Problem in attaching two records to same individual if on same page of a document

Paul W

If two records mentioning the same individual appear on the same image, attaching both as sources to them is not possible. This appears to be a programming flaw.

In the example below, William Greengrass is mentioned in the burial entries of both his wife and daughter (both named Mary), but I am only able to attach one as a source to William. In this example, (as the burials appear to have taken place on the same day) I could rename the source to include all three individuals, but in other cases events might appear on the same page but be a year or two apart, or even for different types of event (say a baptism and a burial).

Could this issue please be referred to the engineers to tweak, enable multiple attachments (here, to William Greengrass), especially as the prime individual in the source attachments (mother and daughter) are different individuals. (i.e., I have added as a source to the separate IDs of mother and daughter without problem, but cannot add to William in his capacity of being father and spouse in the two records.)

I get a "prohibited" sign when trying to attach the image a second time to William Greengrass, as the page image shows as "Attached"

Paul W

Put simply, I would like the ability to add a source for the 1684 burial of "Mary wife of William Greengrass", as would be possible if these records were indexed.

Alan E. Brown

@Paul W You could use the Source Box to accomplish this:

1. Open the details for "Mary daughter of…"
2. Click on the Web Page link
3. Click on Save Record > Save to Source Box
4. Change the title to "Mary wife of…" then Save it
5. On the Sources tab, click +Add Source > Attach from Source Box
6. Click the Attach button by the "Mary wife of…" source in the Source Box

This is a fairly unusual situation, so even though using the Source Box is a bit convoluted, it gets the job done.

In general, I think it's good to protect against duplicate sources in the normal flow of attaching sources, which is the current way it works. It seems much more likely that someone would mistakenly attach a duplicate source than that someone would need to do this multiple attaching for a source that has a person mentioned in the record in two distinct roles. But that's just my opinion — I don't really know which is more likely.

Paul W

@Alan E. Brown

Thank you for your helpful response. I rarely use the Source Box, and then mainly for sources for which I am unable to identify a matching profile.

Isn't one problem that if the title is amended it changes for all the profiles to which it is attached? I'll test with one of the sources to see how the two will appear when added to William's profile, as well as the one for his daughter and one for his wife.

Paul W

@Alan E. Brown

Adding the source appeared to work fine, but during the process it is saving this page, instead of the one in my earlier screenshot. The page I want to save is at https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6P8V-X2?wc=4JFM-8TB%3A30095401%2C29358102%2C30118301%26cc%3D1416598&cc=1416598&lang=en&view=index&groupId= - any idea where I am going wrong?

After saving in my source box, the URL appears to be getting changed to that of a page for an earlier period:

As you can see, the record set now has only 68 images, instead of 1,883 (illustrated in earlier screenshot. I assume the digitised set has been converted to the "original", pre-digitisation set:

Paul W

Ah, believe I've got it to work now! I scrolled forward to image 25 of 68, saved that image to my source box and now have the correct link, as shown in the fourth source in William Greengrass' sources section:

Paul W

I'll forget about the changing of the source titles for now. Not a straightforward process in this case to attach a direct link to the image concerned, but got there eventually!

I didn't think the "change in film" problem - digitised to original collection - was an issue any more, but obviously there are still instances, as here (image 702 of 1883 "converted" to image 25 of 68 - well, wrong image 22 of 68 to be precise), where this still occurs.

For reference: William Greengrass ID is G7L5-Q6W

Regan8

@Alan E . Brown

I agree that the best work around is to manually create a source and then attach it to the profiles.

But I don't think it's an usual situation. I've run into it several times both with vital records like the ones @Paul W is dealing with as well as with deeds and similar records.

The solution is probably a big project that isn't on anyone's priority list, though.