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wleman

Father-Private in reports and GEDCOM

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I discovered the Father-Private category and have begun using it for illegitimate births. Unfortunately, they show up as a regular father in TMG reports and GEDCOM exports to our family tree website.

 

What can I do to retain a father relationship of some kind in my TMG database but not have that relationship show up in reports and GEDCOM files where they embarrass (or worse) family members?

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The extension on a relationship tag is meaningless to the program and is only for your information. IOW... The program sees no difference between a Father-Bio tag and a Father-Private tag. The major tool you have is making the relationship tag primary or non-primary. If you make the relationship tag non-primary, it won't show up in many reports. (Select the Father tag in the Person View and click [*] or type '*' to make it non-primary.)

 

Exclusion markers don't work in relationship tags so you can't mark the father ID# with a single exclusion marker.

 

You could also not use a relationship tag. For example, enter the information in a Note tag, double exclude the Note tag sentence so that the information will never be output in reports and GEDCOM export and double exclude the memo field so that the memo will not show on the Person View. The information will only be visible when the Note tag is opened for editing.

 

I'm probably missing other approaches but someone else will respond.

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Two ideas for you.

 

As Jim suggested: "You could also not use a relationship tag." If you create a custom tag type that is not a relationship tag, maybe called "Private", then you could use it for all kinds of private information, even linking private parents to their offspring. The advantage of a separate custom "event" tag type is that in both reports and GEDCOM export you can "select" which event (non-relationship) tag types are excluded. You cannot select which relationship tags are excluded, which is the motivation for not using a relationship tag.

 

A custom event tag allows you to keep all the people in your Project, but exclude every event of that type from your projects and GEDCOM. Of course, the disadvantage of using a custom "event" tag is that TMG will not be able to recognize the ancestral/descendant linkage of this parent/child pair.

 

A more subtle way to deal with this is by the use of a custom Flag. Go ahead and link the child to the private parent with a relationship tag. You can continue to use your custom Father-Private tag if that makes it clearer for you. That way you have the ancestral/descendant linkage in the Project and can produce reports with that parent if you wish. However, create a custom Flag, maybe called "Private", which would default to 'N'. But set the Flag for the private parent to 'Y'. When you are ready to create reports or GEDCOM for more public distribution, first filter a List of People report using the Flag, and create a temporary Project (using the Secondary Output Option) that only contains people with the flag as 'N'. That will actually remove the private parent from that temporary Project. Now run your "public" reports and/or GEDCOM export using that temporary Project. Then delete that temporary Project and continue editing your master Project that contains all such private people.

 

By creating a temporary Project that excludes certain people you can select whether reports or GEDCOM contain these people. Of course, the disadvantage is that everything about that person is deleted in the temporary Project, not just that relationship.

 

TMG has many different features to custom your output. You have to decide which works best for you. Hope this gives you ideas.

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Thank you for all your suggestions. Although I have been using TMG for many years, I can see I still have quite a learning curve to understand some of what you are saying. But I'm up for learning new things. I have ordered a TMG primer, so I hope it will explain things like "double exclusion". I have been using a hyphen before info in a Note that I wish to keep private. Maybe that's double exclusion.

 

Thanks again.

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The imbedded TMG HELP system is really quite good. See the HELP topic "Exclude Information". It explains that a single leading dash '-' allows data to be excluded if you wish, but shown if you choose to show excluded data as an option in reports. Two leading dashes '--' is a double exclusion, and will prevent the data from ever being output even if you choose to show excluded data. More details are in HELP.

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