globally add and/or edit source fields

[Derrick]

1. I would like to globally edit the source fields. In the past, for instance, I never used a URL field for books; now I would like to edit all of the existing sources that are books to add in a field for a URL. Can I do this?

2. A second question: I seem to have ended with one field that says "Compiler or Editor" and another that says "Editor/Compiler." Both use the same GEDCOM code, EDTR. So, can I merge these somehow?

Both of these are the result of incrementally changing the way that I record and cite sources over time; I export the database to TNG, and I'm struggling to regularize years of citations.

Thanks - Derrick

[Deb]

Try the following to resolve both issues...

1. Open your family file.
2. Export a GEDCOM file from your family file as it is now by choosing File -> Export -> GEDCOM. Be sure to include all people, all sources, etc.
3. With that same family file open, choose File -> Save a Backup Copy and click Save. (I'm recommending this just in case this process does not work as intended.) Also, as an extra safety measure, if you use Time Machine, start a new Time Machine backup.
4. Close the family file that is open and open the "backup" just saved.
5. Delete all people from it by choosing File -> Delete -> Unmarked People and click "Delete." (If some people are marked, follow up by choosing File -> Delete -> Marked People and clicking Delete.)
6. Delete all sources from the Sources sidebar. To do this open the Sources sidebar and select "Unused" from the show menu at the top. Afterward, click "Delete" at the top.
7. Next, choose Reunion -> Settings and click on Sources. Customize each of the Source Templates as you are wanting to see them. (I.e., add the URL field to the appropriate source templates and remove one of these fields...
Compiler or Editor
Editor/Compiler
...leaving you with just one of them in moving forward.
8. Import the GEDCOM file into this family file.

Does that resolve both issues?

Please let us know.

Thanks

[Derrick]

Well that's interesting! Yeesh.

A few things this shows.

1. I could not delete everyone from the file at once; it seems that I cannot delete more than a percentage until there were about 300 or 500 people left.
2. So, what I’d recommend is that after all are deleted, that you save that empty family file. I did this so I could experiment with what happened when changes were made when I imported the GEDCOM back to the file.
2. This works to let me edit the fields, to get rid of/merge the multiple compiler/editor fields with the same GEDCOM code.
3. It got rid of all the empty fields in the existing citations, whether or not they were in a template anymore. So, the books do not all now have a new field. They only have fields with data in them. That’s ok; I can update that as I move forwards.
4. One unconnected thing, about “Connections.” Whereas before in my Notes a connection’s name was in blue and underlined in the text, the color and link are gone. Instead, this appears after a space at the bottom of the page, with the name linked:
1 connection...
connection: Anne Mishe

Derrick

[Deb]

4. One unconnected thing, about "Connections"; Whereas before in my Notes a connection's name was in blue and underlined in the text, the color and link are gone. Instead, this appears after a space at the bottom of the page, with the name linked:
1 connection...
connection: Anne Mishe

I was not anticipating this as connections were not mentioned. But, I see what you are seeing with the connections.

I'm not sure if anything can be done about this. However, I'll pass a note along to our engineering staff to see if anything can be done.

[Derrick]

It was just an observation after the fact that I thought you should know. I only use it once or twice in the file. Thank you for your help!

[Derrick]

A couple of other things happened as well. All of the "notes" for my sources were moved to "Free-Form text." And all of notes attached to places were combined, so that every place with a note attached now has all of the notes attached in a long file.

I think this might be because a lot of these have the same GEDCOM tags, even if they are attached to different items in the database. I happen to use "CONF" for "Confederate soldier" in flags, which is also the Event tag for "Confirmation." The flags were deleted; this is not something I usually export anyway. The same has happened with a few other Flags for reasons I can't figure out. So, this has been a series of experiments here to see what works.

[Derrick]

I'm going back to my save and fixing this from there; it does also help me to find a lot of errors .

One thing that's good about Reunion is that I can assign different Source Field names to the same GEDCOM code. I like the benefits inside of Reunion for that.

Maybe, though, to help with the conflation of Fields that can happen with GEDCOM exports, it would be a help to either 1) Give a warning if try to use one GEDCOM code to more than one field name; or, maybe more optimally, 2) there could be a way to list of ALL GEDCOM code usage in one list. Right now I can't look at codes use for people/events etc. next to sources to check.