* Witness notes

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mezentia
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Witness notes

Post by mezentia »

I've been taking advantage of the reduction in the prices for getting copies of wills from the Probate Registry, and the many wills for Liecestershire folks that are available online, to add a lot of information from the wills to my tree. I've found it useful to add notes to the witness role for some executors and beneficiaries to explain or comment on their relationship to the person whose will I'm recording, or the implications of the bequest. However, I can't see how to get the individual witness's notes to appear in an individual's narrative report. The report will say thay they were, for example, a beneficiary, but no more. I've hunted through report options, but can't find any option to include witness notes in the report. Can anyone shed a little light on how to get witness note to appear?

I thought I might need to amend the sentence template for Will, but can't identify which is the data reference to include. I thought it might be one of these:

%FACT._SHAR[1].NOTE2% or
%FACT._SHAR[1]>NOTE2[1]%

but neither seem to work.
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Re: Witness notes

Post by AdrianBruce »

I don't use witness roles for beneficiaries but do for executors, driven from the Probate event of the principal (i.e. the deceased testator). So this might help...
Probate1.jpg
Probate1.jpg (57.44 KiB) Viewed 12110 times
The first image shows my Fact Definition for Probate. Note that I don't include the Note in the Narrative Sentence - I just add it in by using the report settings. I only have one role - for executors. Most of the sentence (which appears in the Narrative Report for the Principal's Probate Event) is obvious, I think. The complexity there comes in the bit reading:
A Grant of {=TextIf(Exists(%FACT.TYPE%),%FACT.TYPE%, "Probate")} for {individual's} estate
That's "just" a condition to output whether it's a will, an admon or an admon with will attached. I have to go into the All tab for the probate event and add a Descriptor for the type of grant - the values being "Probate" (also the default if omitted), "Administration" or "Administration (with Will Attached)". The values appear as a reminder in the Auto-Create Note for the Probate event.

If I click "Roles..." and go into the Witness Role dialog box on the Fact Definition, then select the Executor Role and Edit, I see the 2nd image:
Probate2.jpg
Probate2.jpg (32.62 KiB) Viewed 12110 times
This defines the sentence that appears in the Witnesses' Narrative Report. The bits that you are interested in are the two final elements:
{note} {%FACT._SHAR[1].NOTE2%}
The first {note} prints a copy of the note that comes from the Principal's Probate event into the Witnesses' Narrative Report.

The second {%FACT._SHAR[1].NOTE2%} prints a copy of the Note against the Witness Details into the Witnesses' Narrative Report. I do not know how to print that in the Principal's Narrative Report - I'd put any such text in with the note against the Probate event of the Principal.

Hope this helps
Adrian
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mezentia
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Re: Witness notes

Post by mezentia »

Thanks Adrian.

I tried your suggestion, but it doesn't work, I'm afraid.

I use the Will fact to record the creation of a will for an individual, and if there's anything of note in the will as regards that individual I will place a comment in a note attached to that fact. That appears on the individual's narrative report as you would expect.

The problem comes when I add witnesses to the Will fact to identify execurors and beneficiaries, for example

[img
Will note.JPG
Will note.JPG (36.61 KiB) Viewed 12077 times
][/img]

In this instance, Elizabeth has been singled out for a specific legacy in a codicil, and it is this note that I would like to have appear in her narrative report following the fact that she was a beneficiary in her father's will. The problem is to identify exactly which data reference applies to the note against the witness role.
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Re: Witness notes

Post by AdrianBruce »

Well, I can only say that it works for me. The reference is {%FACT._SHAR[1].NOTE2%}

If that's the screen shot of "Edit Witness Details", then what's the screen shot of the screen above look like? It should have the Witness Sentence in it - except presumably it doesn't work for you.

And then what does a screen shot of the template for the Witness Sentence look like? It may be that there's a flaw in there that's stopping it appearing correctly - I know I've double bracketed things (for instance) in the past and it's failed to work...
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mezentia
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Re: Witness notes

Post by mezentia »

Cracked it - well almost!

Selecting Will from the Fact Type and clicking Edit brings up the Fact Definition dialogue box.

Select Roles... then select Benificiary from the list that is displayed, and click on Edit

The Edit Role dialogue box is displayed with the sentence template:

{individual} was named as a beneficiary in the will of {principal} {date} {place} <together with {other=beneficiary}>

To get the individual witness' note displayed, I then added

<para>{%CUR~WITN.NOTE2%}

to the end of the template.

Initial euphoria then dampened severely as I noticed that only the first 150 charaters of the note are displayed, followed by "..." !!

I thought Note fields were not limited in length, and though I'm not an expert at unpicking the GEDCOM definition for Note Structure, the definition seems to allow an unlimited number of lines? The field where I enter the note does not place any restriction on the amount I type, so the implication there is that the field is of variable length. The raw .ged file shows that the complete content of the beneficiary's note is stored in the file in one NOTE and one CONC line. The ... at the end of the truncated note in the narrative report seems to indicate that the truncation is by design. If so, why? Is this a bug?

I realise that there is a separate fact Beneficiary in Will, but I had hoped to avoid using that as I would have liked to keep all the comments and annotations in the one place, that is the Will fact for the deceased person and the associated Witness roles.
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Re: Witness notes

Post by AdrianBruce »

Aaaagh - been there. I have a note from Mike Tate that
The general rule is that if you use a Data Reference involving NOTE2 then it gets truncated with an ellipsis.
It's really a software design problem. There is a solution that is complex - I also was given one that was easy for my particular case - which may not match yours. Have a look at https://www.fhug.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=90659 and good luck

(I'll probably find that my probate witness sentence will truncate after 150 as well....)

PS - I think my set-up was different from yours so may not help that much...
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Re: Witness notes

Post by AdrianBruce »

Further, Mezentia, I owe you an apology - I just found that my set-up that I recommended does not work when attempting to print witness notes against two witnesses - it only prints the first witness note against both witnesses. My data hadn't included 2 witness notes before.
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mezentia
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Re: Witness notes

Post by mezentia »

Hello Adrian

Thanks for your help, it is appreciated.

Sadly, your solution doesn't work for me; I seem to have fallen foul of FH's strange handling of NOTE2%.

I've had a look at Mike's workaround, but as I've never embedded an expression within a sentence template, I'm now a little puzzled as how best to proceed. I could, of course, add all the notes for each witness into the single note to the Will, but that seems rather a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and will result in a lot of repetition in narrative reports when I'm trying to make an observation that is relevent to only a single individual.

Has this behaviour been reported to Calico Pie as a bug, perchance?
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Re: Witness notes

Post by AdrianBruce »

I'm sure that I reported the odd behaviour of NOTE2 with Mike's suggestion that qualifiers be introduced that would output the full text, given that its truncation behaviour like this in a report is stupid.
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Re: Witness notes

Post by AdrianBruce »

:cry:
I managed to wrap the Witness Note in the =Text function but it still truncates. Mike's solutions in https://www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?i ... like_notes seem to involve either
=GetParagraph (which gets just one paragraph so needs multiple calls, one for each paragraph in the Witness Note - not good if you've no idea how many you've got) or
=GetLabelledText (which requires a label in your witness note).

Oh dear....
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Re: Witness notes

Post by tatewise »

Sorry, I have been away. This answer applies to both of you.
See how_to:display_long_text_like_notes|> Display long text such as Notes.
So for 1st paragraph you need:
{=GetParagraph(%CUR~WITN.NOTE2%,1)}
Then for 2nd paragraph you need:
{=GetParagraph(%CUR~WITN.NOTE2%,2)}
That must be repeated for as many paragraphs as may exist in your Note field.

Include a space character between each of the above codes to string the paragraphs together.

If you want to retain the paragraph line break structure then use conditional < brackets > and <br> codes:
<<br>{=GetParagraph(%CUR~WITN.NOTE2%,1)}><<br>{=GetParagraph(%CUR~WITN.NOTE2%,2)}>

Don't worry about the cases where there are fewer Note paragraphs than Template codes, because if there is no nth paragraph nothing will appear in the Narrative Sentence.

BTW: =GetLabelledText(...) does not help as labelled text is still limited to one paragraph.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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Re: Witness notes

Post by AdrianBruce »

Thanks Mike. I had checked on my notes from my previous encounter with the truncating NOTE2 - I wasn't clear if GetParagraph and GetLabelledText were the only known means of circumventing the truncation or simply the most appropriate for my previous circumstances. Sounds like they are the only known means... (I couldn't actually check my own templates because it turned out that, in the end, for my particular issue - not a witness sentence - I didn't need {%FACT.NOTE2[1]%} - I was going the long way round to get that item and could have used {note} - so I did).
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Re: Witness notes

Post by tatewise »

Interestingly, {note} does not suffer the truncation and ellipsis that applies to {%FACT.NOTE2[1]%}.
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Re: Witness notes

Post by AdrianBruce »

No thank goodness, else I'd be sunk given the length of my notes!
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Re: Witness notes

Post by mezentia »

Adrian, Mike

Thanks to you both for your help, I now have my beneficiary witness notes appearing just as I want them. :)
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Re: Witness notes

Post by Hanning »

Thank you for this dicussion - I too use Witness Notes extensively and while I don't often print, I do value the sentences appearing in the Property Window when the Witnessed fact is selected. As the discussion started with Wills, you may be interested to know that I have also created a custom Wills/Inventory tab which shows the will details clearly. I was finding it unwieldy to have to go to the citation and then double click on the Text From Source to see all the information.
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Re: Witness notes

Post by tatewise »

You may be interested in fhugdownloads:contents:property_box_tabs_military_census_wills|> Downloads and Links > Property Box Tab ~ Military & Census & Wills.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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mezentia
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Re: Witness notes

Post by mezentia »

The Will tab looks good, but I would like to see a lot more included, for example, the bequests to beneficiaries, the beneficiaries' addresses where these are specified (and one would assume providing a residence fact for the date that the will was written). I also have quite a few wills with more than 8 beneficiaries! An address for where the deceased actually died in addition to the place is needed as the grant often indicates this. I think this might mean splitting the tab into two with a separate tab for the beneficiary details. A means of attaching an image would also be useful, be this an actual image, a PDF version, or even a transcription. (Can't wait for V7 to arrive!)
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Re: Witness notes

Post by Julia V »

Hi, I've also got the same problem as mezentia with Wills and beneficiaries. Since the price of wills dropped to £1.50 each I have purchased quite a lot and been loading basic details into FH. I record witnesses and realised that beneficiaries is a rich seam of information, so am now recording them as well, but would like both to appear in the individual summary report. Both for the testator of the will, and the beneficiary. Several of my wills have many beneficiaries.
I'm currently running v 6, is this dealt with in v7.0 please?
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Re: Witness notes

Post by tatewise »

Yes, FH v7 optionally includes Witnessed Facts in all relevant Reports.

You can, of course, customise the Wills custom tab, but there are limitations.
Only details from the current record can be included and not any linked record.
So that rules out Media and data from the Beneficiary Individual's record.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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Re: Witness notes

Post by Julia V »

Thanks Mike for your prompt reply. Looks like another good reason to purchase v7.0 if Santa doesn't bring one in his sack!

Merry Christmas!
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