Thanks for pointing out this problem in RootsMagic, Jerry. I did an experiment with marriages. In my TMG database, George married 3 times to: TMG ID 4, Anna, m. sortdate before 1815 TMG ID 5, Mary, m. 15 Jun 1823 TMG ID 6, Sarah, m. sortdate before 1 Jun 1850 After import from TMG into a previous trial version of RM, the three marriages sort in the correct order in RM's displays and in the narrative report. That is a good result. However, the sort date of the 2 marriages that lacked an event date in TMG incorrectly appears in RM as both the sort date and the event date. I then added 3 new marriages in RM (v. 6.3.1.4). The marriages appear in the correct order in the edit person display. However, in the narrative descendant report, the new marriages incorrectly all appear before the TMG-vintage marriages and they appear in the order in which I entered the people (Nellie, Millie, Emma), not in chronological order of the year of marriage: Nellie, m. 1843 Millie, m. 1844 Emma, m. 1842 TMG ID 4, Anna, m. sortdate before 1815 TMG ID 5, Mary, m. 15 Jun 1823 TMG ID 6, Sarah, m. sortdate before 1 Jun 1850 In the RM Help system there are articles explaining how spouses and children can be re-ordered by hand ("Arranging the order of spouses", "Arranging the order of children"). I did not find a way to order them chronologically automatically throughout the database. Barbara On 9/5/2014 5:17 PM, Jerry Bryan via wrote: >> Now, to more interesting stuff – I noticed in playing with some charts, >> that multiple marriages often weren’t displaying in >> date order, and children weren’t showing in birthdate order. FH Support >> eventually owned up to the problem: FH displays >> stuff in the order they were CREATED in the original sending program >> (guess in the order they are in the GEDCOM file, i.e. >> in individual’s record-ID order) – even though it shows the events (Facts) >> in its Facts list for an individual in date order. > This is also a problem in RootsMagic, and RootsMagic users have been > complaining about it for years to no avail. I wonder if RootsMagic will be > any more responsive to émigrés from TMG than they have been to native RM > users. > > Jerry -- Barbara Levergood levergood@att.net

> In the RM Help system there are articles explaining how spouses and > children can be re-ordered by hand ("Arranging the order of spouses", > "Arranging the order of children"). I did not find a way to order them > chronologically automatically throughout the database. Correct. Generally speaking, you order spouses and children in RM as you do data entry. However, ordering them after a big GEDCOM import can be problematic. Through the years, I have become pretty leery of big GEDCOM imports, anyway. There usually is just too much cleanup to do. So ordering spouses and children as I do data entry usually is only a minor annoyance. Jerry

To follow up with a bit more detail to bring some closure to the issue of the order of marriages in imports from GEDCOM. I redid the experiment described below in RM and found that the import was in the correct chronological order even if the person-IDs were in a different order. That is, the order of the imported marriages in RM is based on the year of marriage or the sort date of the marriage, not on the person-IDs. I repeated the test in Legacy, Deluxe v. 8.0.0.439, importing from GEDCOM. The result is similar to RM, except that the new marriages are added AFTER the marriages imported from TMG. In the help system, "Spouse List" and “How to Rearrange Order of Spouses and Children” explain how to reorder the spouses; see also "How Legacy Inserts People and Events into Chronological Order" and "Sort Children, Marriages, and Events". See also: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/legacy/2004-08/1091828076. Barbara On 9/5/2014 8:07 PM, Barbara Levergood via wrote: > Thanks for pointing out this problem in RootsMagic, Jerry. > > I did an experiment with marriages. In my TMG database, George married 3 > times to: > TMG ID 4, Anna, m. sortdate before 1815 > TMG ID 5, Mary, m. 15 Jun 1823 > TMG ID 6, Sarah, m. sortdate before 1 Jun 1850 > > After import from TMG into a previous trial version of RM, the three > marriages sort in the correct order in RM's displays and in the > narrative report. That is a good result. However, the sort date of the 2 > marriages that lacked an event date in TMG incorrectly appears in RM as > both the sort date and the event date. > > I then added 3 new marriages in RM (v. 6.3.1.4). The marriages appear in > the correct order in the edit person display. However, in the narrative > descendant report, the new marriages incorrectly all appear before the > TMG-vintage marriages and they appear in the order in which I entered > the people (Nellie, Millie, Emma), not in chronological order of the > year of marriage: > > Nellie, m. 1843 > Millie, m. 1844 > Emma, m. 1842 > TMG ID 4, Anna, m. sortdate before 1815 > TMG ID 5, Mary, m. 15 Jun 1823 > TMG ID 6, Sarah, m. sortdate before 1 Jun 1850 > > In the RM Help system there are articles explaining how spouses and > children can be re-ordered by hand ("Arranging the order of spouses", > "Arranging the order of children"). I did not find a way to order them > chronologically automatically throughout the database. > > Barbara > > > > > On 9/5/2014 5:17 PM, Jerry Bryan via wrote: >>> Now, to more interesting stuff – I noticed in playing with some charts, >>> that multiple marriages often weren’t displaying in >>> date order, and children weren’t showing in birthdate order. FH Support >>> eventually owned up to the problem: FH displays >>> stuff in the order they were CREATED in the original sending program >>> (guess in the order they are in the GEDCOM file, i.e. >>> in individual’s record-ID order) – even though it shows the events (Facts) >>> in its Facts list for an individual in date order. >> This is also a problem in RootsMagic, and RootsMagic users have been >> complaining about it for years to no avail. I wonder if RootsMagic will be >> any more responsive to émigrés from TMG than they have been to native RM >> users. >> >> Jerry -- Barbara Levergood levergood@att.net