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dball

Repaired missing marriage partner not automatically primary

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When I import a GEDCOM from, say, an on-line tree based on descendants of a person, there can be marriage tags in the GEDCOM that only have one person identified. This happens when a descendant's spouse had another marriage; the GEDCOM doesn't capture the other partner in that marriage, only the date and place of that event. It can also happen when there are more generations in the on-line tree than are allowed in the extracted GEDCOM.

Descendants in the most recent generation will have marriage tags, but their spouses won't be captured. These are not the problem. I find them easily with a List of Events report and get the required data from the original tree.

 

My TMG problem comes when I complete these marriages by adding a missing person to the project, then noting their ID number and opening the incomplete marriage tag of their spouse and filling in the added person's ID#. This is very efficient, since only that missing ID# is needed.

 

The marriage tag for the originally included person was primary and stays primary after I add in their spouse's ID# and close the tag entry screen, but when I go back to that previously missing spouse, whose marriage tag was just created by my adding their ID# to the existing tag, that added spouse's new marriage tag is NOT primary. Why? Doesn't make sense.

 

Any completely new marriage tag for both parties is automatically primary for both parties, why would adding a missing spouse to a primary tag not do the same for the person being inserted into a primary tag? Is this a bug?

 

No biggie, only I don't always remember to go to the new spouse and reset their tag to primary. I just fixed 142 such tags in a project with 79,000 people; not a huge number, but annoying enough to want to see if I'm doing something wrong.

 

Dave Ball

compiler of the New England Ball Project

http://www.newenglandballproject.com

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Hi Dave,

 

No, you are not doing anything wrong. As my testing has confirmed, adding a person as a Principal to an existing tag is different than creating the tag brand new. I am guessing that the program code to check for and set Primary is only done when the tag itself is first added. Adding (or changing) a person to an existing tag I guess is considered "editing" the tag, and thus the Primary is not checked or set or modified. I usually don't encounter this as I generally add Marriage tags myself and add the new person spouse using the Add Person button on that new tag. Done this way both get marked Primary.

 

This might be a Wish for a new feature in the TMG Utility, similar to its current ability to make a Birth or Death group tag Primary, but you would have to propose that to John.

 

You may notice a previous posting wishing that Validate File Integrity make a Marriage tag Primary if the person has tags in that group but none are Primary. Of course there is a problem if there are multiple tags in the Marriage group and none are Primary, which should the program choose? My previous reply here to that VFI wish gives a filter setting for a List of Events report that will find all people where they have tags in the Marriage group but none are Primary. At least you could create a Focus Group from this filter and work through that list. Hope this helps.

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Finding non-primary birth, marriage, and death tags is one of some 40 "cleaning" filters in list of people and list of events reports I regularly use when I import from a GEDCOM. Finding the non-primary tags is not a problem, but asking John Cardinal to add the fix to TMGU is spot on and I will do so on the RootsWeb TMG list, thanks.

 

I will admit that I have trouble imagining a circumstance where one person in a marriage tag really should have that tag non-primary, while the other person really should have that tag primary, which is why I question TMG not making both sides of a marriage tag the same with respect to primary/non-primary status.

 

Dave Ball

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There can be multiple tags (not necessarily Marriage tags) in the Marriage group where the same two people are Principals. Only one of these multiple tags can be Primary. Even if the same two people marry, then divorce, then remarry (think Elizabeth Taylor), only one of these marriages can be Primary. It is possible that a user would desire the first primary for one spouse and the second for the other, depending upon what they want to show in those reports and charts that only record Primary events. And there are probably other reasonable situations.

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