* Census templates

[phende]

I am only just finding my way through this aspect of AS but am I correct in thinking that the templates apply to the English census forms only? For instance, in 1841, the options for the Born in County column will differ. Y(es) means born in the county, and that will apply throughout the UK, but N(o) means born in the country and that will differ depending on where the census is. Similarly, the other UK countries options, E, I, S, W will differ in different countries. Don't we need to have a different template for each country, with each country shown in the drop-down?

Also, is the Ref ID exactly the same for each country for each year? Scottish references appear to be of the form
Census - Year - Parish No - Folio No - Page No

Peter

ID:4516

[nsw]

All you're doing when you fill in the 'Born in County' column is entering what it says on the census form - that particular field isn't saved anywhere in your file unless you use Auto text to create a census transcript. You don't have to select an option from the list, you can type in anything you like into the cell.

Ancestral Sources doesn't attempt to fill in this value for you so it doesn't matter which county or country you're in.

I hadn't thought about the fact that other countries would have E as an option. You can edit the census templates as you decide so you could add E to the drop down list for example if you want to.

Regarding the census reference, you could change the option to stop AS displaying the start of the reference number (Tools->Options->Census Settings->Automatically start census reference). Alternatively you could edit the templates.

If you want to create a set of Scottish, Welsh, etc. census templates then that would be great - they could be exported and shared via this site. However, afaik the differences between them are fairly minimal so whether it is really worth bothering I don't know.

Cheers

Nick

[phende]

I'll see if my old brain can cope with creating a Scottish template at least.

I would add that I do not normally have a census image as most of the data I have gathered comes either from FreeCEN or Ancestry, both of which are transcripts of the data. For Scottish censuses, you only get the census image from Scotland's People, and that costs. So the Text from Source becomes the image in my file, in effect, and the opportunity to create an exact copy has attractions.

Peter

[nsw]

Understood and you should certainly have no problem creating an exact copy even with the templates as supplied.

[phende]

I've had a go at creating a Scottish template for 1841. I can't accomplish my target of reproducing the form exactly because several columns are sub-divided and AS can't cater for that. (And it certainly isn't worth the trouble to make it do that!) I can get the important details in but there is a fairly serious problem in creating a new template. If you use the generic UK template, AS will recognise that a person already has a census entry for that year. (I note the thread asking for the facility to replace old entries.) When you use a new template, AS no longer recognises that there is an existing entry. Or should the title (or something) be formatted in a particular way to trigger the warning?

[nsw]

Peter Henderson said:
I've had a go at creating a Scottish template for 1841. I can't accomplish my target of reproducing the form exactly because several columns are sub-divided and AS can't cater for that. (And it certainly isn't worth the trouble to make it do that!).

Pretty much every existing template has this issue, its not something that I think would be desirable anyway. Hopefully you found it fairly easy to create the Scottish templates by copying and pasting from UK templates.

By the way, if you're going to use the Census Date Check or Census Flag Check features then you'll need to remove the Scottish place endings from the 'Countries and Places' list and add them to Scotland.

I can get the important details in but there is a fairly serious problem in creating a new template. If you use the generic UK template, AS will recognise that a person already has a census entry for that year. (I note the thread asking for the facility to replace old entries.) When you use a new template, AS no longer recognises that there is an existing entry. Or should the title (or something) be formatted in a particular way to trigger the warning?

Yes actually it is looking for a census date (rather than year) which matches, rather than the year so if your scottish dates are the same as the dates in your file then you should get the message. I think it would probably be better if it was just the year that was matched rather than the date and I'll add that to my 'to do' list. I wouldn't class it as a 'fairly serious problem' though. It doesn't stop you entering data and you can see at a glance anyway from the census list on the right whether the person already has a census entry for that year. Personally despite creating 700+ census entries over the years, I can't remember a situation where this warning would have appeared except where I was expecting it (apart from a couple of ancestors who appear in the same census twice).

Thanks for pointing this out

Nick

[phende]

Thanks, Nick. I agree that 'fairly serious' was OTT - and it was my fault that I didn't get the warning message. I had the census date wrong. D'oh!

Peter

[nsw]

Ah OK yes I did wonder as I thought the dates were the same. Still I think it ought to warn if any census exists for the same year so I'll change that at some point.

Best wishes

Nick