I am new to Roots Magic however I am not new to genealogy. I am trying to understand the proper usage of the Master Source entries. In my head I expect that there should be, for example, only 1 master source entry per Census year and that the Jurisdiction would be part of the Citation information not the Master Source information. I have viewed the webinar and also downloaded a tree from Ancestry. Both appear to have multiple entries on the Master Source list. Am I looking at this correctly or have I misunderstood the purpose of the Master Source?
Thanks
RM uses source templates to create footnote sentences. There will be several pieces of information that go into making up any footnote sentence. Each piece of information can be entered into either a Master Source or the Source Detail. Which information goes which place is hardwired into each source template.
In the case of RM’s built-in source templates, it has been decided for you which pieces of information are to be entered into the Master Source and which are to be entered into the Source Detail. If the built-in source templates do not make such decisions in the manner which you prefer, you can design your own templates.
It can be challenging to design your own templates, especially if you are new to RM. But there is a shortcut to such design. Namely, you can copy an existing template and change it slightly. You can leave the definitions of all the data elements and the footnote sentence as is, and change only which data elements are part of the Master Source and which are part of the Source Detail. In your case, you could leave the copied template unchanged except for moving the census year to the Source Detail. The Source Detail is another name for what you are calling the Citation information.
Also, there are several different Census templates to choose from. It’s possible you can find one that will meet your needs without having to copy one of them and tweaking it to meet your needs.
Thank you for the reply. I will apply your advice and see if I can figure it out.