Identifying people with "Burial" event but with no data entered.

[James Milne]

I know I have people run my family file who have a "Burial" event but with no data entered in any of the associated fields. i.e date, place, or memo. I suspect this is a throwback to when I first started using Reunion and I had "Burial" as one of the default options. I would like to find these people and delete their "Burial" event. I have tried using the "Advanced Search" but to no avail. It seems to list people who do not have a "burial" event as well as, presumably, the people I am searching for. Thank you for any suggestions.

[David Walton]

Is this what you are looking for:

Empty Search.png

[James Milne]

Thanks for your response David. That is what I have been trying. It comes back with a list of 12,588 people, out of a total of 12,684, who match that criteria. It seems to be listing people who do not have a "Burial" event as well as, presumably, the few dozen people who do have a "Burial" event but with the fields empty. Obviously this is not a major issue, I just thought I would clean up my family file a bit. Thanks again.

[David Walton]

Tried to add this yesterday but ReunionTalk was having server issues. This could be part of your problem:

I suspect that Settings - Fields - Events - Default Person Events has Burial in the default list i.e. every new individual will have a blank Burial event. The above find filter drops those burials with detail leaving the 'empty' burials. It is going to require hands on to find those burials that you want to delete. I would remove Burial from Default Person Events until you are happy with your edited file.

[James Milne]

No, the "Default Person Events" only lists "Birth" and "Death" and has been set this way for many years. Reunion is listing all the people who have a "Burial" event, albeit with blank fields, along with all the people who do not have a "Burial event. Will take this up with tech support if nothing else is forthcoming.

[David Walton]

This will remove empty Burial events:

Use the Finder to duplicate your familyfile. This is a backup.

Start Reunion with the file you want to process and check that Default Person Events does not have Burial in the list.

Export the familyfile, to save only Settings, with a distinctive filename e.g. xxx.familyfile13

File - Export - Reunion Family File and use No people, No sources, No multimedia.

Export the familyfile to save as a ged with a distinctive filename e.g. xxx.ged

Use All People, tick Include multimedia links, Include sources.

Close your familyfile and open your settings file i.e. xxx.familyfile13

A wizard will run then choose to import xxx.ged.

The empty Burial events have been removed.

Your thumbnails will be generated on demand or you can use Settings - Multimedia - Rebuild thumbnails.

[James Milne]

David, thank you for taking the time to come up with this suggestion. My worry would be the export and import of the ged file. I’m afraid I would not be comfortable going through this procedure, even with a backup file. If this is the only solution then I will just delete the unused “Burial” events as I find them. Thanks again.