Filter Date Range

[Hong Kong Chevy 0]

Am I missing something, or is there a bunch of bugs in the filter feature?

 

 

1. One problem is in filtering dates. I often want to do something like:

Any Event... Year > 1870 AND

Any Event... Year < 1881 AND

(additional filters)

 

However, this gives me someone who died in 1621 and someone else who was born in 1922.

 

What I suspect is happening is that there are some events which are undated, such as number of children, (which aren't really necessarily associated with a date). When I add a date to the undated events and refilter, this extraneous person is excluded from the filter. Now, there are times one might want this, but of course the right way would be to allow comparisons to blank data (I think TMG calls this 0, and does this already) and also allow more sophisticated comparisons--in particular allowing more than one condition on the same piece of data. Then one could say,

 

(Any Event... Year > 1870 OR

... Year is empty ) AND

(Any Event... Year < 1881 OR

... Year is empty ) AND

(additional filters)

 

2. Another minor but very annoying issue is that if you have a filter and change certain fields, such as name or birth date, the filter rebuilds (slowly) and repositions the current person to be the first person on the filtered list. So if you are adding a number of pieces of data to the individual, you have to find that individual several times after adding each piece of information.

 

Now, I have found that _usually_ TMG remembers who the last person was, and so you can get back by hitting the Last button, which is better than having to say pull up the picklist. Occasionally it does not remember--I haven't figured out why sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. I can understand that it might have to recalculate the filtered list (although it seems it could be smarter about it, since usually only one person needs to be refiltered). But it should be simple enough to restore the person with the same id when it is through.

 

It is much easier to add these if one removes the filter first, but that means restoring the filter again which is also not ideal.

 

Incidentally, in the example above (in issue 1 with the dates), the filtered list is not rebuilt automatically, but one has to refilter explicitly, so this is inconsistent.

 

3. Occasionally, after rebuilding, the filtered list gets "stuck" with someone other than the one that should be first at the top of the list. I have found that one can restore this by changing the sort order and then changing it back, but it is disconcerting.

 

4. I have also had some cryptic error messages after filtering, after which I could not pick anyone from the filtered list at all. I had to restart TMG. Unfortunately I did not write down the message.

[Virginia Blakelock 0]

4. I have also had some cryptic error messages after filtering, after which I could not pick anyone from the filtered list at all. I had to restart TMG. Unfortunately I did not write down the message

.

 

Error messages are saved in the TMG Logs folder - by default in Users/(username)/Documents/The Master Genealogist v7. The error messages are dated and time-stamped.

 

Virginia

[Terry Reigel 0]

1. One problem is in filtering dates. I often want to do something like:

Any Event... Year > 1870 AND

Any Event... Year

(additional filters)

 

However, this gives me someone who died in 1621 and someone else who was born in 1922.

 

What I suspect is happening is that there are some events which are undated, such as number of children, (which aren't really necessarily associated with a date). When I add a date to the undated events and refilter, this extraneous person is excluded from the filter. Now, there are times one might want this, but of course the right way would be to allow comparisons to blank data (I think TMG calls this 0, and does this already) and also allow more sophisticated comparisons--in particular allowing more than one condition on the same piece of data. Then one could say,

 

(Any Event... Year > 1870 OR

... Year is empty ) AND

(Any Event... Year

... Year is empty ) AND

(additional filters)

 

You can't build filters for a single event in a People filter, which seems to be what you are using. With a people filter, the focus is a person, so the "any event" filter terms each work independently. That is, one term can be satisfied by one event, and a another term satisfied by a second event, thus giving you unexpected results.

 

But you can build the kind of filters you have in mind with event filters, in the List of Events report. With those filters, the focus is a single event at a time, so all the terms are evaluated against each event.

 

The results of that report will be a list of events, but you can have the report list the people associated with those events. If you really need a people filter, you can use the Secondary Output of the List of Events report to set a custom Flag for the person or persons associated with the event, then use that Flag in a people filter.