General Sources and Automatic Sources

What Is a General Source?
How To Enter General Sources
Where Do General Sources Appear?
Setting General Sources Automatically
Automatic Sources
Assigning a General Source to Records Imported in a Gedcom File

Sources: An Overview

Sources Sidebar

What Is a General Source?

In many cases, all the data for a person will be derived from a single source. Rather than clutter your data and reports with source citations in each and every field, you can enter a single source for a person and designate it as a general source. If a source is cited as a general source, it simply means that the source record applies to all information recorded for a person.

General sources apply only to people; they do not apply to marriage, marital status, family events, or family notes.

How To Enter General Sources

General sources are entered like any other source, but only in the Name section of the Edit Person panel.

Where Do General Sources Appear?

In the family view, general source citations appear in a different color than normal source citations. Choosing colors for general (or regular) source citations is explained here.

In all sections of the Edit Person panel, the general source number appears in the center of the bottom bar. And, no matter which section is frontmost (Events, Facts, Notes, or Flags) clicking the text "General Source: x" will bring forth the Name section.

In reports, general source citation numbers appear immediately after a person's name unless that person also has regular sources cited in the Name section of the Edit Person panel. In that case, the regular citations will precede any general source citations.

Setting General Sources Automatically

To assign a general source to a group of people, select Change > Set General Sources. You may apply a general source to all people, all marked people, or all unmarked people. In addition, you may specify source detail that will accompany the general source citation.

Note: This can't be undone!

Use the little "V" menu button to...

Automatic Sources
The Automatic Source feature automatically assigns a general source citation to each new individual entered in the family file. This is helpful when entering lots of people from a single source (such as a family Bible or a book).

Automatic sources only apply to people; they do not apply to marriage, marital status, family events, or family notes. Automatic sources do not apply when information is updated — only when new people are entered in the family file.

To use the Automatic Source feature...

  1. Open the Edit Person panel for any person.
  2. Click the Name section.

The Automatic Source button appears near the lower-right corner of the Edit Person panel.

Clicking the Automatic Source button button reveals a menu with these features...

Tip: In the Edit Person > Name panel, a source can be dragged from either of the Source Citations lists and dropped into the Automatic Source box. This will designate the dragged source as an Automatic source. So if you frequently add a source citation and then realize you'd like to set it as an Automatic source, this feature will make that process very easy.

Assigning a General Source to Records Imported in a GEDCOM File

The Automatic Source menu button appears when you import a GEDCOM file. This lets you automatically assign one new or existing general source to each person imported in the GEDCOM file. A good opportunity to use this feature is when you receive a GEDCOM file from a collaborator and you wish to denote the source of each incoming record (perhaps the source would be something like "Uncle Albert's GEDCOM File, April 1 2021").