* Narrative Report Heading how to change it?

[Kylie]

Hi

I am somewhat new to FH6, my mum used FH6 and along the way she showed me bits & pieces, she recently passed away & now I am attempting to carry on the 35 years of research she's done.

After working out a few things about research I thought I'd have a go at doing a tree for a friend of mine. So far it's going better than I expected.

Before I got to far with her tree I took a look at the Narrative Report By Ancestors/Descendants.

However when the report loaded it had Emily Matilda Nash/Payne at the top of the report. Emily has NOTHING to do with my friends relatives. How do I change that?

I've looked for options/preferences and I have not found anything regarding "title of report" or even Emily's name referenced.

Really appreciate being able to change this, thanks in advance

Kylie

[rodit]

If you go to Report Options > Page Layout > Header, you will probably find
"Descendants of Emily Matilda Nash/Payne by Generation".
You can edit this out just to read "Descendants by Generation", or remove it completely.
Cheers
Roger

[tatewise]

Welcome to the FHUG Kylie.

It seems your mum has customised that report, and may well have customise other things too.
As Roger says, look at Report > Options > Page Layout > Header but to reverse any customisations try clicking the Installation Settings button bottom right.
This technique can be applied elsewhere in Diagrams and Reports, etc.

Furthermore, the labelled lines shown below are unusual for a Narrative Report
Name: Barzalai John Gowty
Gender: Male
Marriage Registration Year: 1868
Marriage Registration Place: Victoria, Australia

Do those labels look like anything you have entered, or might they be some customisation from your mum?

[Jane]

Mike I suspect the poster has simply put the source information into a note against the marriage rather than adding it as a source citation.

[tatewise]

Jane, you are probably correct, but none of the Note options are enabled by default in Narrative Reports.
So for Note details to appear, the Options must have been customised, either by Kylie or her mum.

[Kylie]

Firstly WOOHOO & Thank you! I obviously didn't have my eyes open wide enough (then again never seen so many options in my life lol)

Secondly you are both correct.

Thirdly thank you for explaining the 'installation' option.

And thank you for bringing up source citation.

In my mum's defence she always told me "Sources, sources you must have sources & preferably 3 at least .. "

I suspect either she had already put in so many 'sources' into the note section it was too late for her to go back to every body & fix them OR the adding the Source via FH6 method may have been a little too much for her (no offence Mum but I'm going with that one).

I would say she's ticked the 'note' section in an option box somewhere. When I tried our tree as a report (after seeing some one's report using Legacy 9) I was confused why none of mum's sources were at the bottom of each page and realised no "sources" were referenced. However I did notice some of the note sections go on forever (LOTS of newspaper articles, emails etc).

Admittedly yes I have followed now in Mother's footsteps (she knew best naturally) but after seeing how clean the Legacy report looked I wanted to do same. I have tried it & I know I blundered it. I put in eg: Birth Cert, (see screen cap) then I got to Repository and that opened up empty so I left it. So when I went to use "source" on next person's BC it came up with exact same things I'd put for person A. Again I have read the manual on sources and I'm not quite grasping it. Which embarrassing as I usually pick up tech things rather easy.

I know there is a difference between source & citations. I had wished "automatic source" was exactly that - it found the right source online & put it in nice & neat.

And please stop laughing

Thanks again (oh the screen cap included is just a mock one I did just now - it's getting the big "cancel" in a sec)

[Jane]

Getting to grips with sources, takes a while as you need to make some decisions as to how you want to do them.

There is a good article in the Knowledge base to get you started
Knowledge Base > Source Records

To give you an idea. I use Method 1 so when creating a citation for a Birth Certificate I would add a Source record for
Birth Certificate: Jane Mullins and add the scan of the Birth Certificate to that source.

[ColeValleyGirl]

You're about to get bombarded with information about sources, so I'm jumping in quick to suggest you read a couple of things (both of them in the Knowledge Base which is an excellent supplement to the user manual). Once you've read them, you'll be bound to have some more questions, but we'll keep quiet until you come back and ask -- it can be daunting to be bombarded with everything at once.

1. Knowledge Base > Recording Facts and Sources is a set of pages are working with Sources -- scan them, reread them, see if you can work out how Mum worked and what (if anything) you want to do differently.

2. Knowledge Base > Ancestral Sources describes a really useful tool that many (though not all of us) use to make recording facts linked to sources as consistent as possible.

[Kylie]

Thanks Jane & CVG

would this be almost correct?

sorry how messy it looks - just attempted to make sure you could see most windows.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Looking good, Kylie. You'll want to make sure you have a more specific title for the source because you'll have loads of marriage certificates. And type would be more typically something like 'Marriage' or 'Marriage Certificate' not 'Event' -- it's a type for the source document.

[tatewise]

Check out the Family Historian Sample Project that has several examples of Birth & Marriage Certificate sources.
See Knowledge Base > Family Historian Sample Project.

Strictly speaking your Text From Source shows a Marriage Index with which you can order a Certificate.
( I assume the process in Australia is similar to the UK. )

Once you get the Marriage Certificate it will provide many extra details apart from the bride & groom.
e.g. Date and place of marriage, full names, occupations, addresses, marital status, birth date & place, age, father's name, mother's maiden name of each the couple, the celebrant, witness names (generally two), etc.
That allows you to enter a great many more Facts and each one would cite that same Source record.

[Kylie]

Thanks again

I think I'm sorta following now, after looking at the sample.

I thought source is birth certificate. Once I created the "generic" source title 'birth cert' it could just then apply it to everyone & add the 'text from source' when the citation part comes up.

When you commented on I'd have lots of marriage certs I thought well sure but only from about 3 to 5 countries. But looking at the sample I see each Birth Cert, Army Serv source is for each individual!

Which at first I thought that's silly cause seriously going to have tens of thousands of people and there load of certs. Until I realised (I hope) the source can be used for other things, such as Birth Cert could be source not just for the child, but for their parents names, parents occupations. Or a death cert could be used for children/siblings & residence.

Or did I totally miss something?

[Valkrider]

Thanks again

Which at first I thought that's silly cause seriously going to have tens of thousands of people and there load of certs. Until I realised (I hope) the source can be used for other things, such as Birth Cert could be source not just for the child, but for their parents names, parents occupations. Or a death cert could be used for children/siblings & residence.

Or did I totally miss something?

No you haven't missed anything, that is correct. Many facts, as you have described, can be linked to one source.

[Jane]

Just to add, having a Source for each Certificate also makes it easier to unpick if you find a mistake.

A UK birth certificate can have 16 pieces of information so potentially 16 citations for each certificate.

[tatewise]

Yes Kylie, you have understood perfectly.

With so many Citations for a single Source document, anything in Where within Source or Text From Source would need to be repeated in every such Citation, which is bad practice and difficult to correct mistakes.
That Text From Source field is very different from the field with the same name within the Source record.

Don't worry about having LOTS of Source records (or Individual records or Media records, etc) as your PC and FH are good at handling large amounts of information.

One further tip ~ don't overlook Knowledge Base > Ancestral Sources which is a free companion program for capturing the most popular Source documents (Census, Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Death, Burial). It semi-automates the creation of multiple Facts and Citations linked to a Source record with a Text From Source transcript and Media image attached. It follows rule based templates that you can define to create all that in a repeatedly consistent format.

[Kylie]

Thank you every one for all the advice, links, you have no idea how much I appreciate all this to carry on what Mum started.

Now to attempt fixing 11k people in the db lol

[davidf]

Yes Kylie, you have understood perfectly.

With so many Citations for a single Source document, anything in Where within Source or Text From Source would need to be repeated in every such Citation, which is bad practice and difficult to correct mistakes.
That Text From Source field is very different from the field with the same name within the Source record.

If Kylie has a single source "Birth Certificate" - or even a limited number of them such as "UK Birth Certificate", "US Birth Certificate", "UK (Overseas) Birth Certificate", her mother may have been an extreme "lumper" and it may be best to live with that (rather than spend days delumping), but clearly understanding how an extreme lumper would handle such citations/sources.

When taking over a tree you need to get into the mind warp of the person who compiled it. It is possible that the approach taken to sources was to answer "how do I know this?", and in the case of births it might have been "I have the birth certificate", so the single source was seen as "a collection of birth certificates" - in the same way as you might have a source "Encyclopedia Britannica" (a bound collection of articles).

The where within source has to reference "where within" the source the information was found (the specific certificate - or Encyclopedia Entry) - and will naturally vary with individual. The citation needs to be of a form that unambiguously directs you to the right place (for a certificate in might be "Jane Smith b 12/5/1960 Margate", for an entry in an encyclopedia it could be the entry title).

The text from source in the citation (the bottom of the yellow right hand side of the properties box) should (if used) only be the specific text relevant to the person concerned - otherwise you will get the repetition that Mike warns of. I say "if used" because if you have attached an image of the certificate (preferably as a citation image rather than a fact image*), the information is easily visible - a formal transcript is only required if the text is required for printing/displaying in reports or diagrams.

Where a source is "indirect" (such as a specific birth certificate being the source for the occupation of the father), against the father's occupation fact, you might add the lumped source "Birth Certificates" and cite in where within source "Jane Smith b 12/5/1960 Margate: Father". In the text from source you can put the specific occupation description recorded on the certificate (e.g. "Loc Govt Officer").

If you have media (such as in the case of a birth certificate), you can link that media to every citation if desired (links are considered good practice because it avoid duplication of media and because it is a link that you pluck from a selection box rather than type in it is relative mistake proof). However you should as a minimum attach the media to the citation for the actual birth fact for the individual concerned.

* Citation media are often overlooked. They are accessed through the yellow right hand side of the property box, via the media icon in the toolbar across the middle; clicking this then gives you the option of first "citation media" or secondly "source media". If lumping you choose the first; if splitting you choose the later. Many prefer attaching media via one of these ways rather than attaching them directly to the fact (through the media icon in the left hand side of the property box); if a fact has multiple sources, media attached to the fact could refer to any of the sources; attached to the citation (or source if splitting) the media unambiguously relates to a specific source.

If that is what Kylie's mother was doing there may be little work required to "fix the people" in the database. Certainly a lot less than a complete delumping!

Just as you don't have to worry about having LOTS of Source records (or Individual records or Media records, etc) you don't have to worry about having lots of citations. The key is that the combination of source (and for lumped sources, citation) gets you back to where the information came from.

[Kylie]

Thanks Davidf for more claification, really appreciate it.

My mother was clearly a 'lumper' (especially if she was on a roll with newspaper articles) and I'm reasonably confident, since she had most of the hard copies in files, she didn't bother with correct sourcing within FH (too hard for her).

I've been playing the sample tree this morning by adding some of Grandfather & Great Grandfathers information, mainly Aust Electrol Roll & A newspaper article.

I see what you mean by the repetition of 'text from source' & it should only be for the person involved. Re: Electrol Rolls I did actually put my Grandfather, my mother & my uncle (together) for each of them - in my mind I was thinking come time it shows who was living with whom. (LIGHT BULB just went off - use "witness"). I did however change the "where in source" by changing their identification numbers to represent "where". When I did an individual narrative for my grandfather it showed up with the entire text for him, my uncle, my mum, which obviously took up nearly a page on its own due to the source being for residence & occupation. However I went into report options & unticked "include whole source" which tidied it up.

One thing I have looked at but I don't appear to be able to find it, is to change the text size of the "sources" at the end of the page. I'd rather it be much smaller so it doesn't take up as much space. I can see we can change fonts & sizes in general but I don't seem to be able to just change the source area.

Regarding my Great Grandfather & a newspaper article it included the text from source obviously at the bottom of the page - not what I wanted! So I figured that is more of a note and from what I think I've worked out it's handled a little differently. Put it this way I got the report to look how I wanted.

Also it looks like my Mum attempted to add some 'custom fact sets'. Land rates, accident, I've been through the fact sets, and used every drop down menu with the other drop down menu & can not find them. Any clues? I have managed to adjust the residence one to include the address. And recently noticed Occupation - when we've put Home Duties it reads "SoNso was a Home Duties in LaLaLand" more tweaking - housewife or single mother would probably be better.

Oh also Birth & Death facts don't seem to appear in the fact set list so I can edit them, currently when reading it's imported sentence it leaves out the address of where born/died. I'm also wanting to tidy those up.

But it's been an awesome learning curve these last 5 months (mum's been gone) and I know after watching her for 35 years I still have so much more to learn, I know she's doing the "family history dance" on a cloud right now

Thanks again every one for taking on my questions & allowing me to feel comfortable to ask some very, no doubt, newbie questions.

[tatewise]

You are correct that the Sources text style cannot be changed without affecting the main report text above.
Report > Options > Format > Section Data governs them both.

Use Tools > Fact Types and you should be able to find Birth, Death and those custom facts.

Select Fact Set: Standard and you should get:

StandardFacts.png (36.35 KiB) Viewed 3605 times

I suspect the custom facts have been imported from another program without Fact Type definitions.
So you need to tick Show Hidden to allow those <undefined> custom facts to be defined by clicking Edit:

UndefinedFacts.png (48.81 KiB) Viewed 3605 times

See Knowledge Base > Work with Fact Sets/Fact Types.

[davidf]

...
Also it looks like my Mum attempted to add some 'custom fact sets'. Land rates, accident, I've been through the fact sets, and used every drop down menu with the other drop down menu & can not find them. Any clues?
...

Custom Fact definitions are held outside the GEDCOM. If you have only inherited the gedcom and loaded it into a new copy of FH, you won't have the definitions.

If you have inherited your mother's computer and FH set up, the custom definitions will be there.

There are FH plug-ins for backing up sundry settings and definitions, which can then be exported from one computer and imported into another. This should restore your mother's definitions. I suspect others who have done this will post about the specifics of doing this. The custom facts are probably in a separate file but to ensure that they are properly read into your FH it is probably best not to fiddle with the file structure "under the hood".

Alternatively you can (re-)create the custom facts yourself. If you have an orphan custom fact such as "Accident", you can create that fact - be careful to create an "attribute" if the fact has a "value". Once you have done this your orphan custom facts will no longer be orphans, but...

You need to be careful that the fact sentence construction matches what your mother intended. For instance:

She may have put the place of the accident in the "Value" field and the hospital where treated in the Place and Address Fields. But has your new fact given a sentence implying that the Place and Address is where the accident occurred and the "Value" is the hospital where treated? If so, you either have to modify the sentence (via the Add New Fact dialog), or you have to go through all the facts swapping Values and Place/Addresses around. Modifying the sentence is probably easier!

[tatewise]

David, if you check Kylie's OP you will see she has 'inherited' her mum's customisations as the Reports had their own style.

[davidf]

Fair point, but if so, why the orphan facts?

[tatewise]

As I said in my earlier reply to Kylie, they were probably imported from another product.
Or maybe Kylie is not looking in the correct place ~ strangely she could not find Birth and Death.
Perhaps this latter dialogue can be deleted after you've read it?

[sheenash]

Sort of on the same topic--
I often use Descendants by Generation Narrative Report to send to distant relations and I read it through before converting to pdf and sending.
Then I find all my typos! Is it possible to edit these within the Narrative Report or do I have to go back to the record notes to correct, as I have been doing? I can't see any other option but maybe I have missed something?
Sheena

[ColeValleyGirl]

Sheena,

no you don't do the editing within the report -- you go back and fix it in the original data and then regenerate the report.

If you screen is large enough, you can tile the windows **inside** FH to have the report open alongside the Focus window or the Record Window and Property Box to make it easier to change from viewing the report to editing the data.