Living People Flag

[helpmabob 0]

I have recently transferred my family history file from Family Tree Maker 2005 to TMG V7.00, and I am now going through a lengthy clean up. I have discovered that the living people flag has not defaulted to ? in lots of instances for people born in the 1700's and 1800's, but is blank. So when I used the Utility for a fast clean I got very few results. I would like to know whether there is any way of bulk changing the blank to ? for people born before, say, 1900. That way I could then use the Utility to save me from the tedious process I am currently going through of finding these people one by one, albeit helped by the use of Accents.

[Terry Reigel 0]

I think you should be able to do that with the List of People report. Use a filter like:

 

Birth... Date

 

or, if many people don't have a birth date entered, perhaps:

 

Any Event... Date

 

Then use the Secondary Output (in Options) to set the Living Flag to "?".

 

This would still miss any people who have no dated tags, if they exist.

[JanisR 0]

Welcome to TMG! I suggest using John Cardinal's Utility. It is a utility program which helps TMG users make batch changes to their data. John has a much more expansive routine for setting the living flag which considers dates of ancestors and descendants. It is donor ware and a great not so little program!

 

Back up before you use it and always run it first in log only mode to make sure it is making the changes you intend...

 

http://www.johncardinal.com/tmgutil/setliving.htm

 

Regards,

Jan

[Terry Reigel 0]

Jan,

 

According to the original post, that's already been tried. It changes the flag from "?" to "N", but doesn't change flags that are blank, as the case here.

[Michael Hannah 0]

I haven't tried this, but the following might work.

Try a "List of People" report using a filter mentioning all valid values of the LIVING flag and then use the Secondary Output to set it to a valid value for everyone that does not match. For example try a filter of:

LIVING does not equal Y AND

LIVING does not equal N AND

LIVING does not equal ? END

This should identify all people with a blank LIVING flag. Then in the Secondary Output I would set the LIVING flag for all these people to '?'. Finally, I would use the TMG Utility to change all appropriate people that now have a '?' to 'N'.

 

Hope this gives you ideas,

[Terry Reigel 0]

That's clever, Michael.

 

I'd think that should work.

[helpmabob 0]

Thank you Michael. I'll try that. And it will give me some experience at using reports. John.

[helpmabob 0]

Michael, I'm pleased to say that your solution worked a treat.

Many thanks,

John.

[Terry Reigel 0]

Thanks for letting us know.

[Michael Hannah 0]

Glad to hear that helped. Since you say you are new to TMG, don't hesitate to ask further questions on this forum. There are lots of users with clever ideas eager to help.