MARRIAGE ORDER

[Fraser Lindsay]

Is there an easy way to change the order of marriages?

Fraser Lindsay

[John Nairn]

On Feb 27, 2011, at 10:15 AM, Fraser Lindsay wrote:

> Is there an easy way to change the order of marriages?
>
> Fraser Lindsay

The easy way is the Tree->Sort->Spouses menu command. But this method sorts them by the marriage date which raises two issues - 1) What if you do not know the dates and 2) What if you want them in non-chronological order?

For the first, a solution is to enter approximate dates. In my own research, I like to estimate such dates because it helps when I return to that data at a later time and need a guess for key dates. You can estimate marriage dates from birth dates of children, birth dates of the spouses, marriage dates of other marriages, etc. I try to enter as a range or something like "AFT 1845", if, for example, last child of first marriage was born in 1845 or first marriage date was before 1845. I then use the "Memo" feature to attach comment to the dat field on why I estimated that date.

For the second (or the first if you do not want to enter dates), you can always edit the raw GEDCOM data. This is not as easy, but not that hard:

1. Select individual in the index window
2. Select "Show Source Editor" if GEDCOM data is not showing in the bottom of the window
3. The links to family records with spouses are in FAMS lines like

1 FAMS @F345@

and they appear in the record in the order those lines appear in the record. To change the order just reorder those lines. They usually occur together, but may not (and it is not required that they be together).
4. Open the record to check the new order

------------
John Nairn
http://www.geditcom.com
Genealogy Software for the Mac

[Fraser Lindsay]

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Fraser Lindsay