Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Creating and Using a Source Fact List in RootsMagic 4

As I've been editing my master Sources in RootsMagic 4, I'm finding that I also need to edit my Source Details - the ones that note volumes, page numbers, census pages, etc.  My earlier posts about RootsMagic are here.

How can I obtain a list of the Facts that use the master Sources so that I can edit my Source Details?  Ideally, there would be a button that shows a list of the Facts, and then I could click on each Fact to edit the Source Detail.  Sounds simple, right?  Here's the screen for a specific master Source:


There is no magic button on this screen that I can see.  I checked the RootsMagic 4 Help! index and search capability and found no way to have a list like I want.

There is, of course, a way to make a Fact list using the Reports > Lists > Source List  option:


That opens a "Report Settings" menu where I can choose between "Print all sources" and "Print a single source:"



Well, I have over 650 master sources, and a list of all 20,000+ Facts will likely create a report that is about 1,000 pages long.  That's probably unwieldy - especially to find a specific master Source.  I decided to select a single source:


I chose the 1900 U.S. Census, for which I have 227 citations at this time.  Here's the start of the 9 page list:


I saved the list as an RTF file to my RootsMagic computer folder, and it opened in WordPad in a separate window.  How can I use it?  One way is to put the WordPad file window side-by-side with my RootsMagic 4 file window on my screen, for example:


Here I can edit my Source Detail information on the RootsMagic 4 screen.  I can also highlight the completed Source Detail on the WordPad window so that I know that I've completed that one.  It's a work-around, but it's fairly easy to do and use.  226 Source Details for the 1900 census to go!  Then 649+ more master Sources to do. 

A magic button that provides a Fact list for a specific master Source would be helpful, but I can work with the one-at-a-time list using my work-around method above.

For reference purposes, I note that Family Tree Maker 2011 and Legacy Family Tree 7.5 can access a Fact list for a specific master Source, and the user can click on the Source Detail to edit that detail, without creating a Source List report. 

The Seaver Source Citation Saga continues...

1 comment:

EricJ said...

Hi Randy, Nice post of one of the same things I'd like to see as I'm doing the same sort of updating. I use the same work-around but with a slight shortcut: You can "print" directly from the Master Source list, and it will have the selected master already chosen with "Print a single source". :)