* Marriage Witnesses

[Johnr65]

Is it possible to bring up the 'Witness' names rather than 'Best Man' as I've never yet found a best man but a lot of witnesses?

[jbtapscott]

In the AS Marriages / Further Info tab there is a dropdown list against Association - select Witness from that list. If it's not in the list (unlikely!), then hit the Edit option to add it

[Johnr65]

Yes I know it's in the drop down list but I'd like witness to be the 1st one not best man?

[Jane]

According to the AS Help

Witness Role: The witness role was first introduced in version 6 of Family Historian specifically as a method to associate individuals with a fact. Therefore this is almost certainly the best method to use if you have Family Historian 6 and is the default scheme used in Ancestral Sources. The description will be the name of the witness role in Family Historian and care should be taken that they match, e.g. Witness, Godparent, Minister, Priest, Rabbi, Mourner, Bridesmaid, Best Man. The note is probably best left blank for the template.

So I suspect that if you edit the Witness to have a title of _Witness it will appear at the top of the list, but as the description is used for the match the Witness role should be created OK, I have not tested the theory though.

[tatewise]

I agree with Jane, that will put _Witnesses top of the drop-list, but the Witness Role will be just Witness.
i.e.
In the current Association drop-list select Witnesses and then click the Edit... link.
In the Associated Individual Types: Marriage dialogue, change the Title from Witnesses to _Witnesses then click the Save button and the Close button.

[Johnr65]

Yes, that workaround seems to be OK thank you.

[victor]

I will have to remember to do this next time I use it. Itis rare for anybody to know who the best man is and I never understood why that was a default.

If I recall correctly the burial details have a witness drop down menu. How many people know the witness names?

Victor

[Valkrider]

I just used the edit button to remove all except Witness. Should I find another on an entry I will happily use edit to add the new role at that time and then remove it again after that use.

[tatewise]

Best Man is only the 'default' because the drop-list is in alphabetical order as is often the case with custom lists.

The order can be changed simply by editing the title of each entry, without any side-effects.
e.g.
Add a digit or letter prefix to each entry to determine their order.

[Valkrider]

That's a work around though Mike as is mine BUT I have yet to come across anything other than Witness

[Gardengirl]

I will have to remember to do this next time I use it. Itis rare for anybody to know who the best man is and I never understood why that was a default.

If I recall correctly the burial details have a witness drop down menu. How many people know the witness names?

Victor

I’m very new to using Family Historian but I have used those other witness categories for people that I have found in newspaper write ups of weddings and funerals where there is often detail about guests, bridesmaid, mourners etc

[NickWalker]

I will have to remember to do this next time I use it. Itis rare for anybody to know who the best man is and I never understood why that was a default.

If I recall correctly the burial details have a witness drop down menu. How many people know the witness names?

The list in AS just mimics the same list in Family Historian and is indeed in alphabetical order. If you were adding details of burials or cremations that you've been to then you could record the mourners, priest, etc. Indeed I've seen reports in newpapers for family burials in the 40s and 50s that list the people who attended.

Removing some of the associated individual types or renaming them as Jane and Mike suggest both work. It's not a big deal I think. I've spent a lifetime being at the end of lists and registers!

[Johnr65]

Thank you Mike I think I've found the relevant place.

[Johnr65]

Since my computer crashed completely, I've been trying to catch up on my plug in information. I've added _Witness to the Marriage template but it only appears in the Generic marriage not in the parish marriages 1837-? Maybe you can tell me where I'm going wrong?

[tatewise]

You need to explain in more detail exactly what you have changed and what does not work.

I thought it was the list of Association: types on the Further Info tab that you wanted to change as shown below.
So that instead of Best man being top of the list, _Witnesses was top of the list and thus the default.

You must then use Tools > Autotext Template Editor... and select each Template in turn, in which the script must be changed from ASSOCLIST[Witnesses] to ASSOCLIST[_Witnesses] wherever necessary.

AssociationWitnesses.png (54.31 KiB) Viewed 3985 times

[Johnr65]

Yes Mike it was exactly that and although I found an AS options back up in my documents, it was obviously ouit of date regarding the addition of _Witnesses. I tried to add them into the Marriage lists for Parish Registers England 1837- but it appears that it hasn't worked for me and I can only see the Witnesses on the Generic Marriage?
I've got several Marriage entries on the template list that say either custom or built in-should I delete these and try again?

[tatewise]

Have you changed the Further Info tab list of Association: types to use _Witnesses instead of Witnesses as highlighted in my screenshot yesterday?

Use Tools > Autotext Template Editor... and select each Template in turn, in which the script must be changed from ASSOCLIST[Witnesses] to ASSOCLIST[_Witnesses] wherever necessary as highlighted in the screenshot below.
When you edit and save a built-in template it becomes a custom template. You must all the templates you use.

AS-Autotext.png (122.04 KiB) Viewed 3897 times

[Johnr65]

There is such a mess in the Marriage templates that I wonder if it would be best to delete AS altogether and reinstall it and then amend it afresh?

[tatewise]

You said "Since my computer crashed completely..." so I presumed you had to reinstall everything including FH and AS.

[Johnr65]

Yes the motherboard ceased working completely. I had no trouble reinstalling FH7 but the Settings Restore for it and AS didn't work very well and especially AS as I must have forgotten to back up the _Witness Settings and used a previous back up.

[NickWalker]

Ancestral Sources usually saves templates into a folder called 'Ancestral Sources' in your Documents folder (and then in a sub-folder canned Settings). So if you backed up the documents from your previous computer you would find your templates in there. There are 4 settings files:

Associated - this holds the templates for 'Associated Individuals' (witnesses, etc.)
AutoText - this holds the auto text templates. In Ancestral Sources v7.3 this will only hold any 'custom templates' (i.e. those you have edited). The 'built in' templates are stored in the AS installation folder (and shouldn't be tampered with).
Settings - (not really well named for historical reasons!) but this holds the census templates for the various countries and years.
SourceTemplate - used to record information related to source templates for users of FH v7 who use source templates rather than generic sources.

So if you wanted to you could replace those files on your new computer with the ones from your previous computer.

There is such a mess in the Marriage templates that I wonder if it would be best to delete AS altogether and reinstall it and then amend it afresh?

I wonder what you mean by 'such a mess'. You will see a list of templates that arrive with Ancestral Sources. There are 16 of these for Marriages. 8 of them will begin with [R] - these are the 'rich text' templates introduced by FH v7 that allow formatting, colours, fonts, etc. The other 8 are the 'plain text' (just text no formatting) versions. If you have edited a template you will then see two versions with '[Built-in]' and '[Custom]' at the end of the name to distinguish between the original version and your edited version.

[Johnr65]

I have 16 Marriages with R against them which are 8 of each Custom and Built In but AS isn't picking up the ones with _Witness in them but just recording no Witnesses.
Should I delete the 8 original custom ones and retain my 8 Built in ones?

[NickWalker]

It's a bit difficult to know which stage of the process you're failing to carry out correctly.

I'm assuming you've done this step described by Mike Tate much earlier in this thread:

In the current Association drop-list select Witnesses and then click the Edit... link.
In the Associated Individual Types: Marriage dialogue, change the Title from Witnesses to _Witnesses then click the Save button and the Close button.

Some of the built in templates for Marriages include witnesses in the auto-text and these refer to the 'associated individuals' type called 'Witnesses'. For example the 'Marriage Certificate 1837- (England/Wales)' includes this:
in the Presence of us, {ASSOCLIST[Witnesses].COMMA}
So I assume you've edited this template, thus making a custom version of the Marriage Certificate 1837-(England/Wales), and changed the reference to this:
in the Presence of us, {ASSOCLIST[_Witnesses].COMMA}

Should I delete the 8 original custom ones and retain my 8 Built in ones?

You're going to need custom ones so deleting them doesn't make sense (unless you've made mistakes in them). You can't delete the built in ones, but you can hide them if you've got customised versions... I'd suggest going into the AS Options (under the Tools menu) and on the 'general settings - source text' page tick the option 'Hide built-in if modified' so you will then only see your modified templates when you select a template on the main screen.

[Johnr65]

I did as you suggested by hiding built in modified, Nick, but the result was the same as before. The only marriage record that shows the _Witnesses is the R Generic one, none iof the other Parish Register records showed any witness names?
Either I'll have to just use the R Generic for all marriages or?

[NickWalker]

I did as you suggested by hiding built in modified, Nick, but the result was the same as before. The only marriage record that shows the _Witnesses is the R Generic one, none iof the other Parish Register records showed any witness names?
Either I'll have to just use the R Generic for all marriages or?

It's difficult to know what you're doing wrong without you actually showing screenshots or other details that might give us some clues... Can you reply to this post and paste in the autotext template you've edited to include _Witnesses but isn't showing the witnesses?

Cheers

Nick