* Change Any Fact Tag question

[BillH]

Mike,

Could the Change Any Fact Tag plugin be modified to have an option to change the only the tag on a fact which is selected on the fact tab of a property box?

I find that I sometimes use the wrong fact type on some fact occurrences and would like to modify them, but not all occurrences of the fact type. Also, sometimes I add a new fact type and would like to change some existing occurrences of a different fact type to the new fact type, but again not all occurrences of that fact type.

I know I can go through the fact occurrences one at a time and select which ones to change, but in my current situation I have over 500 occurrences and only need to change about 50 of them.

Not meaning to cause you a lot of work, just wondered if that type of change could be made without too much trouble. If it is a lot of work I'll just wade through all of them in the plugin as it stands.

Thanks,
Bill

[tatewise]

It is not possible from a Plugin to determine anything selected except whole records.

The Plugin already has several filters to narrow things down considerably.
Try the Records: Pick option and choose the Individual records that have the Fact to be changed.
It is sometimes easiest to add the required records to a Named List beforehand and choose that list via the Select Records dialogue in the Plugin after enabling the Records: Pick option.

If the Facts to be changed all have similar Value, Date or Place values then use those filters too.
Optionally, they can use Lua Pattern matching.

[BillH]

Mike,

I didn't realize about the restriction on selecting whole records (by this I assume you mean all records for an individual). My problem is that for any given individual I don't want to change all occurrences of the fact type. For this same reason I can't add the individual to a named list.

Unfortunately the value, date, and places are not similar from one occurrence to the next. There is really nothing very similar about the occurrences of the fact other than that they all have the same fact type.

Oh well. It was worth asking.

Thanks,
Bill

[tatewise]

In my terminology, records are what FH identifies with different tabs in its Records Window.
All subsidiary structures and values I call fields within a record and is consistent with GEDCOM.

I am still not clear about what you were hoping for.

If you hope to select one Fact for change, then that only relates to one Individual record.
So, in the Plugin use Record: Pick to select that Individual record.
Optionally, select any Value, Date, Place text unique to that Fact versus others with same tag.
Select the Source Tag Name and perhaps only one Fact, or at most a few Facts, will get presented for confirmation.

I don't understand how you could select multiple Facts?
You mentioned selecting 50 out of 500, but FH has no mechanism for doing that.

[BillH]

Sorry I didn't explain myself very well.

In a different case than the one I was talking about in my original post, I have 200 Emigration facts. For any given individual I might have more than one Emigration fact. Some of these I would like to convert to Departure facts. What I was hoping to do was to be able to go to the Facts tab, select an Emigration fact, and convert the selected one to be a Departure fact.

I probably have maybe 100 total Emigration facts that I want to convert to be Departure facts as they were not really emigrating (I just used that fact type because I hadn't yet defined my Departure fact type.

I didn't actually say I wanted to select 50 out of 500. I just meant that I have about 50 out of 500 facts of that fact type that I want to convert to a different fact type. I didn't want to be able to select multiple facts at the same time, I just wanted to work on one fact at a time rather than all facts for a given fact type.

Bill

[tatewise]

So those 100 Emigration facts are associated with at most 100 Individual records.
I imagine that most of those Individual records have only one Emigration fact.
A few may have multiple Emigration facts.

So add those 100 (or fewer) Individual records to a Named List.
Run the Plugin and use Record: Pick to select that Named List.
Then only those few cases where multiple Emigration facts exist for one Individual will need to be skipped.
There should be significantly less than 200 confirmations to contend with.

Moving to a record, selecting a Fact, running Plugin, moving to the next record, selecting its Fact, running Plugin, and so on, is no less tedious than accepting or skipping confirmations within the Plugin for a chosen subset of Individual records.

[BillH]

Actually quite a few do have more than one emigration fact so the named list won't help all that much. I would have to skip a lot of them and then do it manually by adding the Departure fact, adding all the citations, copying over the notes to the Departure fact, and then delete the Emigration fact.

For my other case most of the 500 facts are ones where any given individual has multiples.

That is why the wishful thinking that maybe the plugin could help. I wasn't going to do it all at once, but rather one at a time as I came across them.

I do appreciate your taking the time to think up alternative methods. I think I will just have to bite the bullet and do it manually.

Thanks,
Bill

[tatewise]

I don't understand your point about "skip a lot of them and then do it manually".
The ones you skip don't get changed, but the ones you accept do change and thus all the Citations & Notes automatically migrate to the Departure fact, which is the whole purpose of the Plugin.

If you are only doing them "one at a time as I came across them" then my suggestion should work quite well.
Use Record: Pick for the single Individual record (the current record is preselected so just click OK).
Set up the Emigration to Departure change.
Then skip past the Emigration facts you don't want to change, accept the one you do want to change, repeat if another change needed, but if no more then skip the rest.
I suspect that is easier than manually adding the Departure fact copying over all the subfields, taking care not to forget one, and then deleting the Emigration fact.

[BillH]

Mike,

Yes, this will work very well. Thanks for continuing to explain it to me. I finally understand what you saying.

This will be much easier than adding the Departure and deleting the Emigration.

Thanks!
Bill

[tatewise]

Phew! Glad we got there in the end.
I was beginning to wonder if I'd misconstrued the scenario completely.

[BillH]

As someone once said "I can explain it to you, but I can't make you understand". I was just having another senior moment. They come more and more frequently it seems.

Thanks again,
Bill