Use a custom flag to keep track of the editing progress

[Admin 0]

Use a custom flag to keep track of the editing progress

Applies to: TMG

 

Tip: TMG's custom flags can be used a number of different ways. Many experienced users define one or more custom flags to keep track of lengthy editing tasks.

 

For example, if you decide to change the way you record census data, you may have many existing census events to modify. To keep track of your progress, create a custom flag with the values "NY", for No and Yes, where the default value is "N". After you modify the census events for a particular person set the flag to "Y". That way, you an easily create a report of the people whose census events still need attention.

 

Many users create a custom flag to manage the manual cleanup of data after it is imported to TMG. GenBridge does an excellent job of importing data, but as a result of the differences between programs, there still may be manual changes required. Use a custom flag to monitor your progress.

 

Other keywords: Import, Cleanup, Clean Up

[anitatally 0]

Regarding custom flags - I have an idea to flag all the people in my project who were alive in 1940 and then locating them in the 1940 census to update or corroborate information, etc. Is this the best process for this task? My only experience in flags is with the entire project being flagged after importing from another program, for clean-up purposes. I am still working on that task! Any suggestions would be appreciated!

 

Anita Tally

[Terry Reigel 0]

Anita,

 

You can do this by creating a Custom Flag, using Flag Manager, on the File menu. I would give it values of N,Y.

 

Then you set the Flag to Y for selected people with the Secondary Output of the List of People report. You turn on that feature by going to Options on that report, and on the Secondary Output tab tell it to change your Flag to Y.

 

Now the trick is to define the "selected" people. You would do that with a Filter on the Report Definition screen. There are a number of approaches you might use, depending on what kind of data you have for the people of interest. For example you might filter on the dates of the birth and death Tags, but that depends on your having both those tags. Further, some people in the 1940 census would not have a death tag. Further, you may not have birth Tags for everyone.

 

I would suggest you look for anyone with any event before 1940, AND who you have a death Tag for after 1940, OR who is marked as still living. However that would also pick up people long dead but for whom you have no death Tag and have not marked as not living, so it will get some false positives. But if your data is in pretty good shape there probably won't be too many. I would include the Birth tag in the output, and sort on it, which may help sort them out quickly.

 

The filter to do what I suggest is:

 

Any Event... Date ...

( ... Death.... Date ... > Comes After .... 1940 .... OR

Living ... = Equals .... Y ... ) ... END

 

The parens are important. You enter then by clicking the little boxes that appear after you select the OR connector in the second line.