Family Tree Maker Hints – Burial Date

I have been working on a family book for my sister-in-law. Actually, it’s an updated version of the book I created last year. Last year, in the spring, we started on her mother’s maiden name family tree. Someone gave her a binder with computer pages that looked like it was generated through Family Tree Maker. This book appeared to be created in the early 2000’s.

Anyway, my sister-in-law was in charged of the family reunion which they held in August of last year. Thus, I had a pressing time table. I didn’t get as much time as I would like to proof read the book. I created the book using the plugin “Family Book Creator.”

In my opinion, FBC is a wonderful tool for generating books. It has many options and I have only used it a couple of times, as an experiment to see what it does and it was quite a few years ago.

Anyway, fast forward to today. I have entered corrections and new information into my FTM software and generated the book. Even though FBC has many options, there are some things I would like to do differently. Such as, the graphical tree that it can include, I like it for the primary person and the 1st generation of children, however, I wish I could turn it off for the remainder of the book. My work around, I manually remove all the graphical trees that I don’t want in the Word document that it creates. This reduces the size of my book, dramatically.

Thus, before I go to all the work of removing these trees, I thought perhaps I need to really look over the book I created last year and see if there are any obvious things I need to fix.  

One of the things that really popped out at me was that sometimes the burial information would print before the death information. Being a programmer, I quickly saw that it was controlled by the date of the two events. Therefore, if I inputted a death date of Oct 24, 2021 and a burial date of Oct 30, 2021 then it printed in the correct order. However, if I inputted a death date of Oct 24, 2021 and a burial date of 2021 or Oct 2021, then it would sort the burial first, based on date and print that information in the paragraph first. It was like a “spoiler alert” because I reported where they are buried and then tell you about their death.

To fix this problem: Create a Filter

I returned to FTM. The challenge is how do I identify all the people who have incomplete death dates. On FTM, located beneath the Index, you will find a Filter option. When I click on that option, a filter screen will display. I click on Filter In…> and then click the All Facts option.  I use the drop-down arrow next to the Search where and select Burial. Then, next to Burial using the drop-down arrow I select Is not blank, then Okay. Next click Apply. The index will now only display those people who match my filter.   Then I click on the first person in the Index.

This person should have a Burial date. I will skip those that have a complete date and clear out the date for those people who have no date. Thus, I can use the down arrow to move through the list. I use my mouse to highlight the Burial date for incomplete dates and then press the delete key. I will need to click on that person’s name again in the index. I keep repeating this process until I am through the list of names. 

When I am done with this list, uncheck the Apply and the filter will go away and you are left with your normal Index view.

I will be sharing more hints as I work my way through the book. Next I will share a how to identify all those people who have a burial place but no Cemetery location, if you record the Cemetery name in the Description field.

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!

Update to Creating a Tree for RootsTech Relatives

Last year I started a stand-alone tree for my RootsTech Relatives. This year I decided that I wanted to repeat the process, however, I decided I would update what I had started last year.

My prior post “Creating a Tree for RootsTech Relatives” explains how I created the tree.

For my matches, in the FSID custom fact which stands for FamilySearch ID, I had typed Match. So, the first thing I did was use the Edit – Find and Replace function to find all the occurrences of “Match” and replace it with Match – 2022.

I had a smart filter that included all FSID contains Match, I modified it to contains 2022 and renamed the filter to 2022 Matches. I had 559 inputted matches from last year.

Then I created a new smart filter that included all FSID contains 2023 and named that filter 2023 Matches.

So, if I apply the new smart filter, the index will limit the view to only show those individuals who are my 2023 Matches. I use this view to verify that I have entered all the matches that FamilySearch has reported have joined. 

I have noticed that last year, it didn’t always show the last deceased person’s info for my relatives. This year it is giving me that information, and I am able to update my previous matches.

If this year’s match was previously entered from last year, I modify the FSID field that contains Match – 2022 to Match – 2022, 2023. 

If this year’s match is a newly entered match, then I enter Match – 2023

I have found some matches who have changed their username as in Shannonhill54 is now known as Shannon. Therefore, in the birth description, I entered 2022 = Shannonhill54. I think their former username might be their legal name and thus I don’t want to lose that name.

Thus, when I click “View Relatives”, I start at the top of my list and I type in their username into my FTM Index, if I find them, I modify their entry and verify that it’s the same. I also add those deceased people that last year wasn’t being displayed to me. If they are a new match, I start at the common ancestor and follow the path down to them, entering those individuals who are not already in my tree. Many in the lines of my matches are already in my tree and thus the process goes pretty fast.

Currently, I have very few matches, thus, keeping up with this project this year has been relatively easy (knock on wood). 

Also, it seemed that my matches are pretty low, so I made sure to look at how I am connected to my relatives on the shared tree in FamilySearch. I wanted to make sure my known ancestors were showing connected to me. I did find that my 3rd Great Grandfather wasn’t attached to his wife, so I added him.

The purpose of this Relatives tree is for giving me another hint. Perhaps, I have a DNA Match that I don’t recognize the name in my main tree, I could see if they are in this Relatives tree and then research to see if the lineage is accurate. Also, it has extended many of my branches, I can see if that new ancestor is really the parent of my proven ancestor. I might be able to extend my tree back a generation or two or more.

Have fun at RootsTech this year, whether you attend in person or virtually.