What Are Person and Family Fields?
Defining New Fields
Field Attributes
Deleting Fields
Default Fields
Locked Fields
Couple Delimiter
Changing or Moving Fields
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Substituting Events (Birth, Death)
Reunion has different categories of fields to record different kinds of information.
Categories |
|
For information about... |
---|---|---|
Person Fields |
events facts notes flags |
a person |
Family Fields |
marriage items events notes |
a couple or a nuclear family |
Source Fields | n/a | sources of data Source fields are explained elsewhere. |
Reunion includes many preformatted fields from which to choose. However, you may need to define new, custom fields to suit the needs of your research. For example, you might need to record a particular type of fact or event that isn't included in the fields provided by Reunion. The fields you define are available for use with any person or family in your family file.
1. Do you need a person field or a family field?
To define a new field, first determine if you need a person
field or family field. Then, choose and click the button.
Next, click the
or button to open the Field Settings window for person fields or family fields.
If the Edit Person or Edit Family panel is open, you can still get to the Field Settings window by clicking the
button and then clicking the button.2. Make sure the desired field doesn't already exist.
Check each subcategory of fields and scroll through the lists to make sure the desired field isn't already defined. For example, if you want to add a new field for Shoe Size, click the
button, and make sure it's not already there (it's not, by the way).
3. Select the type of field.
If not, select the type of custom field you need (event, fact, note, etc.) by clicking the appropriate button, shown above.
4. Click the button.
When you create a new field, a new line is added to the list of fields on the left, and the middle section of the Fields window displays important attributes of the new, highlighted field.
5. Set the attributes for your new field. (See below.)
The middle section of the Field Settings window shows important editable attributes of the field highlighted on the left side. Different types of fields have different attributes.
Name
To name your new field or to rename an existing field, type a name directly into the list. Your field names must be unique within each section.
In certain reports and charts, the title of a field will be abbreviated. Use the abbreviation fields in the middle of the Field Settings window to specify your abbreviations.
Note: Flags only have one abbreviation.
Field Abbreviations in Chart Boxes, the Tree View, and Web Family Cards
The value of the Short Abbreviation field will precede data in chart boxes, the tree view, and web family cards. The following guidelines apply:
Guideline |
Example |
---|---|
If your short abbreviation is a text string that does not end in punctuation, then the delimiter will be a period followed by a space. |
If your short abbreviation for birth date is "bd" then, in a chart box, the line would appear like this: bd. 22 Jan 1948 |
If there is no short abbreviation defined for a field, then there will be no delimiter. |
If your short abbreviation for birth date is empty, in a chart box the line would appear like this: 22 Jan 1948 |
If the short abbreviation ends with punctuation, the delimiter will be a space. The following is considered punctuation: ~ . , ! * & % $ # @ - + : = ∞ |
If your short abbreviation for birth date is "*" (an asterisk), in a chart box the line for birth date would appear like this: * 22 Jan 1948 |
(Events, Flags, and Marriage Items only)
The narrative form refers to the way a field will be expressed in narrative-style reports, such as the Register report. With events and marriage items, you can control the arrangement of sentence items as well as the choice of verb and the preposition that precedes the place element of an event. A sample of your choices will appear in the window.
For flags, you simply define what a "checked" flag field represents. For example, if you have a flag defined as "Immigrant," you could set up the narrative expression as: "One of our immigrant ancestors."
The GEDCOM tag is typically a 4-letter word that identifies the contents of a field. This tag will be used if you export a GEDCOM file and is necessary for any other genealogy software to recognize the field in a GEDCOM file.
A list of field tags used in the GEDCOM specification appears here.
Reunion supports the export of events in GEDCOM via the "EVEN/TYPE" pair of GEDCOM tags. The use of these tags provides better compatibility with other apps. This option is enabled in Settings > Fields > Person > Events, in the GEDCOM tag section.
More information about importing and exporting GEDCOM files can be found in this chapter.
Fonts for Specific Note and Fact Fields
Generally speaking, fonts that appear in the family view are specified by choosing Learn more.
and clicking the icon.Likewise, the font that appears in lists and data entry fields is selected via
, clicking the icon and then using the section.However, you can also select the font used for displaying, editing, and reporting a specific fact or note field. We recommend that you keep this set to Default; however, there may be instances where you are recording information in a fact that requires a particular font (such as Hebrew names) or a note field that requires a particular font. (Examples: you may desire to transcribe documents in their original language, or record Czechoslovakian godparent names using a Czechoslovakian font.)
To do this, choose
. Then use the pop-up menu button.Font choices (other than "Default") made here in the Field Settings will take precedence over the "Font for lists and data entry" in the General Settings and also the font selections in the Family View Settings.
(Birth and Death only)
In certain situations, Reunion allows the substitution of a different field in place of the birth or death date if these fields are missing. Learn more.
Note: | This feature is very powerful and may affect information entered for each person. Deleting fields cannot be undone. We strongly recommend choosing before proceeding. |
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If you need to delete a person field or family field from all records in your family file (as opposed to deleting a field from one person's record)...
Reunion will scan your records to see if the field is used somewhere. If so, the following window will appear...
Be very careful about deleting fields that are used in your family file, as you can't undo this. We recommend making a backup copy of your family file before deleting fields globally.
To see a list of person/family records that use the field you're trying to delete, click the
button (shown in the warning window above). This will open the Usage section of the Field Settings window which contains a list of all the person/family fields in your family file.Note: if you arrive at the Field Settings window via the Edit Person window (clicking the button and then clicking ) you won't be able to delete fields in this scenario. However, by returning to the family view and choosing , etc., as described above, fields can be deleted.
The Usage section of the Field Settings window shows you how often a field is used in your family file. It lists every person and family field in your family file. Each row shows...
To sort the Usage list by any column, click the title of the column. To change the direction of the sort, click the title again.
To search for and create a list of the people/families that use a particular field, select the desired field and click the Results sidebar, wherein you can navigate to and/or mark each person/family for closer examination.
button. A list of people/families that use the selected field will appear in theDefault fields are those that appear automatically in the Edit Person window and Edit Family window when you add a new person or family.
Tip: When you add a field to a record (in the Edit Person window or Edit Family window), you'll have the opportunity to designate the field as a default field. This page explains how, when adding an event field in the Edit Person window, you can designate it as a default event, rather than using the Field Settings window to set up default fields, which is described below.
To change the default fields...
To add a default field...
To remove a default field...
To reorder default fields, you can drag fields up and down in the list on the right.
Locked fields can't be deleted. These include:
When the name of a couple is presented, by default, the delimiter (or character) that appears between the names of the members of the couple is the "&" character. For example...
John BUCK & Jane DOE
To change the couple delimiter, choose
, click the button and then click the button. The button will be at the bottom center of this window.The delimiter selected from the
menu will be used everywhere. For example...There may be situations where you've entered or imported some information and then you change your mind about the usage of a field.
Reunion has tools to help you change fields from one kind to another or move information from one field to another.
"Changing" fields happens one instance at a time, whereas "moving" fields happens for everybody at once.
Changing Fields for One Person
Reunion has the ability to change individual events, facts, and source fields into different events, facts, or source fields on a case-by-case basis. So if you simply need to clean up a few mistakes with regard to field choices, or perhaps perform some minor clean-up after importing a GEDCOM file, then performing such edits one-at-a-time makes sense. This feature appears when Control-clicking fields, as shown in this example.
Visit these manual pages for more details...
Note: | This feature is very powerful and has the potential to alter every person and/or family in your family file. Moving fields cannot be undone. We strongly recommend choosing before proceeding. |
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This feature will move data from one field to another, for all people. Basically, the entries are "cut" from one field and then "pasted" via appending to another field.
To move information from one field to another for every record in your family file...
Information will be moved out of the From field and into the To field. The data that is moved will be cleared from the From field and appended to the To field.
One exception is moving the contents of the Person or Family ID Number fields. In these instances, data is copied into the To field. (It is not "cut" from the Person or Family ID# fields.)
The other exception is moving the contents of any field into the User ID field. In this case, a button appears with the option to "clear" all User ID field numbers before moving the contents of another field into the User ID field.
Moving Data From One Type of Field to Another
Moving data from one type of field to another (for example, from a note field to a fact field) may result in truncation of data if the destination field doesn't have the capacity of the source field. Keep these limitations in mind when moving data from one type of field into another type of field...
Field | Limitation in characters |
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Date | 50 |
Event | 1,000 |
Places | 255 |
Facts | 255 |
Notes | 64,000 |
For example, if you attempt to move the contents of note field ABC into fact field XYZ, and some of your records have more than 255 characters in note field ABC, then those contents will be truncated to 255 characters when they are moved into fact field XYZ.
Examples of Moving Fields
PROBLEM: | SOLUTION: |
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We have entered certain data into a note field, and in each instance the data only required a word or a single line. Now we discover that we can't include note fields in charts, so we need to move the data from the note field into a fact field. We don't want to lose any data. |
Define a new fact field and move the original note field into the new fact field. |
PROBLEM: | SOLUTION: |
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We originally defined a field to record data of type A, but somewhere along the line we began recording type A data in a different field. Now we want to consolidate the fields — we want to use only one field, instead of two, to record type A data. |
Move the field you originally used for type A data into the field you are currently using for type A data. |
"Married Name" is a special field in Reunion.
So, what is the "Married Name?"
In the four situations above, a "married name" is defined by the following rules (in this order)...
Thus, by default, the "married names" of females are automatically provided by Reunion. However, if the auto-provided "married name" is not correct — for example, if a female did not use her husband's surname, or was known by some other surname — then you can add a "Married Name" fact field for that person and enter the surname she did use. And that surname will be the one used as the "married name" for searching, sorting, and in List window columns, as described above (the four bulleted situations at the start of this section).
More Details About the "Married Name"
"Married Name" has special behaviors because in some circumstances it is an "auto populated" field, so to speak, yet there is also a "Married Name" fact field which behaves like any other fact field. The main difference is that the fact field "Married Name" is a field that you, optionally fill in.
In this illustration we are in the Family View Settings and selecting "Married Name" for the children in the family view. Notice that we are not selecting from the Facts submenu. Thus, this field will follow the 3 rules listed above.
However, when selecting fields for the main couple or the parents in the family view, you're actually selecting the fact field called "Married Name." If you haven't entered anything into the fact field "Married Name," then nothing will appear in the fact field in the family view. In this illustration we are in the Family View Settings and selecting "Married Name" for the parents in the family view. Notice that we are selecting from the Facts submenu. Thus, this field will only have a value if you're entered something into the field for a person.
Put another way, when you select the fact field "Married Name" for inclusion in a family view or for a column in the List window, then it will only show content if you've explicitly entered something into the fact field "Married Name." Whereas, when you select "Married Name" as a field to display inside child buttons, notice that you're not selecting it from the "Facts" submenu, and thus it behaves differently — it always gets populated, either with what Reunion thinks is the "married" name (see items 1 and 2 above) or with the content of the fact field "Married Name" if there's a value in that field.
The illustration below shows the pop-up menu that appears when you want to choose a field for a column in the List window. Notice that the special Married Name "auto provided" field appears in the Name submenu. Whereas, the Married Name fact field appears in the Facts submenu. A similar distinction is made in the Family View Settings window.