* [Wish List 629] Recognise DD-MMM-YYYY as date

[t4ms]

Apologies if this has already been listed: I've made as thorough search as I can (internet/knowledge base etc) but I can't find anything.

I am working with Genealogy SA databases which format dates as DD-MMM-YYYY. When inputted into FH7 14-Mar-1949 becomes frm 0014.

It would be lovely if FH7 could recognise the above format as a date.

Many thanks,

Tamara

[BillH]

Are you wanting FH to understand mm-dd-yyyy with the dashes?

If the dashes don't matter, in Tools > Preferences > General you can select your preferred date format. One of the options is dd mmm yyyy. Would this work for you? Just leave out the dashes.

If you need the dashes then I don't believe FH can handle that.

Bill

[tatewise]

The Tools > Preferences > General date preferences that Bill mentions only apply to displayed formats and not Date entry formats.

It does seem odd that the popular format of dd-mmm-yyyy is not recognisable by FH as a normal date.
FH seems to take the first two digits as a year then the hyphen as meaning 'from' with the rest ignored.

[BillH]

The Tools > Preferences > General date preferences that Bill mentions only apply to displayed formats and not Date entry formats.

Mike,

I'm not sure what you mean. I'm able to enter dates in the format DD MMM YYYY.

Bill

[t4ms]

The Tools > Preferences > General date preferences that Bill mentions only apply to displayed formats and not Date entry formats.

It does seem odd that the popular format of dd-mmm-yyyy is not recognisable by FH as a normal date.
FH seems to take the first two digits as a year then the hyphen as meaning 'from' with the rest ignored.

Hi Mike,

Yes, I was very surprised that FH does not recognise the dashes and it would be great if this could be incorporated in a future release.

[tatewise]

The Tools > Preferences > General date preferences that Bill mentions only apply to displayed formats and not Date entry formats.

Mike,

I'm not sure what you mean. I'm able to enter dates in the format DD MMM YYYY.

Bill

Yes, but entering Dates in DD MMM YYYY format is NOT affected by the Tools > Preferences > General settings.
You can change those settings to whatever you like and the DD MMM YYYY format is a valid Date entry format.
Also, the MMM DD, YYYY format (with or without comma) is a valid Date entry format regardless of the settings.
Other valid formats are DD/MMM/YYYY and DD/MM/YYYY but not DD-MMM-YYYY as reported by Tamara.
It seems that FH is taking DD- as a Date Range (i.e. from 00DD) and ignoring the rest.

[Mark1834]

I am working with Genealogy SA databases which format dates as DD-MMM-YYYY. When inputted into FH7 14-Mar-1949 becomes frm 0014.

That suggests to me that you are copying information directly from the database into FH, rather than keying it in yourself. Is that simple copy/paste, or via a separate tool such as ORA? Are there options to change the data format before FH sees it?

[AdrianBruce]

... Yes, I was very surprised that FH does not recognise the dashes and it would be great if this could be incorporated in a future release.

One might think it's easy to recognise 1-Feb-1878 as "1 Feb 1878" (no dashes in the actual date.)

However, 10-1800 is interpreted as "frm 0010 to 1800" - you do get a warning that "0010" is earlier than "100 AD", by the way. Seems to me, therefore, that the dash is initially recognised as indicating a range. Hence 14-Mar-1949 becoming "frm 0014" as the range element has taken precedence.

It could get a bit messy trying to accommodate dash as both a separator and a range indicator. I'm not saying dash as a separator is a bad idea - just that there may be complexities distinguishing it from dash as a range indicator.

[tatewise]

Adrian, yes, I explained that Date Range interpretation earlier, but as long as there is a Month name involved it should not get messy.
e.g. 10-Feb-1878 and Feb-1878 should be easy to differentiate from a range 10-1878 or 10 or -1878.

Thus formats dd-mmm-yyyy and mmm-yyyy or even mmm-dd-yyyy should be easily distinguished from yyyy-yyyy even in cases where dd and yyyy may be fewer or no digits.

[AdrianBruce]

... as long as there is a Month name involved it should not get messy. ...

That would seem a good starting point.

[ColeValleyGirl]

How many different input formats do we want to cater for? We already have 12 ways of entering 14 March 1949.

I think the complexities of NOT reserving '-' to denote a data range will be significant, whether or not a month is involved.

I'd like to hear the answer to Marks' question about how the data is being entered.

[BillH]

Yes, but entering Dates in DD MMM YYYY format is NOT affected by the Tools > Preferences > General settings.
You can change those settings to whatever you like and the DD MMM YYYY format is a valid Date entry format.
Also, the MMM DD, YYYY format (with or without comma) is a valid Date entry format regardless of the settings.
Other valid formats are DD/MMM/YYYY and DD/MM/YYYY but not DD-MMM-YYYY as reported by Tamara.
It seems that FH is taking DD- as a Date Range (i.e. from 00DD) and ignoring the rest.

I see. Thanks for the explanation.

Bill

[t4ms]

How many different input formats do we want to cater for? We already have 12 ways of entering 14 March 1949.

I think the complexities of NOT reserving '-' to denote a data range will be significant, whether or not a month is involved.

I'd like to hear the answer to Marks' question about how the data is being entered.

Adrian, yes, I explained that Date Range interpretation earlier, but as long as there is a Month name involved it should not get messy.
e.g. 10-Feb-1878 and Feb-1878 should be easy to differentiate from a range 10-1878 or 10 or -1878.

Thus formats dd-mmm-yyyy and mmm-yyyy or even mmm-dd-yyyy should be easily distinguished from yyyy-yyyy even in cases where dd and yyyy may be fewer or no digits.

I am working with thousands of entries using the online Genealogy SA databases which use the DD-MMM-YYYY format. In the past I have sucked it up and manually transcribed the date while being able to cut and paste all other text. I had no idea the wish list existed until recently and it would be lovely to be able to cut and paste the date into FH7 to reduce the likelihood of a transcription error.

As it isn't one or two entries (it really is thousands if not tens of thousands) it would be fantastic if my request could be considered.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Thus formats dd-mmm-yyyy and mmm-yyyy or even mmm-dd-yyyy should be easily distinguished from yyyy-yyyy even in cases where dd and yyyy may be fewer or no digits.

Equally easy to distinguish 1-Mar-1949-18-Mar-1949, I assume.

[ColeValleyGirl]

I am working with thousands of entries using the online Genealogy SA databases which use the DD-MMM-YYYY format. In the past I have sucked it up and manually transcribed the date while being able to cut and paste all other text. I had no idea the wish list existed until recently and it would be lovely to be able to cut and paste the date into FH7 to reduce the likelihood of a transcription error.

As it isn't one or two entries (it really is thousands if not tens of thousands) it would be fantastic if my request could be considered.

Thanks for the clarification.

I assume you've checked whether Genealogy SA can display dates in a different format; it's a pity they haven't used the date format preferred by Gedcom but wishes aren't horses, so beggars can't ride.

I wonder what other data sources have the same issue.

It might be possible (and quicker) to script something with a browser extension to do the conversion. What browser do you use?

[t4ms]

I am working with thousands of entries using the online Genealogy SA databases which use the DD-MMM-YYYY format. In the past I have sucked it up and manually transcribed the date while being able to cut and paste all other text. I had no idea the wish list existed until recently and it would be lovely to be able to cut and paste the date into FH7 to reduce the likelihood of a transcription error.

As it isn't one or two entries (it really is thousands if not tens of thousands) it would be fantastic if my request could be considered.

Thanks for the clarification.

I assume you've checked whether Genealogy SA can display dates in a different format; it's a pity they haven't used the date format preferred by Gedcom but wishes aren't horses, so beggars can't ride.

I wonder what other data sources have the same issue.

It might be possible (and quicker) to script something with a browser extension to do the conversion. What browser do you use?

Firefox.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Ignore this post if it makes your eyes glaze over!

Before I start reinventing the wheel, anyone out there using Tampermonkey that knows of a suitable script? I'm thinking something like:

Code: Select all

// Select the HTML element containing the date value
var dateElement = document.querySelector('#your-date-element-selector'); // Replace with the appropriate selector

// Get the current date value
var currentDate = dateElement.textContent.trim();

// Split the date into day, month, and year
var parts = currentDate.split('-');
var day = parts[0];
var month = parts[1];
var year = parts[2];

// Reformat the date
var formattedDate = day + ' ' + [month] + ' ' + year;

// Update the date element with the reformatted date
dateElement.textContent = formattedDate;

Things will be made a little more difficult as Genealogy SA has a joining fee, and full dates are only available to members, so the relevant selectors might be hard to pin down... Anyone looking on with the right skillset and access to Genealogy SA who's willing to help out?

[Mark1834]

This discussion is a little reminiscent of earlier threads about FH not supporting ISO standard yyyy-mm-dd format either.

I wonder if there is any mileage in requesting a user-configurable date option, analogous to Excel user-defined format? This would then be available both for output (charts and reports) and input (recognised as a date on input, both via the keyboard or reading an external file).

[JohnnyCee]

I am working with thousands of entries using the online Genealogy SA databases which use the DD-MMM-YYYY format. In the past I have sucked it up and manually transcribed the date while being able to cut and paste all other text. I had no idea the wish list existed until recently and it would be lovely to be able to cut and paste the date into FH7 to reduce the likelihood of a transcription error.

As it isn't one or two entries (it really is thousands if not tens of thousands) it would be fantastic if my request could be considered.

ORA, the Online Repository Assistant, may be able to help. It extracts Field data from online record displays and it has various functions for extracting and reformatting dates. Here's a link to a template demonstration page where the input value is "14-Mar-1949" and an ORA template reformats it to the "dd MMM yyyy" GEDCOM format.

https://www.ora-extension.com/en/templa ... 4-Mar-1949

Note that you would not use the demo page, and you would not copy/paste from the Genealogy SA page(s) to some other page. ORA would operate on the Genealogy SA page, detect the Field values, including dates, and you could configure a template to transform the date using a similar method to what the linked demo page uses.

I am not familiar with "online Genealogy SA databases" so an ORA solution may or may not work out-of-the-box. If you provide a URL to an example Genealogy SA page that has a date in dd-Mmm-yyyy format, I will check it out.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Johnny, I suspect it's this website which is paywalled.

[t4ms]

I assume you've checked whether Genealogy SA can display dates in a different format; it's a pity they haven't used the date format preferred by Gedcom but wishes aren't horses, so beggars can't ride.

I wonder what other data sources have the same issue.

As an aside, I've just checked with my old PAF5 program (developed by the LDS) and it does recognise DD-MMM-YYYY.

[Vyger]

As an aside, I've just checked with my old PAF5 program (developed by the LDS) and it does recognise DD-MMM-YYYY.

On the face of it this would appear to be a niche request from one user regarding the DD-MMM-YYYY date format on one genealogy data source (Genealogy SA databases).

However I can also confirm Rootsmagic version 7 & 9, Family Tree Maker 2019 and Family Tree Builder all accept the date format DD-MMM-YYYY including the hyphens essentially leaving FH out of step.

[Vyger]

Wish List item 629 has been created. Please vote for it to let Calico Pie know if you wish to see this feature introduced.