Importing Events from Legacy GEDCOM

[tomk]

Hello, I am tired of working in both Windows7 and Mountain Lion on my Macbook, and have decided to transition to Reunion and stop updating Legacy database. I have tried previously with Reunion 9 and 10, but been discouraged by the amount of effort needed. But now am firmly committed to make the change!!

My Current Operation is that Legacy is my database of record, and I used GEDCOM exports to replace/update my online TNG database. I use Legacy's Tagging and Custom Saved Export GEDCOM Tags to maintain two TNG databases.

The two biggest transition problem areas for me are: 1) Events and 2) Sources.
For Sources, I have decided that I will just have to recreate Sources in Reunion - I may create a different post for Sources, since I have sources for over 6000 individuals.

For Events, I have come up with a few different approaches, and I would like suggestions on which would have better long term survivability against future Reunion Upgrades, and/or changing to different genealogy programs.

The basic problem with Events is the way Legacy and Reunion treat events. Legacy has one GEDCOM tag for Events - EVEN, but Legacy also uses a subsequent TYPE Gedcom Tag to describe the Event. Reunion does not support creating this TYPE GEDCOM tag. Legacy includes the following Event TYPEs: 1) Obituary, 2) Military Draft Registration, 3) Military Service, 4) Land, 5) various Censuses, etc.

For example with Obituaries and Military Service, Legacy exports

1 EVEN
2 TYPE Obituary
2 DATE 16 Dec 1986

1 EVEN
2 TYPE Military
2 DATE 25 Apr 1941
2 NOTE Enlisted in Army

Reunion still imports these as Events, but labels them as "Misc: Military Draft Registration", etc. And double clicking on the Event shows TYPE has been saved. On export the GEDCOM from Reunion outputs the TYPE field.

But, I haven't found a way to change the way they are labeled in Reunion on/after import. And I also have not found out how to add a new Event that will include Type field. Is there a way?

I have searched the Forum and I think I have the following options:
1) Don't treat these as Events, and instead focus on them as Source to support dates, etc.
2) Treat these as Notes - e.g. Obituary, Military Service, ...
3) Create unique GEDCOM Tags for Events and/or Notes. Have done this for Obituaries, but still issue if Event Description is greater than 2500 characters and it is entered as a Note.

I am considering using a combination of the above options, but if possible I would like to do this intelligently and within Reunion.

If it can't be done in Reunion, then I need to find a way to manipulate the LEGACY exported GEDCOM before final importing into Reunion.

I would appreciate your inputs. Thanks,

Tom Kuehn

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Importing Events from Legacy GEDCOM

For example with Obituaries and Military Service, Legacy exports

1 EVEN
2 TYPE Obituary
2 DATE 16 Dec 1986

1 EVEN
2 TYPE Military
2 DATE 25 Apr 1941
2 NOTE Enlisted in Army

You mention creating new events, but you don't mention that you can then preprocess the GEDCOM file and use GREP to convert these to the new events (I've chosen _OBIT and _MIL arbitrarily) or standard facts

1 _OBIT
2 DATE 16 Dec 1986

and

1 _MIL
2 DATE 25 Apr 1941
2 NOTE Enlisted in Army

before importing the GEDCOM to save yourself from having to move things manually.

Another example would be
1 EVEN
2 TYPE Fact 2
2 PLAC Social Security #: 123-45-6789

to map to:

1 SSN 123-45-6789

so you'd replace:
1 EVEN\r2 TYPE Fact 2\r2 PLAC Social Security #: (\d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4})
with:
1 SSN \1

[tomk]

Re: Importing Events from Legacy GEDCOM

Dennis,

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, as I mentioned in my option 3) Create unique GEDCOM Tags for Events and/or Notes - I know I can change Obituaries to have a unique GEDCOM Tag - in my case I used OBIT for events, and something different for Obituary Notes.

Your suggestion to precede Tag with "_" is a good one, that way I know which ones were real versus ones I created.

Before doing this wholesale, I thought I would check to see if others had better ideas.

Tom