* Marriage record id

[Ron Melby]

I can find no way to insert the record id in the marriage box inside the focus window, is there a way to do it?

MARRIAGE.png (450.57 KiB) Viewed 416 times

[tatewise]

If you mean the Record Id of the Family Record where the Marriage Event is held, then that is not possible.

If you mean some other 'Record Id' then please explain.

[Ron Melby]

that is the one I mean. I will have to see if there is a wish list for that fh error.

[Gowermick]

Ron, I doubt it’s an error. That particular ID is produced by FH, just like the Individual Record ID, and is not amendable.
However there is nothing to stop you adding a custom-ID to the marriage

[KFN]

If you mean the Record Id of the Family Record where the Marriage Event is held, then that is not possible

To be specific, a "Record Id" (for example the "[2592]" displayed after the Knute Melby name) are more commonly know as either an XREF in GEDCOM or a "Foreign Key" in database terms, they are not considered data but under the control of the application and should never be modified by the user! This XREF/Key is used to point one record instance to another record instance. Consider them like a house address where you as the person living in the house can't change the address of the house because if you do your mail will never get to you, rather the only "entity" that can change the address of your house is the governing body (the PO or local government) in charge. The same therefore in the case of "Record Id" the governing body is the application not you.

However there is nothing to stop you adding a custom-ID to the marriage

Actually this would be a custom-id for the "family record" associated with the marriage of interest. I do this regularly for all individual, family and source records in my database. I create a unique custom-id for each new individual, family and source that gets added to the database so that I have something to relate back to any paper/electronic files I keep of these items (kind of like a book call number in a library). These "custom-id" values are also printed in any reports I produce so I can see immediately who they are when their name is not unique in my database.

[LornaCraig]

Ron, It looks as if you work with the Property box docked beside the Focus window, so if you just want to be able to see the Family ID number easily, click on the Marriage event line in the Focus window and that will display the Family record in the Property box, where the ID number appears in the Caption, after the record name.

Admittedly some Family records have longish names so the ID might not show unless you expand the width of the Property box, but you could customise the Caption so that the ID number comes before the record name.

[Ron Melby]

Lorna, that does not work with my long names.

to others, I do not want a custom id have enough stuff I cant keep track of and it would not correct the problem.

if the record ids for the individuals did not appear after the names in the focus window, would anyone consider that an error? if you had to go to another window or list from the focus window to find the record id of an individual would that be an error? FAM is a record and has a unique id why not show it in the marriage window in the middle of the focus window where the marriage is?

A program error and a logical error are a distinction without a difference.

[jelv]

What's wrong with Lorna's last suggestion?

Individual:

Individual.png (11.57 KiB) Viewed 290 times

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Family:

Family.png (8.38 KiB) Viewed 290 times

[Ron Melby]

dont have a configurable line there that I can find in 6.7.2 but still a pastiche, no reason it cant be in the family record in the focus window. So not good for me on two counts.

[jelv]

Can someone with FH 6 confirm whether configuring the Property Box captions is available.

If anything was done about this it wouldn't be in 6 so you might as well upgrade now.

[jelv]

Just done a search and found this 2017 post: viewtopic.php?p=80091#p80091

That won't have been FH 7.

[NickWalker]

The way I see it is that there are effectively 4 views of your data available in FH, not counting queries and reports. In the initial versions of Family Historian the records view was the main view and this allows access to all fields, all the data. However, this wasn't a very friendly interface for non-technical users. Some people instead used (and use) Family Historian with a tree view and each box in that view offers a summarised version of each individual (name, birth date, etc.). To get a more detailed and/or user-friendlier version of the data we use the properties window. However, the properties window didn't look as user friendly as some of the other competing family history products. Therefore, a later version of FH introduced the focus window as a much more attractive way to view the data, but it was only ever designed to give the key details. For example it doesn't show census, residence, occupation, etc. It enables the user to 'focus' on the key information. Adding things like family record IDs to the focus window would just not really fit in with the concept and reason for it. If the focus window starts to get cluttered up with more information then it will look more and more like the properties dialog!

[LornaCraig]

I agree with Nick. The Focus window was introduced to provide an uncluttered summary. In fact with the default settings it doesn’t even include the Individual IDs, although these can be added.

However, on a related issue, CP do seem strangely reluctant to make new users even aware of the existence of Family records. In the Preferences for the Records window the Families tab is set to ‘Always hide’ by default. One result of this is that when (as often happens) a user has got in a muddle by merging some individual records without merging their Family records, we sometimes have to explain how to find the list of Family records by using Tools > Preferences > Records window and changing the default setting. I think CP have been asked about this in the past and the reply has been that they don’t want to confuse new users by making them aware of Family records. In fact the confusion often arises because they are not aware of them!

I don’t think there is much chance of CP including the Family record ID in the Focus window unless they also make the Families tab of the Records window show by default.