Monday, July 15, 2013

Do RootsMagic 6 Source Template Citations Transfer to FamilySearch Family Tree?

I posted about using RootsMagic 6 to transfer source citations to FamilySearch Family Tree in Sources Can Now Be Interchanged Between RootsMagic 6 and FamilySearch Family Tree (posted 20 June 2013) and in Checking How Sources From RootsMagic 6 Transfer to FamilySearch Family Tree (posted 8 July 2013).

In the latter post, all of the source citations that I transferred were "free-form" source citations (meaning I used the "free-form" source template with only one field for the Master Source element and one field for the Citation Detail element.  The actual source citation (with the two elements together) transferred well, except for the limitations noted in the second post.

What about source citations crafted using the source templates in RootsMagic 6 that were derived from Elizabeth Shown Mills' book, Evidence! Explained?  I recently blogged about the Online Newspaper Image source citation in Creating a Source Citation for an Online Newspaper Image in Family Tree Maker 2012 - UPDATED! (posted 11 July 2013), and noted that I wanted to make sure source citations crafted using the RootsMagic 6 source templates also transferred to FamilySearch Family Tree without a problem.

1)  In RootsMagic 6, I clicked on the FamilySearch icon for my grandfather, Frederick Walton Seaver), and then on the "Sources" tab.  The comparison of RootsMagic sources and Family Tree sources appeared.

I scrolled down to the "Fitchburg Sentinel newspaper ..." source citation in the left-hand column and checked that box, which opened the "What do you want to do with this RootsMagic source?" window:




I clicked to attach this source to his Name and to his Death Fact.

2)  After clicking "OK," the list of Family Search Sources on the right-hand side of the screen was refreshed:


The screen above shows the newly added source added to the FamilySearch Family Tree.

3)  In the FamilySearch Family Tree, I navigated to Frederick Walton Seaver, and opened his Person Profile.  Here's the top of it:


Further down the web page is the "Sources" section.  The "Fitchburg Sentinel newspaper ... " source title was the first one listed (I think it puts the last added source first, but I may be wrong).  I clicked on the source title and expanded the view:



The FamilySearch Family Tree source citation for the specific source says:

"Deaths: Frederick W. Seaver," obituary, <i>Fitchburg (Mass.) Sentinel</i>, 13 March 1942, page 9, column 2; digital image, <i>Ancestry.com</i> (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 17 November 2006).

That is exactly the same as the source citation created in RootsMagic 6 for this source, except for the italicizing of the newspaper name and the website name. Those are indicated by <i> in the source citation above. I noted that in the third blog post noted above.

I wondered if the Tags for the Name and the Death Events also transferred. I clicked on the "Tags" link and saw:



The Tags transferred without an overt act on my part (other than what I did in the first screen above). I checked the Name and the Death Event, and the Sources were listed for this newspaper clipping.

4) My conclusion is that source citations in RootsMagic 6 created using the source templates transfer to FamilySearch Family Tree well, subject to the same limitations noted in the third post above. That is good news.

Where is the problem with the italics? Is it because RootsMagic uses the <i> in their code that transfers, or is it in FamilySearch where it cannot read the italics directly or can't implement the italics indicator?

The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/07/do-rootsmagic-6-source-template.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

1 comment:

SearchShack said...

Thanks for doing all these tests and showing the examples. I was waiting to transfer source information until I could do some verification and voila - your post appeared!

I think the [b] function is from Roots Magic (even this software won't let me use a < around the b. When I copy a source from Family Search or Ancestry that happens to be in bold print into the Research Log, I see the source in bold. If I want to sort my sources (which I do to prevent duplicate work), I end up with a [b] (with a < in front of the sources that were in bold. Then I have to go back into RootsMagic and remove the bold sources so they sort correctly.