryan to John Cate.
Death: 31 Dec 1920 in Knox County, Tennessee.

There is no option in RM for point form sentences. My point for sentences are all done with RM’s sentence template language. Here are some sample sentence templates from my RM database.

[Person:Full].
<b>Birth: </b><[Date:Plain]><, [Place:Plain]>.


<b>[Couple:full]</b>. 
<b>Marriage:</b>< [Date:Plain]><, [Place:Plain]>, [Person:full],< age [Person:Age:plain]> to <[Spouse:full]< age [Spouse:Age:plain]>>.




<b>Death:</b>< [Desc]>< [Date:Plain]><, age [person:Age:plain]><, [PlaceDetails:plain]><, [Place:plain]>.

GedSite supports RM’s sentence templates and also it’s own sentence templates. I tried using my RM sentence templates in GedSite, and they worked fine. But I liked my sentences even better in GedSite when I switched them over to using GedSite sentence templates. These were sentence templates I designed for GedSite, not GedSite’s default sentence templates.

14

Jerry, where would I find a chart/list/explanation of the sentence element names and formatting codes. I had Theresa Ghee’s cheat sheets for TMG as these things don’t come naturally to me. I understand the square brackets around element/field names and the use of the < > symbols. I run into problems with the slashes and what can follow the : after the element/field name to make it read the way you want it. Hope you can understand what I’m asking?!?! Thanks.

15

See
Help>Sentence Template Language

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In addition to the Help files referenced by BobC, you can get some very good ideas simply by looking at a variety of RM’s built-in sentence templates. They are in the fact list.