FTM 2009 - BMD certificates

[Guest]

Hi
I'm finding your guide very useful Glen - many thanks.

I am however getting in an almightly muddle ! I feel like I'm making alot of hard and repetative task work of this. or maybe thats how FTM works.

Ultimately what I want out the back is the ability to be able to create a report which tells me who I have actually BMD certificates for and who I've found in which census. My problem is how best to do this.

I have set up a birth certificate GRO 'Source'. I took a person and :

- scanned the birth certificate , file name smith john 1867 birth
- copied the certificate into media and catergorised it under 'birth'
- went to person in FTM 09 linked their birth fact with the birth certificate media
- then linked the person with the birth certificate media (so I can see all media against one person without clicking through each fact)
- then I linked their birth fact to the birth certificate generic source
- typed into the citation detail the file name (ie: smith john 1867 birth) so the citation list wasn't blank and I can see the list.

This seems very labour intense and leaves me still wondering how on earth I get my report of those people I have birth certs for (and those not) as well as DM and census !

I feel paper in boxes was far less stressful . Can anyone steer me ?

Cheers
j

[Crafty Sue]

Hope this helps Jon.....

If you want a report that shows certain facts, ie BMD certs you have, go to 'publish' and choose person reports, then custom reports. In here you can choose what you want to include and other options.

There may well be another way, I'm still finding new things in FTM 2009 after 6 months! But this is the way I do it.

[DevonJon]

Thanks. Yes I've gone through that bit and expect that one day thats the one I click to get the report. However at the moment it won't help. I assume census will be same methodology so lets stick to birth example.

That report appears to be customisable for facts only - not media or sources.

If I click 'birth' fact clearly all I get is a string of all the births for all the people on the system - not just the birth certificate validated people.

So what I need to know is how to get a birth fact identifiable in that report as only those with supporting certifcates.

I fear that what I need to do is create a new fact called birth certified, convert all 'birth' facts in my database to 'birth uncertified' then create birth certified facts for just those with certificates. And then do same for death, marriage and all census. Which leads me to think whether I'll just stick to being happy with the pile of paper in corner of room.....sigh

J

[Crafty Sue]

Yes, Sorry Jon. Forgot to mention that I've added facts to cover this, which I use when I have a certificate. ie fact: Birth certificate - I then put in the discription 'copy on file'

I still use the 'standard' birth fact, putting in the date/place etc and source, for all people in my tree.

I also do a similar thing for graves I've found and taken photo's of.

Not good at explaining, hope you understand this!

[Crafty Sue]

Just reread your post!

I think if you change all your births to uncertified & certified you may have problems if you want to upload your tree to the internet.

I'd leave them as they are and just add extra facts: 'birth certificate' marriage certificate' & death certificate'

[DevonJon]

ah I see. No that makes sense. Good explanation. We do after all have Plain English over here. I often wonder why the 'inventors' of 2 of the most complicated and statistically boggling sports (aka baseball n American football) have been trusted to put together a user friendly geneology database !

Looking back to my original post - my 6 point task has just become 7 point as I create and then allocate a new birth cert record (and death and marriage and census) for each. think i might take up flower arranging instead

Cheers
J

[Crafty Sue]

lol Jon.

I have a census fact for each of the census (1841-1911) allocated to each person. Plus anything else I find, I usually add a new fact to cover it. Easier to do as you go along, much trickier if you're having to redo all the tree.

But I think most people do things in their own way, whatever suits them. So there's not really a right or wrong way. Perhaps someone else will reply and give you some more ideas!