Thursday, April 6, 2017

Time out for a little Database Clean Up

While we await the arrival of FTM2017, I am taking some time to do some database clean up. I do a lot of file clean up and file management all of the time. For example, I run the Undocumented Fact Report daily. I want to make sure that ALL of my Facts have a citation. I run the Data Error Report frequently, usually daily, I want to keep that clean. I make sure that ALL of my Source Groups are using the Template Feature. Of course, Compacting and Backing Up my file frequently.

I am thanking this down time to go a little deeper into the Sources Workspace. It was a long time before I found this, and I am guessing that others have missed it as well.

To start with, I went to the Plan Workspace, and clicked on the More Button for more File Statistics.

There are two items here that I want to talk about. There are 36 Sources in this file, but am only using the Template in 35 of them. I missed on. Will fix that shortly. This means that when I add information into Family Tree Maker, I put the Source of the information into one of the Template features in the Source Workspace and this is one of the areas I really focus on when I merge records into the program. Many blog posts on this topic. I will deal with that source group at another time.

When I look at the Sources Workspace, All source citations in the List By, 



I have 521 Citations. These two numbers match up, as expected.

There is a dropdown menu where we  have 4 choices. The All source citations, Source Title, Repository, and Person.



When I am working in the Sources Workspace I select and use the Source Title option. It's easy for me to find the Source Group I want to work on.

I want to look at all of the Source Groups by PERSON. I then can look at what Source Groups are Linked to that person. For this Clean Up, I want to scroll down to the Bottom of the list to find the UnLinked Source Groups.



When I select that, I see that I have 0 (zero / no) Source Groups not linked to a Person. That is what I want to see ALL of the time. All of my Sources are linked to someone's Fact.



One down, two to go.

Now I selected List By Source Title, scroll down to the bottom, again to Unlinked, This will give me a list of any Source Titles, and again All Source Groups have Citations.



2 down, 1 to go

The List by Repository has a problem, or ate list one problem.

This specific database had totally relied on Online Records. Any Record found Online, should NOT have a Repository. This List By should not have any repositories listed. There are two Source Groups and the first one has three Citations that have a Repository of Ancestry.com.



I won't go into this now, but when I looked at the Source Group, Template, I determined that I had selected an Incorrect Template, one that called for a Repository. I will blog about how I resolved that in the near future.


Also,that "FamilySearch" Repository, when I looked at it, was NOT using a Source Template. That is the difference of 1 in the File Statistic screen at the top of this blog post. 

I have two clean up items to do:

  • Select the correct Source Template for the Ancestry.com Source Group
  • Put the FamilySearch Source Group into a Source Template



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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

4 comments:

  1. I have a Fact “Find-A-Grave” with the Description being the Memorial ID.

    I have a Source Group “Find A Grave, Compiler” that contains 90 Find-A-Grave, Complier Source Citations for these facts. No repository is specified for this source. My citations are based on “Genealogy Do Over (Go Over) Find A grave Citations” Aug 28, 2018.

    On Apr 6, 2017 “Time out for a little Database Clean Up” you discussed unlinked Source Groups. In an effort to clean up my file, I found the 90 Find-A-Grave source citations also under Unlinked Repository.

    Should I assign these to Ancestry.com since Find-A-Grave is owned by them or set up a new Repository?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jimmy,

      NO Online Resource / Source has a Repository.

      Russ

      Delete
  2. I have 3,699 citations with ancestry.com as the repository. I agree with you that the online sources shouldn't have a repository. Do you know of a way to mass change them? I see that I can put in different text for the repository name, but that, of course, doesn't resolve the issue :-(

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown,

    Are you using the Source Template feature ?

    No, there isn't a bulk reformatting of Sources not Citations.

    Suggest that you look at the Source Template feature.

    Rusd

    ReplyDelete

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