Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Use of Filter - update

Here is an update based on the previous two messages:

How to identify Civil War Family Members

How to Identify Civil War era members of your tree (revised)

I wanted to understand what was going on a little what the difference was.


Created a test file with three (3) names. no other information. Using the same steps in the previous blog posts, the use of the Birth fact, "is blank" did not remove anyone.

I then added a birth place to one of the three. Same result, no one filtered out.

To make sure I wasn't missing anything, I filtered out Birth Place is not blank, and the person I had the birth place was filtered out.

Then, Birth Date is Blank, filtered out the same person. So far, it appears that this "logic" works when there is a Birth Fact in use for the person.

Going back to the see how to Filter Out anyone not using the Birth Fact, can be filtered out by using the Birth fact, Any Data, Does Not Exist will Filter Out that condition. Meaning not using the Birth Fact.

The observation from all of this is that the fact must be used to be Filtered Out. Or, If the fact isn't in use, then the conditions in the Filter will not evaluate the conditions in the Filter



Copyright © 2011 by H R Worthington

6 comments:

  1. Hmm, that's not intuitive. I would've done as you've done. Have you asked anyone with any say in such things what they were thinking?

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  2. Rosemary,

    I have had some discussions with some colleagues and we all came to the same conclusion, with one exception.

    I wanted to follow up with my testing, as this isn't the first time I have seen this type of issue (fact is blank). So, my conclusion here, is only my observation, not backed up by anyone official.

    Thank you,

    Russ

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  3. Thank you for posting this. Not only have I filtered for Civil War veterans, I've filtered for those men for whom I might find WWI Draft Registration Cards, which are a wealth of information. I have WWI Draft cards for only about a third of the 78 that made it through the filter.

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  4. Elizabeth,

    Great and Thank you.

    I used my Civil War filter to remind me who I might look for when researching Civil War Pension files which also contain a wealth of information.

    Good luck,

    Russ

    ReplyDelete
  5. I have run into the same problem trying to find people with blank records (who needs a birth date). If there is any information in the fact it will work, but otherwise the fact doesn't exist. So, I do the reverse. First, I open the filter and add everyone. then I filter out anyone where the birth (any data) exists. I'm left with those without any birth information.

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  6. anonymous,

    Sorry, you didn't sign your name.

    Have you looked at the Data Error Report recently?

    Russ

    ReplyDelete

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