Gedcom (for preferred/alternate birth/death events)

[JNG30047]

I recently upgraded to Reunion 11 and want to start using it as my primary genealogy program. To that end, I imported my database (from Family Tree Maker for Windows) and discovered that Reunion (unlike some genealogy programs) does not apparently differentiate between "preferred" and "alternate" birth and death events when importing Gedcoms.

Is there a way that I can have Reunion use the "preferred" Birth/Death event from my FTM Gedcom and make all of the other "Birth/Death" events for that person be something other than a birth/death event? I want to avoid deleting (editing) all of the alternate birth / death events in Reunion, and my charts look funny since the boxes (on the pedigree chart, for example), include ALL of the various birth events.

One possible workaround (which isn't ideal) is to take my FTM Gedcom, import it into iFamily and then expert a Gedcom from iFamily (which does not use the birth/death tags except for preferred events) and then import the iFamily gedcom into Reunion. But this workaround is cumbersome.

Thanks for any help.

[mjashby]

Re: Gedcom (for preferred/alternate birth/death events)

As another relative 'newcomer' to the specific workings of Reunion, I'm sure someone with greater knowledge of the software will come along shortly with some suggestions on how you might manage the action you want to take.

However, I would suggest that you might seriously consider taking this opportunity to get rid of those multiple Birth/Death events completely and, instead, consider creating multiple sources to evidence when the single events occurred. Why do I say that? Simply because a person is only born once and can only die once. You may occasionally end up with some conflicting evidence of when either of those events happened but have to decide, by comparing all of those sources, the most probable ('preferred') date and place and determine why any conflicting information is less likely to be correct. This may be clearer if explained in a note attached to a single Birth/Death event. Is there any real point in recording all those dates as separate (duplicate) events/facts, which will probably continue to cause you problems and confusion in reports or in any future data transfers/exchanges.

Mervyn

[Frank]

Re: Gedcom (for preferred/alternate birth/death events)

A couple clarifications...

...my charts look funny since the boxes (on the pedigree chart, for example), include ALL of the various birth events....

Charts in Reunion do not include multiple birth events or multiple death events. Only the first birth and first death event are included.

Reunion (unlike some genealogy programs) does not apparently differentiate between "preferred" and "alternate" birth and death events when importing Gedcoms.

To my knowledge, GEDCOM differentiates "preferred" values from other values only via the order in which the data appears. So the most preferred value is first, and lesser values following in order. And that is how Reunion imports the data. For example, for any given person in a GEDCOM file, his or her first birth date in the GEDCOM file appears as his or her first birth date in Reunion. The second, as the second, etc.

If you're not experiencing what I've described here, send us the GEDCOM file so we can see what's in it, and perhaps we can clarify further.

[Howard Fink]

Re: Gedcom (for preferred/alternate birth/death events)

I ... discovered that Reunion (unlike some genealogy programs) does not apparently differentiate between "preferred" and "alternate" birth and death events when importing Gedcoms.

While this does not apply to GEDCOM import (although Frank's answer did) I wanted to reiterate Frank's info about the first instance of each Event being treated as the preferred one. You can drag the event you feel is most appropriate to the top and that will be the one used in charts and age calculations. So while this may not be explicitly called the "Preferred" event, Reunion does provide support for an implicit "preferred" event.

I do believe there is value in recording multiple events, because I have certainly found multiple birth (for instance) dates in different record sources. It would be wrong to attach a source to an event that did not match the information in that source, and you do want to record what you have found so that later on others (or even yourself) do not have to deal with finding that source and information again. Another reason to document each source is so that anyone else who looks at the information later can make their own judgement call about which they feel is "preferred".

[Cliff Gittens]

Re: Gedcom (for preferred/alternate birth/death events)

How does Reunion handle additional names for an individual within a gedcom? In my attempts to import a gedcom from Legacy 8 , the Reunion import seems to ignore the additional name but imports the source of the additional name.

[Frank]

Re: Gedcom (for preferred/alternate birth/death events)

In individual records in the GEDCOM file, only the first level 1 NAME line is imported.

[Cliff Gittens]

Re: Gedcom (for preferred/alternate birth/death events)

In individual records in the GEDCOM file, only the first level 1 NAME line is imported.

I suppose only importing the first occurrence of the NAME tag is intentional on the part of the Reunion Software Gedcom import. This is a little puzzling to me as every genealogy package that I have test of late which includes Family Historian 6, RootsMagic 7 and Mac Family Tree 7.5.2 import all occurrences of the NAME tag and include all occurrences of the NAME tag in their respective searches. In my experience this is a very handy tool.

Is there any talk, discussion or plans at Reunion to alter the current practice of importing only the first occurrence of the NAME tag for each individual in a Gedcom?

Regards
Cliff Gittens