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Linda (Babbin) Jones

Duplications in Journal Report

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I ran a journal report for a filtered group, and the resulting report is very nice and could be used to publish a book.

 

Except that it is full of duplications of people. Considering that each couple gets a full page, that's a ton of wasted paper and a lot of extra junk to wade through.

 

Can someone please explain if there is anything I can do to prevent people from being duplicated in this report? I also posted a message about duplicate people in the List of People, and received no replies. That's very annoying, but it's only a tool I use for myself, so I can live with it even though I don't like it. But I really can't use the journal report with all these duplicated people in it.

 

And no, I'm not talking about couples listed under both the husband and wife, although I'd love to be able to turn that off. I'm talking about two pages that have identical content.

 

Linda

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Linda,

 

I think the problem is you ran the report with a Filtered Group. All ancestor and descendant reports are designed so that normally you would specify only a single person - the starting person whose ancestors or descendants are to be included. Then you use the report Options, primarily the number of generations setting, to control who is included.

 

If you specify a group of people you are specifying a set of reports, each one starting with one of the people in that group. The individual reports do stop when lines intersect, but I think the first person who is in common with both lines does appear in each of them, as you found.

 

Try running the report with only a single starting person specified. If, as in a book, you do want separate lines to be included, specify a group that consists only of the starting persons for each of those lines. Then, use the options on the Sort tab to specify the order in which those lines appear in the report.

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Linda,

 

I think the problem is you ran the report with a Filtered Group. ...

 

Try running the report with only a single starting person specified. If, as in a book, you do want separate lines to be included, specify a group that consists only of the starting persons for each of those lines. Then, use the options on the Sort tab to specify the order in which those lines appear in the report.

 

Thanks for the response, Terry.

 

Both the List of Persons and the Journal allow filtered groups, but you're basically telling me I can't actually use those filters. This is really a horrible disappointment.

 

I've got 2500 people with the same surname--so far--who are all descended from the same couple. Plus of course their spouses. But I can't yet connect every single one of them. So I have maybe 30 to 40 lines, and I don't know who is at the head of each line--that's what I thought the filtered journal would do for me--include everyone and sort them into families.

 

Since so many of them are not yet connected to the original ancestor, a list of that ancestor's descendants would leave out half of them. I thought the filter was a great tool, but frankly I don't see what's the use of it if the reports can't deal with it.

 

Programming a report to exclude duplicates is not at all difficult--after all ID numbers are unique--so I'm kind of stunned that after TMG has existed for so many years, this has not been done.

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Both the List of Persons and the Journal allow filtered groups, but you're basically telling me I can't actually use those filters.

You're misunderstanding what Terry said.

 

Narrative reports are designed to report information about one subject.

 

The content of the report is determined by the report options (click the [Options] button).

 

If you use a filter to select more subjects, you will, in effect, be generating a report for each subject selected by the filter. The filter cannot be used to determine the contents of the report for a given subject.

 

Put another way, a filter for a Journal report does not determine the people who will appear in the report. The filter determines the subjects for whom the report will be run.

 

A List of People report is designed to product a list of people based on the results of the filter used. Each name should appear in the report only once. Using a filter in this case is the normal thing to do.

 

Narrative reports and list reports are like apples and oranges. They have entirely different purposes and work differently.

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Linda,

 

The reports deal with filters just fine, but you have to use them as intended. For the List of People report filters are at the core of the report, because that report does not have any internal structure to connect people. It is just a list of people you define with a filter, focus group, or the Project Explorers.

 

But ancestor and descendant reports are very different. They have an ancestors or descendants structure built into them, and are designed to create a report showing a list of ancestors or descendants. Normally that would be the ancestors or descendants of one person. You do not need to define all the people who will appear in the report, but only define who the report is to start with and the report finds all the ancestors or descendants.

 

As I said before, if you want a set of ancestor or descendant reports for different lines, you would create a filter that would define all the starting people you want used in the report. For example, if you want a descendants of the various "end of line" people with a given surname, use a filter that specifies the surname, and people with no parents.

 

If you would tell us what kind of report you are trying to create in a little more detail we can help you create a filter that will do the job.

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Both the List of Persons and the Journal allow filtered groups, but you're basically telling me I can't actually use those filters.

Hi Linda,

 

Yes, you can use filters, but I think you misunderstand the purpose and nature of these reports which are ancestor and descendant reports. For these types of reports, filters should identify the (usually very few) people for whom you wish the report to output all those people's ancestors or descendants. The filter needs to identify only end-of-line people.

So I have maybe 30 to 40 lines, and I don't know who is at the head of each line--that's what I thought the filtered journal would do for me--include everyone and sort them into families.

And it will, with an appropriate filter. It is easy to set a filter to have TMG identify who is the head of each line. Then you can run a Journal report of the descendants of only these end-of-line people, which is the purpose of that report. Try this filter:

Father* // Is ID # // 0 // AND

Mother* // Is ID # // 0 // END

You could even add more conditions to this basic filter to limit which end-of-line people you get, such as:

Surname // = Equals // JONES

or to get only the male end-of-line people:

SEX // = Equals // M

or even just those people based on a custom Flag value.

MYFLAG // = Equals // Y

 

Hope this gives you ideas about how to use the filters for ancestor/descendant types of reports.

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A List of People report is designed to product a list of people based on the results of the filter used. Each name should appear in the report only once. Using a filter in this case is the normal thing to do.

 

But as I have already said in an earlier message, my List of People reports are in fact full of duplicates.

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If you would tell us what kind of report you are trying to create in a little more detail we can help you create a filter that will do the job.

 

Thanks, Terry, that's really kind.

 

I have an ancestor with 200,000 descendants (that I know of so far). I would like to create a tool that's useful to someone looking for his descendants with the same name.

 

I have (15 years ago) created indented reports with just the same-named descendants, but people find these hard to follow when there are thousands of names. And the amount of info that will fit on one line is limited. So I was excited about the journal report because people find these easy to read and understand. Plus they can include details about things like occupation, residence, and cause of death. But I don't want all the descendants with different surnames (I want each of those in their own reports) and I DO want all the people with this surname who aren't connected to the main tree yet.

 

And since the family is broken up into 3 main groups--those in Nova Scotia, those in Quebec, and those in Louisiana, I really wanted to have 3 completely separate reports. A person in Louisiana trying to connect his great-grandfather doesn't really care about all these people in Quebec. (Well, unless he's as crazy as I am, in which case he can still read all 3 reports).

 

So, if you're still with me, I'd like a report that looks like the journal report, and acts like it in the way it organizes and numbers the members of the families, but that restricts the descendants to just the filter I specify.

 

Is there any hope for me?

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Linda,

 

Yes, I think so. Some ideas...

 

1. There is a "follow surname only" option for the Indented Descendant report, which would help with the surname issue. But I prefer the Journal format and you seem to also, so that may not be a good option.

 

2. If you are trying to make the report briefer, you might consider using a custom Language, with custom Sentences that output only the data you want to include. This is especially useful if you only want to include a few Tag Types, as it is then pretty easy to write custom Sentences for a limited number of Tag Types. With this approach you can pretty brief - instead of the normal:

 

"John Jones was born on 3 May 1850 in Center City, Iowa. He married Suzie Smith, daughter of Melvin Smith and Mary Monroe, on 8 Jun 1880 in Lower South Fork, Montana. He died 13 Dec 1921 in Upper Red Bank, Butte Co., California."

 

You might prefer something like:

 

John Jones, b. 3 May 1850, Center City, Iowa. M. Suzie Smith, 8 Jun 1880, Lower South Fork, Montana. D. 13 Dec 1921, Upper Red Bank, Butte Co., California."

 

3. Since you can't restrict a Journal to surname only, you need to address that differently. I'd suggest creating a temporary Project containing only the people you want to include, and running the Journal from that. You can do that with the Secondary output of the List of People report, using a Surname equals Filter. If you want the spouses to be named in the report (or their details included), check the Add their... Spouses box at the bottom.

 

4. Then run the Journal (Descendants) from that temporary Project. I'd suggest a filter like Michael suggested:

 

Father* Is Not Known AND

Mother* Is Not Known AND

Surname Equals JONES AND

Sex Equals M END

 

This will generate a separate Journal Report for each line, starting with the oldest known male in that line. I'd probably sort by birth date to get the longest lines first.

 

5. Now, about your three geographic areas. Did the lines move from one to the other, or are they separate? If the latter, it's easy. Create a custom flag, say Location, with values ?, N, Q, L. Then use the Secondary Output of the List of People report to set the flag for everyone. Maybe a filter like:

 

Any Event... Place Contains NOVA SCOTIA END

 

to set the Flag to N, and likewise then to set for the other two values. Then add the term:

 

Location Equals N

 

or Q, or L, to the filter above.

 

If people from the same lines migrated between these places it gets a bit harder. One idea that occurs to me is to create three different temporary projects, one for each location. To do that, add the "Any Event... Place Contains" line to the filter you use create the temporary Data Sets. That would make people who actually migrated from one place to the other appear in both reports, but maybe that's OK.

 

Hopefully this will give you some ideas. Please ask if anything I've suggested is unclear, or gives a different result than what you are after.

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1. There is a "follow surname only" option for the Indented Descendant report

 

Right, I've used it and I like it, and will probably still use it, but I'm looking for something a little sexier.

2. If you are trying to make the report briefer...

Thanks, but I kinda like the Journal Report in its default form.

3. Since you can't restrict a Journal to surname only.... I'd suggest creating a temporary Project ...with the Secondary output of the List of People report, using a Surname equals Filter.

4. Then run the Journal (Descendants) from that temporary Project.

That's very clear, and I'm going to try it. I really think I can get pretty much the output I want using this approach. Since I add people all the time, I was hoping for something I could run on the fly, and maybe upload updated results weekly or so, and this takes an extra step, but I think it won't be too bad.

5. Now, about your three geographic areas. Did the lines move from one to the other, or are they separate? If the latter, it's easy. Create a custom flag, say Location, with values ?, N, Q, L.

This part puzzles me a little. Can't I just directly filter on the location instead of creating flags to correspond with the location and filtering on that?

Hopefully this will give you some ideas. Please ask if anything I've suggested is unclear, or gives a different result than what you are after.

I really appreciate it. I'll try this out and if I have any more questions, I'll be sure to take advantage of your kindness.

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5. Now, about your three geographic areas. Did the lines move from one to the other, or are they separate? If the latter, it's easy. Create a custom flag, say Location, with values ?, N, Q, L.

This part puzzles me a little. Can't I just directly filter on the location instead of creating flags to correspond with the location and filtering on that?

You sure can. Looks like I tried to make it harder than necessary on this point.

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