When I convert my RM7 DB to RM10, all of my RM10 freeform source citation names are blank.
What do I need to do in RM7 to get non-blank citation name after direct conversion to RM10?
You need to have something in the Citation Details fields of each Citation. Not the Comments or Note. For a FreeForm source template, something in the Page field.
@TomH Tanks for the info.
Is there an easy way to get this filled in, as the Page field doesn’t show in the source list.
It seems to me that if the page number field in RM7 is blank for a free form citation, then it is correct for the page number field in RM10 to be blank for the same citation.
In turn, it seems to me that if the page number field is blank in RM10 for a free form citation, then it is correct for the citation name field in RM10 to be blank for the same citation. There really is nothing else for the citation name field to be in this case than blank.
In the earliest days of RM8 a sliding source/citation panel sometimes would only show the source name or would only show the citation name. So even for citations where the page number field was not blank, you might see something like page 27 in a sliding panel if it was only showing the citation name and it would only show John Doe, History of the Doe Family if it was only showing the source name. What you as the user really needed to see in the sliding source/citation panel was John Doe, History of the Doe Family, page 27. I might be forgetting a case where the problem is not fixed, but the best I can tell RM9 and RM10 always show both the source name and the citation name in the sliding source/citation panels.
My situation is a little different than yours because all my citations for the last 10 to 12 years have been based on source templates of my own design rather than on the free form template. But my situation is similar to yours because all my source templates place all the data into the source part of the source/citation and they place nothing into the citation part of the source/citation. As a result, all my citation names default to being blank, just like with your free form citations with a blank page number field.
But as a result of the original problems with RM8’s sliding source/citation panels not displaying both the source name and the citation name, I decided to copy the source name field into the citation name field. That way, I always had the information I needed in sliding source/citation panels no matter that they were not displaying both names… Now that the problem is more or less fixed, I suppose I could go back to blanking out the citation name, but for whatever reason I have chosen to continue duplicating the source name into the citation name. Plus I do still have a lot of old citations based on the free form template, and for some of them the page number field is blank. So with either my new style sources or my old style sources, I understand the issue of the blank citation names.
I do have a minor disclaimer. I use * as the first character of source names and ! as the first character of citations names. So the names are not absolutely identical. But I would reiterate that if the page number number field is blank, I don’t think there is anything meaningful to be put into citation name field except blanks, unless maybe you do as I do and copy the source name into the citation name.
This is not a direct answer as it presupposes that the sources were built using custom source templates whereas yours are Free Form. But maybe it provides some context and food for thought.
https://sqlitetoolsforrootsmagic.com/naming-citations-in-preparation-for-rm8-rm7-citations/