Monday, October 1, 2012

Creating a Specific Place List Report in RootsMagic 5

Last week, I discussed how to create a specific Source Usage List Report in RootsMagic 5, Family Tree Maker 2012, and Legacy Family Tree 7.5 genealogy software.  My purpose was so that I could determine which source citations need to be improved to (near) Evidence! Explained quality.   The lists created by RootsMagic and Legacy were fairly easy to generate and were useful to me; the list in Family Tree Maker was more difficult to create and was useful.

This week, I want to create a specific Place List Report in each software program listed so that I can determine which Facts in my database for a specific place do not have a Source Citation.  I want to search the available resources and add source citations for those Facts.

I will use Sudbury, Middlesex county, Massachusetts as my test Place.  I have already made a Source Usage report for the Vital Records of Sudbury book.  Ideally, I want a Place Usage report that lists these items, ideally in columns:

*  Place Name
*  Persons
* Fact Type
* Fact Date
* Fact Source Citation

In RootsMagic 5, I did not find a report that would provide all of those items.  I can use the "Place List Report" and select one place for the list.  I could select the "Fact List" report and select the "Facts without Sources" report, but I can't limit that to one place.  If I understood how to make a Custom Report, p[erhaps I could create what I want.  I've tried, but have not yet succeeded (not even close!).

So, using the "Place List Report" option, I clicked on the "Reports" menu item and selected "Lists" and then "Place List:"


After clicking on "Place List," the "Report settings" window opened and I selected "Print events in a single place" from the dropdown menu.  The other options were "Print all places in database," "Print all places (including events)," and "Print events near a place."


After choosing "Print events in a single place," I then selected the Place in the "Place list" window:


After selecting Sudbury from the "Place List," I was back to the "Report Settings" window.  I did not check any of the boxes because I didn't want any of the options.  What I wanted was a check box for "Print source citation."

I clicked on the "Generate Report" button and saw the "Place List Report:"


The resulting 15 page, single-spaced report.  The Page Layout has Date, Event and Person/Couple columns.  The Page Layout cannot be changed as far as I can tell.

I would really like to have the option to have this list in Person order rather than Date order because that would be much easier to cross-reference with my Source Usage Lists for the specific place.

My ideal Place Usage List would have another column for the Source Citation.  That would eliminate the need to cross-reference with a Source Usage List.

I will look at Family Tree Maker 2012 and Legacy Family Tree 7.5 in the next few days.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/10/creating-specific-place-list-usage.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

4 comments:

Celia Lewis said...

Wonderful details of this search, Randy. I appreciate seeing the steps, following along in my own tree, as tried to see how this could be useful to me in planning research. Oh my - I'm totally embarrassed at how non-standardized my place names are in my tree! We won't even talk about my non-standardized sources and citations. I did so much work before I truly knew what I was doing. This simply reminds me yet again to start cracking! Thanks again.

Andrea said...

Custom reports in RM have been a struggle for me since the beginning so I share your pain & avoid them as much as possible. I've had some luck, however, creating subsets of the database by creating groups of people who meet specific search criteria. You can then run RM reports on the group instead of everyone in your database or selecting individuals from the list each time.

As a test, I created a group for individuals who had any fact place containing "Los Angeles" AND any fact source that "does not exist" using dropdown menus using Find in the Select People option. I then ran a list individuals report to display facts sorted by person. See "Working with Groups" in the help section for more info.

I'm looking forward to reading your evaluations of Legacy and FTM for this type of report. Thank you for investigating these issues--it's a big help.

Nettie said...

Any of the reports can be saved as a rtf form and come up in a word processing file and THEN you can sort or change them. I do that all the time.

Laura said...

Restate your purpose to "I want any facts without a source for a specific place".
Go to Reports, List, Fact list
Choose Fact without sources from the dropdown menu
Select from a list from the People to include menu
Mark group and select People by data fields
Search Any fact, place, contains, [name of place]
The report gives Name, Record No., Event, Date, Place
Other facts and places that don't have a source in a person's records are also shown in that report.