Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Creating a Specific Source List Report in Family Tree Maker 2012

UPDATE:  OK, there is a much easier way to do this, but it is still imperfect.  See http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/09/update-creating-specific-source-list.html.

I posted Creating a Specific Source List Report in RootsMagic 5 yesterday, in which I wanted a list of ALL source citations for one specific source - in this case, the Vital Records book for Westminster, Massachusetts.  I was able to create a list of 171 source citations for the specific book so that I could add or edit the source citation details.

In my post, I noted that I hoped that Russ Worthington would do something similar using Family Tree Maker 2012.  Russ explored the "Source Bibliography" report and the "Source Usage Report" in his post FTM2012 - Source and Citation Clean Up.  In the latter, he showed just one source and one citation in what was probably a long list of source citations for many Sources.

I decided to follow Russ's example, so I opened Family Tree Maker 2012 and figured out one way to do the task, with the help of the Help menu item for "Source Usage Report," "To select the individuals to include," and "Filter individuals" pages.


Here is the process I used to create a "Source Usage Report" for one specific source (the Westminster vital records book):


1)  In the "Publish" workspace, and the "Source Reports" link, four report types are available. 



2)  I selected the "Source Usage Report" on the screen above, and clicked on the "Create Report" button.  Based on past experience, I quickly clicked on the "Selected individuals" radio button on the right panel in the "Individuals to include" area.  Then I clicked on the "Individuals to include" button and the "Filter Individuals" window opened, but with no persons selected.  To select persons, I clicked on the "Filter in >" button in the center of the panel, and the "Filter Individuals by Criteria" window opened:


For my Filter, I chose "Vital facts,"  Search where = "Birth," and selected "Place" (the list appears when you select a fact type), selected "Contains," Value = "Westminster" and  clicked on "OK.

3)  The list of Persons with a Place = "Westminster" in their Facts appeared:


There were 170 of them.

4)  I clicked on "OK" and the "Source Usage Report" for the 170 persons appeared:


The screen above is page 1 of a 46 page report.  The first source listed is for the California Death Index (I'm assuming because the person listed died in California, but had a Westminster place name in her list of Facts).

Not all of the items on the list were "Birth" Facts - there were Name, Birth, Marriage and Death Facts in the "Source Usage Report."

The sources are listed in alphabetical order (with quote marks ahead of the letter A).  I need to search for the Westminster vital records book down the list.

5)  Eventually, down on page 31, the listings for the Source of interest, the Westminster vital records book, began:


The source citations include Source Title, the Repository, the Citation for the specific detail citation (e.g., the page number), and the entries with that source citation.

There are 10 pages of source citations for the Westminster vital records book.  I could print just those pages out and use them to add or to improve my source citation details.

This task was much more difficult to perform in Family Tree Maker 2012 than in RootsMagic 5, in my opinion.  The "Source Usage Report" in FTM 2012 did not meet my needs to list source citations for a specific Source.  I had to cobble together a process and accept the output in order to obtain a usable report.  This is a report that I really want to use, and I'm sure other researchers need it too.

Ideally, Family Tree Maker would add a Source Report for a specific Source.  Is it hiding in the list of reports in the "Publish" workspace, but I cannot find it?  If it is, would someone please clue me in?  

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/09/creating-specific-source-list-report-in.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

6 comments:

Rosemary said...

Randy,

It is easier to do what you want from the Source Workspace and you don't get all the extraneous data.

1) Click on Source Workspace (Ctl-5 shortcut.
2) Make sure you have the sources listed by title (top left under Source Groups).
3) Select the Source you're interested in.
4) Click on the Print icon up in the top right of the page and select "Print Selected Source Usage Report".

Cousin Russ said...

Randy,

How about this one?

http://ftmuser.blogspot.com/2012/09/ftm2012-specific-sourse-useage-report.html

Sorry I missed, exactly, what you wanted. Is this any better?

Russ

Cousin Russ said...

Randy,

My most recent post, is the Source Usage Report. It lists what Facts taken from that Source, but does NOT show the Citations. That is what the purpose of the First response to your Roots Magic 5 Report was about.

I did NOT want to get involved with the Filter Feature for focusing the Source and it's citations looking for things like missing page number in the Citations. Just "printing" or looking at that specific Source, is what I was proposing. That allowed me to clean up that Source and it's citations.

I may re-look at the Filter Issue, but filtering on Source information.

Russ

Cousin Russ said...

Randy,

The Filter doesn't work, because it is an Individual Filter not a Source or Citation filter.

Russ

Randy Seaver said...

Thank you Rosemary and Russ. This specific source report provided what I wanted, but it didn't select just the specific source. It selected persons that had Facts that used the source.

Rosemary said...

No Randy, but it was the closest I could come to it. I really wish there were some way of filtering citation text but I haven't managed to get anything to do that yet.