Family Historian User Group

I have read a lot of previous correspondence in this Forum re Icons, Flags - and the Living Flag in particular.

However, I am still unsure about how it works .. if it actually "works" at all. I have just entered a Death Date for Person X. Surely, if there is a Death Fact, a Burial Place or a Probate Date, then the Living Flag will be turned OFF automatically ? I should not have to do that.

I don't understand how the Living Flag operates - maybe it is dormant - or the default is for it to be set ON ? I dunno.

What is the default value of the flag ? What is the value of the Flag when it is ON, meaning "Alive" ? What is the value of the Flag when it is OFF, meaning "Dead" ?

Finally do I have to turn the Living Flag OFF for all the people known to be dead even when I have no data for the death .... surely FH will automatically turn all Living Flags OFF when people were born more than 120 years ago ?

Just asking.

john

There is nothing automatic about any record Flag including Living.
Also there is no ON or OFF state for any Flag.
A Flag is either manually attached to an Individual record, or it is not attached.

In FH use Help > Search Help > Living and checkout the Record Flags topic.

The Living and Private flags can be used to govern what details are published in Reports, Websites, etc.
There are also other tools to govern what details are published and they often work on Birth & Death dates as well as Flags.

The fhugdownloads:contents:flag_living|> Query:Individual ~ Flag Living can help set the Living flag.

Miketate,
Pedant that I am, in queries, one checks if a particular flag is Set or not for an Individual. So OP is not so wrong in assuming it is an On or Off indicator for a particular event.

Strictly speaking, FH assumes everyone is dead, unless one specifically attaches or sets the living flag to override that assumption.

Yes, in FH the test is whether the Flag is Set or Exists, etc.
e.g. =Exists(%INDI._FLGS.__LIVING%) is true or false.

Some other products have Flags that effectively have three states.
Either they exist with an ON or OFF value, or they don't exist which represents an UNKNOWN state.
I was making it clear that such values do NOT apply to FH Flags.

Thanks Mike Tate (and you too Mike Loney),

Very useful. I have solved my problem thanks and also learned a bit more - as I have at last got around to using a Query to set a Flag on the Results if that makes sense.

Regards,

John Snelson

Not all packages use the Living flag the same way. I have many examples in my Ancestry tree where the Living flag has been set automatically when no death date was specified, even if birth was over 200 years ago!! Not sure if the bug is with Ancestry or RootsMagic, which I use as a “helper” application to keep Ancestry synced with FH.

In any product the Living Flag is a product specific proprietary feature as there is no GEDCOM definition for flags.