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beetle3247

Filtering on non-1940 Census Tag

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I've been attempting to create a filter to list all primary individuals in the database for which I still need to find the 1940 census record. I've created a filter:

 

( Death Year > 1940 Or

Birth Year > 1880) And

Census Year = 1930

 

Which works just fine, but I get 1014 results and many of those already have the 1940 census. I've been looking for a way to next include a logic item that states that I don't yet have a census record with the year 1940 for the individual, but I cannot find any operator that would do that. If I insert an AND Census Year <= 1939 at the end I get the same results.

 

I would appreciate some help here.

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Try changing the last statement to:

Census Year

 

( Death Year > 1940 Or

Birth Year > 1880) And

Census Year

 

That should exclude anyone with a Census tag with a year of 1940.

 

This situation is why many people have a custom tag type for each census year. I only use the 'Census' tag type for exceptional cases where there are not enough occurrences for a custom tag type.

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Sorry, that didn't work. I recreated the filter just as you have typed it, but It actually INCREASED the number of records returned.

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Note that your filter gets people who are born after 1880 and die before 1940 because of the OR operator. OR says that if either parameter is valid, the person is selected.

(people who were born after 1880 _and_ didn't die until after 1940)

 

Something like this would get a number of viable candidates...

 

( Birth Year > 1880 AND

Death Year > 1940) AND

Census1940 # of tags = 0 END

 

Assuming that you were using the Census1940 tag type...

 

In my test database, every person selected with this filter was a viable candidate. There are limitations to this filter also.

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I guess I'm really out of luck, since I use the general Census tag, but created a different Source for each census (in my database the 1900 census is #6, 1940 is #248, etc.) I don't find any way to filter on the Source #.

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Obviously that works, but that just gives me a listing of where the entries where I had applied the source# as a citation. I guess I'm lost here. Thanks anyway for the help. I'll just plod on and find the ones I'm missing as I work on the individuals.

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As Jim said: "Assuming that you were using the Census1940 tag type". But since you are not, you will need to get a bit more clever. Because you are trying to discover what does NOT exist (no 1940 Census tag), I would suggest a two step process involving a temporary Flag.

 

I would first define this Flag, maybe named "Cens1940", with values 'Y' and 'N' and a default of 'N'. Now I would identify all the potential candidates using a List of People report similar to Jim's filter. Since I have a variety of tag types which might be used to set the Birth and Death dates, I would choose a filter based on the date in whatever is the "Primary" tag in the Birth and Death groups.

 

* Birth Group... // Year // > Is greater than // 1880 // AND

* Death Group... // Year // > Is greater than // 1940 // END

 

[Note the asterisk is set at the beginning of the filter for each group to select the Primary tag in that group.]

 

I would set the option in the Secondary Output of that LOP report to set the Flag "Cens1940" to 'Y' for these people.

 

Step two will be to eliminate those people from this potential set who already have a Census tag for 1940. For that I would use a List of Events report with a filter which would identify the existing 1940 Census tags. Assuming you have entered a date in these Census tags, I might use a filter on this LOE report of:

 

Census... // Year // Is exactly // 1940 // END

 

I would set the option in the Secondary Output of that LOE report to set the Flag "Cens1940" back to 'N' for "All Witnesses".

 

Following this two step process the Flag "Cens1940" would be 'Y' for all potential candidates who did not already have a Census tag dated in 1940. I think this is what you want? You could then get a list of these people based on this Flag.

 

After all this effort and the fact I am likely to want to work through this list in multiple sessions, I would probably Filter the PE for Primary Names Only based on this Flag. Then I would open the Focus Group window and remove any names there. Now I would right-click in the PE and "Add all names to Focus Group", and then un-filter the PE. I would then save this Focus Group with some appropriate group name.

 

Now whenever I want to work on the 1940 census, I simply load that Focus Group, right-click on the top name and change Focus to that person to review them for the census. When they are done, I would remove them from the Focus Group and re-save the group. I would probably also change their Flag to 'N'. (I use the Focus Group instead of keeping the PE filtered since performance can be affected by keeping the PE filtered as you work.)

 

Hope this gives you ideas,

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Michael,

 

I must be really dense. I created the new flag and also did the LOP report and set the flag to 'Y' in the secondary output and it worked just fine. BUT, when I get to the LOE I cannot find a filter field of "CENSUS" that I can pick and set the filters. What am I now missing?

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Are you looking for this to set the flag?

 

List of Events...

Filter...

Tag Type... Label = CENSUS AND

Date - Year = 1940 END

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Yep, Jim is right.

 

I was flipping back and forth between LOP and LOE and got the filters mixed up. You "could" use the LOP with my filter for step two, but then you only reset that one person. I changed my comments to LOE since there are probably fewer of these tags so it will run quicker, and also you can set "all witnesses" to that tag with one action in the LOE. I just forgot to change the filter structure to what the LOE uses. Use the filter Jim shows above. Sorry about my mixup.

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Great! Now it works just fine. I ended up with 699 individuals for whom I have yet to find a 1940 census, based on the criteria listed above. I have created a search filter for CENS140 = 'Y' and will use that, changing the flag to 'N' as I go. I appreciate all the help. I've been a computer programmer in business for more than 35 years and I could have written a program to do this in one step if I could have had access to a program editor/compiler that could read the data structure. Anyway, again, thanks.

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Glad we were able to give you ideas to get what you wanted. Using the Secondary Output and Filters to set Flags it is sort of like programming for what you want. I generally find that setting and then unsetting the Flag to narrow the results will generally let me identify just about any collection of people or events I want.

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