Transferring Notes from RM to FamilyTree

RootsMagic
1

Years ago, I abandoned the idea of transferring data between RM and FamilySearch Family Tree in either direction using the RM user interface. I found too many pieces of data that wouldn’t transfer. So I do my work in RM while being in RM and I do my work in FamilySearch Family Tree while being in FamilySearch Family Tree. But periodically, I do like to revisit such decisions to see if I can make better use of some of RM’s tools.

So recently, I added a note to a person in RM. It was a real note - too long just to fit in the Description field. And it was a fact note for a custom fact in RM. I then matched the person in RM to a person in FamilySearch Family Tree. Finally, I tried to use RM to transfer the custom fact from RM to FamilySearch Family Tree, including the note.

The basic custom fact information transferred just fine and it became a custom fact in FS/FT. But the note did not transfer. The custom facts in FS/FT do not seem to support notes. For that matter, I don’t think the standard facts in FS/FT support notes, either. On the other hand, it appears that FS/FT does support the Description field from RM’s facts using the RM user interface. The trouble is that the Description field is limited to 100 characters.

There are places in FS/FT where notes can be pasted after being copied from RM using the Windows clipboard. I have been doing so for years. But it’s a messy process and I find it hard to store notes in FS/FT where it’s likely that other users will see them.

Am I missing something obvious, or is this just the way FS/FT works when it comes to notes?

2 Likes
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Notes are transferred between FamilySearch and RootsMagic via the Notes tab on the FamilySearch Person Tools screen. FamilySearch treats them similar to Sources, when they are not automatically uploaded with a person but have to be added afterwards.

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Much thanks. I probably never would have never figured this out on my own. After playing with it a bit, it seems to me the the most salient point is not that the notes from RM have to be added to FS/FT afterwords. Rather, it’s that the notes from custom facts in RM show up in the Collaborate tab in FS/FT. That’s an example of FS/FT using a very different data model than RM.

Let me further clarify. When I added a fact note from a custom fact in RM to FS/FT, the only option that I was offered was to add the note to the Person in FS/FT. RM said that the note was transferred successfully. But when I looked around in the Person data in the FS/FT screen, I didn’t see the note anywhere. I finally noticed more or less by accident that the note was under the Collaborate tab. The RM Help file is silent on the issue of notes showing up under the Collaborate tab.

What I don’t know without further experimentation is whether a note for the Birth fact in RM or the Death fact in RM or some other category of information supported by FS/FT is actually added to the Birth or Death areas of FS/FT. I do remember a video when the FS/FT support was first added to RM where Bruce said that FS/FT doesn’t actually support things like “birth facts” and “death facts”, but rather FS/FT supports something he called the “concept of a birth” and the “concept of a death”.

Again, much thanks. The Collaborate tab is the only place I could find to copy and paste my RM notes manually. So if RM can do that for me more automatically, I guess that’s a good thing. But I don’t think the FS/FT data model makes a whole lot of sense.

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FamilySearch has a habit of moving things around on their website. Collaborate used to be only Discussions, now it includes Notes too. However, the FT API has not changed.

5

This has given me a lot to think about. I have quite a few fact types in my RM database whose primary purpose is just to contain a note. I will use my Obituary fact type as an example. Here is a way a typical obituary might appear in my narrative reports.

Obituary: Morristown Gazette and Mail [Morristown, Tennessee] 13 Jun 1938, page 2.17
George Jackson Cox, 76, died Sunday afternoon at 3:30 at his home near Dandridge. Funeral services were held this afternoon at 2:00 from the Wesleys Chapel Church, conducted by Rev. W. A. Thompson. Interment followed in the church yard cemetery. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Retta Cox; two daughters, Mrs. Dan Harrison of Morristown, and Mrs. J. P. Slaton of Dandridge; one son, J. F. Cox of Dandridge; two brothers, W. N. Cox of Dandridge, and Jim Cox of Straw Plains; and one sister; Mrs. John Breeden of Dandridge.

The way I enter this into RM is that the first line starting with the word Morristown goes into the Description field for the Obituary fact. I include <i> and </i> tags around the name of the newspaper to get the name of the newspaper to be in italics. The second line starting with the words George Jackson Cox go into the Note field for the Obituary fact with a blank line in front of the word George to get the obituary text to start on a new line.

This approach has served me well for many years. But it does not work very well if I to want to start using the RM user interface to transfer notes to FS/FT. I could enter the text instead by leaving the Description field for the Obituary fact blank and by including the newspaper information at the beginning of the Note field for the Obituary fact. If I did it that way, my narrative reports could look exactly the same and it would work much better for transferring my notes to FS/FT. The only little glitch in FS/FT is that you would see the <i> and </i> tags rather than the text actually being in italics.

When I say this approach does not work very well if I use the RM user interface to transfer the obituary to FS/FT, I mean the following.

  • If I transfer the Obituary fact itself, the result is not very meaningful. All you see is the newspaper information and not the text of the obituary.
  • If I transfer the note for the Obituary fact, it includes the text of the obituary but it loses the name of the newspaper.

So why don’t I just change my data entry practice and put all the obituary information into the note for the Obituary fact? Doing so would make transferring notes between RM and FS/FT work a lot better. The reasons I’m reluctant to change are the following.

  • Having the newspaper information in the Description field allows the newspaper information to be displayed as a column in Family List View.
  • Having the newspaper information in the Description field allows the newspaper information to be displayed as a column of its own in RM’s Custom reports.
  • Having the newspaper information in the Description field makes it easier to do Advanced Searches and to make groups based on the newspaper information.
  • In other words, having the newspaper information in the Description field makes obituaries much easier to manage and to standardize than if all the text were in the Note field.

As I said, I have a lot to think about. Using RM to transfer notes to FS/FT is very attractive. I’m wishing there might be an RM option where transferring a note from RM to FS/FT might mean transferring the Description field plus the Note field as if it were a single concatenated field. But I still don’t know what to do about the italics tags that are visible in FS/FT. I don’t think FS/FT could ever be expected to support the italics tags, but perhaps there could be an option for RM to strip them out before transferring the note to FS/FT.

P.S. An additional and somewhat unrelated problem is that when I use RM10 to save a narrative report for further editing by Microsoft Word, all the italics are lost. If this problem is not fixed by the time I need to create a report for my next family reunion, I will have to produce the narrative report using RM7 because RM7 does not lose the italics.

6

After giving considerable thought to this issue, I’m going to experiment with the following in a test database. I will include the newspaper information in two different places in my Obituary fact - in the Description field as I do now and also at the beginning of the Note field. And I will remove the [Desc] variable from the sentence template. This should have the following effects.

  • My printed reports will look no different than they do now.
  • I can continue to use the newspaper information in the Description field to help manage my obituaries. For example, I can continue to display the newspaper information as a column in People List View or Custom Reports. I can continue to do Advanced Search or make groups based on the Description field.
  • I will gain the ability to transfer obituaries as notes to FS/FT and the notes will include the newspaper information.

The only loose end seems to be that if I continue to use the <i> and </i> tags to put the newspaper name into italics, then those tags will be transferred to FS/FT but the tags will show up in FS/FT rather than forcing italic text in FS/FT. I think I will just have to live with that.

Finally, I should mention that not all of my obituaries come from newspapers. For example, if they come from funeral home Web sites, it is the Web site information that now goes in the Description field of the Obituary fact and that in the future might be duplicated into the beginning of the Note field of the Obituary fact. That should work fine and no italics will be involved.

7

Beating a dead horse here, but I am very happy with the results of my testing. So I am now including the newspaper or Web site information for my Obituary fact in both the Description field and at the beginning of the Note field. I avoid duplicating the data in printed reports by removing the [Desc] variable from the sentence template for the Obituary fact.

The advantages are that I can still use the Description field of the Obituary fact to help manage obituaries as I described previously, and I can now use FamilySearch Central in RM to transfer the obituaries to FamilySearch as notes. I decided to leave the italics tags in the Obituary note, and the italics tags will just have to be included in the text that is transferred to FamilySearch.