2 replies to this topic

[Stewartrb]

I have used several genealogy software programs over the years. (Well, two primarily: TMG (to 8.0) then FH 5.0.)

I notice I have a lot of Events that have the data I wanted filed under Note, and it should be under Description in order for the sentence to read right.

I like the idea of having a Note entry, in addition to the "event text" entry, so I don't want to cheat and simply put the Note and Description both in the sentence.

Is this something I'd have to resolve in SQL?

[TomH]

You cannot put the Note in the sentence template. You can only opt whether Note is included in the report. The sentence template outputs only to narrative reports. The Description field is outputted in both narrative and list reports, within the sentence defined by the template for the former.

If you duplicate the Note content in the Description, you could end up with repetition. So the title of your topic sounds correct.

A potential problem could be the length of the Note text - while the Description field in RootsMagic does not have an inherently low size limit, it is not intended to accommodate very much (viz the field is one line high) and exporting to other applications can result in truncations as short as 96 characters.

I don't think there is a way within RM to batch move Note content to the Description so it would have to be done with something else. Yes, it could be done with SQLite which is probably the best way to do it. It might be possible to operate on a GEDCOM with a text editor having regular expression search and replace or write a script in some basic (BASIC!) language; import the modified GEDCOM to a new database.

[Nettie]

In the past, there was a time, when we did not have the research notes in the citation manager and most of us put the notes in the Note button area. Then change came so we could choose whether to put the Research notes in the Narrative Report and a lot of us had to move them or have duplicates in the Report. One in the Note field and the same information in the Research Notes. Personally I like the Research Notes and have been moving them into the right source and Research notes for that source.
When it was in the Note, unless you stated where you got it, there was no way to source it.