Individual Narrative Report Endnote Problem?

[MMj 0]

I had what seemed like a really screwy thing happening in my individual narrative report endnotes today. It took me about 3 hours to isolate what was happening, and it just about drove me crazy. I would be very interested to know if this is a known problem, if anyone else can reprodue it, or if it is just me...

 

I noticed this morning that when I generated an individual narrative report, the endnotes for it were all printing in the short version of the note. And it was only happening in the individual narrative report. Or at least, it worked properly in the individual detail and journal reports. I didn't try it in all of the others.

 

I finally isolated the problem as coming from my birth tag. Then I removed each component of the tag individually until I found the one that was causing the problem. What it turned out to be was that I was using a custom role in the birth tag, and the part of the sentence structure that the individual narrative report didn't like was that I had started the sentence with [P+], rather than with [P]. As soon as I removed the offending "+", the endnotes were generated properly. If I added the "+" back in, all I got was the short form of the endnotes. The individual detail and journal reports ran properly whichever way I set up the sentence.

 

Then I set the variable in the sentence to read [P+], and re-ran the report. It worked fine. Then I changed the death date so that it happened before the birth date (to make it the first tag for the person), left the sentence variable as [P+], and re-ran the report. I got the short form of the endnotes again.

 

The only conclusion that I can reach is that the individual narrative report takes offence at finding [P+] as the first thing that it encounters, at least so far as the endnotes are concerned, while other reports seem to run properly regardless...

 

Mike Daugherty

Frederick, Maryland

[MMj 0]

This morning, I was looking back over this message that I posted here yesterday, and realized that it reads like it was written by someone under the influence of controlled substances, which wasn't the case, although I had just gone through a few pretty dizzy hours trying to figure out why my endnotes wouldn't print properly for one person, while they printed fine for others.

 

It is actually a very easy thing to test:

 

1. Go to any person in your database who has a birth tag as their first tag.

2. Go into the tag entry form for the birth tag.

3. Click on the sentence button and change the [P] variable in the sentence to [P+].

4. Exit from the tag entry form.

5. Pick the Individual Narrative report from the Reports menu.

6. Go into the report options before running the report and make sure the Endnotes under the Sources tab are turned on.

7. Close your Individual Narrative report.

8. Run Endnotes report. If you have the same issue that I have with the report, the notes will be all screwed up.

9. If you run this same test on the Individual Detail report, everything will work fine.

9. When you remove the "+" from the [P] variable back in your birth tag for that person, the Individual Narrative report will work fine too.

 

Any assistance here would be greatly appreciated, because I would really like to know if this is a general TMG issue, or if it is an idiosyncrasy on my PC.

 

Thanks

Mike Daugherty

Frederick, Maryland

[Vera Nagel 0]

Hi, Mike,

 

tried to replicate what you see by exactly following the sequence of steps you provided (tested with TMG's sample project as well as my working project and my test project) but everything works just fine for me. No screwed up Endnotes in the Individual Narrative Report.

 

Have I missed anything?

Do you get the same effect for the Sample Project?

Are you able to provide an example of such an "unwanted" Endnotes report?

[MMj 0]

Hi Vera,

 

Thanks for the reply. I am quite dismayed that you didn't encounter the same problem, because I can replicate it over and over again. I can also replicate it in the sample database (which I have never modified in any way).

 

I went to the sample database and ran the report for Benjamin Franklin Keebler (21). The first time I ran it was without any changes. I left the sentence structure for the birth tag as the default

 

[P] was born <[D]> <[L]>

 

Then I ran the narrative report and then the endnote report. The narrative report output looks fine. The endnote report output also looks fine and has 10 endnote references in it, the first one of which is referencing Benjamin Franklin Keebler's name in the first line of the narrative report.

 

Then I went into his birth tag and added the "+" so that the sentence reads

 

[P+] was born <[D]> <[L]>

 

Then I ran the narrative report and then the endnote report again. The narrative report still looks just like it did before, except that now it only has 9 endnote references. The place where the #1 endnote reference was in the earlier version of the report was on Benjamin Franklin Keebler's name. Now the #1 reference is on his birth date in the first record instead, and his name has no endnote reference number.

 

The endnote report after the change now only has 9 endnotes in it, and the first one is ibid, rather than the letter reference that it should have been.

 

If you can't replicate this, can certainly send you pdf's of the reports run both ways.

 

Mike

 

Thanks for your help. This has really had me scratching my head...

[ggilbert1 0]

FWIW I can duplicate. But note that there are 2 undated Father-Can tags, 2 Mother-Can tags, and 1 Son-Bio tag preceding the birth tag.

See attached: IN_BFK_DefaultSentence.PDF

Endnotes with default sentence:

Endnotes

 

1. Letters from Josephine (Alexander) Peterson (Fort Lauderdale, Florida)

to Louise (Baldwin) Waterman, 1967-1973; held in 2000 by Lissa Soergel (504

North Quaker Lane, Alexandria, Virginia 22304), Letter of 21 Feb 1971. No

source given.

 

2. Ibid.

 

3. Jacob Kibler household|page 216, line 9, 1830 U. S. census, Washington

County, Tennessee; National Archives micropublication M19, roll 175.

 

4. Ibid., John Kibler household|page 210, line 14.

 

5. Letters, Josephine (Alexander) Peterson to Louise (Baldwin) Waterman,

1967-1973, Letter of 21 Feb 1971. The late Mrs. Peterson gave no source

for the marriage date.

 

6. Louise (Baldwin) Waterman (Goodwin House, Alexandria, Virginia).

Research notes and personal communications to Lissa Soergel. Notes held in

2000 by Lissa Soergel, (504 North Quaker Lane, Alexandria, Virginia 22304).

Mrs. Waterman is now deceased. XXX.

 

7. 1850 U. S. census, Washington County, Tennessee, free schedule;

National Archives micropublication M432, roll 898.

 

8. Goldene Fillers Burgner, compiler, Carter County, Tennessee, Marriage

Records, 1796-1870 (Easley, S.C.: Southern Historical Press, 1987).

 

9. 1850 U. S. census, Washington County, Tennessee, free schedule, page

245, dwelling 1988, family 2021.

 

10. Benj. F. Keebler - no entry found. Son Henry Clay living with John and

Sarah (Keebler) Squibb, 1860 U. S. census, Washington County, Tennessee,

population schedule; National Archives micropublication M653, roll 1277.

 

IN with custom sentence: [P+] was born <[D]> <[L]>

See attached: IN_BFK_CustomSentence.PDF

Endnotes with custom sentence: [P+] was born <[D]> <[L]>

Endnotes

 

1. Ibid.

 

2. Jacob Kibler household|page 216, line 9, 1830 U. S. census, Washington

County, Tennessee; National Archives micropublication M19, roll 175.

 

3. Ibid., John Kibler household|page 210, line 14.

 

4. Letters, Josephine (Alexander) Peterson to Louise (Baldwin) Waterman,

1967-1973, Letter of 21 Feb 1971. The late Mrs. Peterson gave no source

for the marriage date.

 

5. Louise (Baldwin) Waterman (Goodwin House, Alexandria, Virginia).

Research notes and personal communications to Lissa Soergel. Notes held in

2000 by Lissa Soergel, (504 North Quaker Lane, Alexandria, Virginia 22304).

Mrs. Waterman is now deceased. XXX.

 

6. 1850 U. S. census, Washington County, Tennessee, free schedule;

National Archives micropublication M432, roll 898.

 

7. Goldene Fillers Burgner, compiler, Carter County, Tennessee, Marriage

Records, 1796-1870 (Easley, S.C.: Southern Historical Press, 1987).

 

8. 1850 U. S. census, Washington County, Tennessee, free schedule, page

245, dwelling 1988, family 2021.

 

9. Benj. F. Keebler - no entry found. Son Henry Clay living with John and

Sarah (Keebler) Squibb, 1860 U. S. census, Washington County, Tennessee,

population schedule; National Archives micropublication M653, roll 1277.

DOH: I realized output to ASCII text removes the superscript footnotes -- see attached pdf

IN_BFK_DefaultSentence.PDF

IN_BFK_CustomSentence.PDF

Edited December 5, 2006 by ggilbert1

[MMj 0]

Hi Glenn

 

Thanks for the help...and the reassurance that I'm not seeing things that aren't there. Thanks also for the samples. You got all of that done and posted while I was trying to figure out how to do it within the forum. I didn't notice the undated tags. They sort to the bottom in my setup and I didn't even see them. I don't think they mattter, though. I had selected that record in the sample database because it had a relatively large number of tags in it with citations, and so I knew that I would get a reasonable sized endnote output. After I saw your post I went back to both my database and the sample database and tried the test again on very simple records that only had 3 or 4 tags in them, like birth, marriage, death, burial, and where all had dates in them. I got exactly the same results.

 

One of the things that I found most interesting about this whole thing (and the main thing that caused me to take so long to isolate the problem) was that the problem only appears to happen in the individual narrative report. I haven't tried it in all of them, but the individual detail and journal reports seem to work fine with the "+" in the sentence.

 

Thanks again

Mike

[Vera Nagel 0]

Hi Glenn

 

Thanks for the help...and the reassurance that I'm not seeing things that aren't there. Thanks also for the samples.

 

Hi, Mike and Glenn,

 

Thanks to both of you ..... finally you made me see the same.

Sorry it took some time.

 

Will do some more testing...

[MMj 0]

You're welcome Vera.

 

I've been designing and analyzing database applications for nearly 25 years now, and one of the reasons that I chose TMG in the first place, and will stick with it, is that it is one of the best thought-out database products that it has ever been my pleasure to work with. And it is easily the best genealogical database that I have tried.

 

The other thing that TMG has going for it is the quality of it's user base. Here, and on the RootsWeb forum, on the mail list, and at the RUG user meetings in Virginia. Just about everywhere I encounter TMG users. I've never run across a bunch of people who are more willing to help someone out.

 

Thanks for your efforts!

 

Mike