I agree with your suggestion about the use of the Notes fields and I tend to use them quite a bit. However, there is an obscure bug in their use that could present a minefield of disaster unless the user knows about this. This obscure bug involves the use of “Alt.<Event>” events such as “Alt.Birth” or “Alt.Death”. For example, whenever I come across such a bit of data that presents an alternate date of birth, I create such an Alt.Birth event and then I use the Notes tab of that alternate event to add my notes or a description of why this date may differ from the main Birth event and other explanations. In a few cases, I’ve had a long text note that came via email and it was copied and pasted into the Notes tab of the alternate event.
Now, here is where the bug occurs. Imagine that as one’s research continues, you confirm that the alternate event has the correct data but you’d still like to keep the other event just for continued research reasons. Legacy makes it easy for you to just select the Alternate Event, then click on Options, and then select “Swap with <Event> Information”. Beware! If you have more than 255 characters in your Alternate Event Notes tab, and you swap the events, you will lose all your notes beyond the first 255 characters. In other words, the transfer of text is limited to only 255 characters. If you can remember this bombshell, I’d suggest you first copy the lengthy notes to the General Notes area, complete the Swap, and then copy the lengthy notes back to where they got cut off. I don’t know if this bug still exists in v8 but it was still there in the last v7. Will it ever get fixed? Maybe, but I’m not holding my breath because there seems to be an infestation of other bugs in v8 that are more pressing than this minor issue. Brian in CA From: Michele/Support [mailto:mich...@legacyfamilytree.com] Sent: Monday, January 27, 2014 4:48 PM To: legacyusergroup@LegacyUsers.com Subject: [LegacyUG] Notes There were a couple of posts about how many characters/words the notes fields hold. The question was answered pretty quickly and I was tied up at the time but there is something that I wanted to add. There are MANY notes fields in Legacy that I think are underutilized. There are birth notes, baptism notes, death notes, burial notes, medical notes, location notes, event notes, image notes, marriage notes and marriage event notes. What is nice about these note fields is that they are specific. If you put everything in the General Notes or Research Notes it can get crowded and hard to wade through. In the report options screen, you can tell Legacy to print all of these other notes fields in addition to the regular General, Research, Medical notes for any report that allows notes. Location Notes can be printed on a Location Report (available at View > Master Lists > Locations > Options > Print > Location Report). Just another tool you can use :) Michele Technical Support mich...@legacyfamilytree.com www.LegacyFamilyTree.com Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
