Tagging Marraige Sources is inconsistent
As i work on cleaning up records, I am trying to tag at least one source (if they exist in the persons record) to vital events, including marriages. When editing the couple's marriage information, sometimes I can just click on a link to tag the source. Other times this is not an option. Most often the marriage source record itself will not give an option to add a tag as a marriage record, even under other Tags. An perfect example for this is found in the following record for Crystal June Gregg who had sources for two different marriages.
When clicking on edit the couple's marriage event, it had a Tag Sources link which easily let me tag the source in the record for her second marriage to George Hommel .
However, for her first marriage to Robert Elsbery there is no option to tag the source to the marriage event found in her sources. The only options is to add the source to the notes for the marriage event.
Why isn't there always/consistently an option to Tag Marriage events. This is not a one time occurance. I am working on a FamilySearch VROC service mission and go through numerous names each each week reviewing hints to add people to the tree and standardizing dates and tagging existing sources to the person added and their parents. It is always frustrating when I have to copy and paste the information into the marriage event notes instead of just selecting the source under a Tag Sources link. Most often the sources are either actual marriage indexes or records, or obituaries.
Best Answer
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There is a second way to take a marriage source on an individual and add it to the couple relationship so it can be tagged to a marriage event that I'll go through here. I personally think this is a little faster.
A. Here is your first example which has no couple relationship sources:
B. Go to Crystal's sources, find an indexed marriage source, and click on the title to open it (This does not work on custom sources that have the globe icon because you cannot use them in the source linker):
C. Click on Review Attachments to open the Source Linker:
D. On the spouse, click Detach to detach the source from him. This is on Robert, not on Crystal!
E. Click Attach:
F. Now this is the critical point: You must move the marriage information from left to right even if it is already on the right side and looks like it will cause duplicate marriage information!!! (If you do end up with duplicate information just delete it later.)
You can see that this does not automatically create a tag.
G. Click Attach.
Yes, this does look like you have not done anything at all. But when you go back to their Couple Relationship popup, you will see:
The source is now on the Couple Relationship and is available for tagging to the event.
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Answers
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I can't know for sure what you are running into without a specific example or two, but I suspect you are just seeing a long standing issue with sources that has been discussed frequently and that we can only hope is addressed in some major future update.
You can only tag couple sources to couple events. You cannot tag individual sources to them.
This source can be tagged to this marriage:
These sources cannot be:
If I want to tag any of these three additional marriage sources to the marriage event, I either have to make sure I add the source to the marriage event while attaching it through the source linker by always moving the marriage information from the left side of the source linker to the right side even if it is duplicate information or if the source is already attached to an individual by making a copy of the source and attaching the copy to the marriage event.
If this is not what is going on, please give a specific example of a situation where you cannot tag a source to a marriage with the ID number of the profile.
If it is what is going on, rather than copying source information into a couple note, try copying the source to your source box then attaching the source to the couple event, then tagging. This will be beneficial to users who come to the profile in the future since the Data Quality Score routine is starting to complain when a couple event does not have any tags.
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If this is the correct Crystal June Gregg, then the situation is as I suspected;
Her first marriage has no sources:
There is no Tag link because there are no sources to tag:
Her second marriage has two sources:
So these can, and one of them has been been, tagged to the event:
There are two sources for her first marriage on her source tab, so if you copy those two sources to the couple event popup by way of your source box, then you will be able to tag those two source to the couple event since they will then be couple sources.
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Here is an example today of a couple Hattie Jopnes G6QY-BJH and her husband Merchant Berry G6QY-K14 that had marriage records in their sources but not tagged, and there was an option to tag sources for the marriage record. It worked perfectly to tag their marriage record. Sometimes the option to tag source for exisitng marriage sources shows up as an option, and other times it does not. If it doesn't show up as an option like the previous example, even though both couples have the marriage record in their sources there is no way to tag it to the marriage. For this couple, there was an option to tag the source which also existed in both their records was there to use. Don't know why sometimes the option does show up and other times it does not
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I'm not sure why the graphics I initally added did not show up. I probably did not use a good example because Crystal June Gregg was also known as Crystal Lehman and some of her childrens records show her with the birthname Gregg on one record and the Birthname Lehman on a different record for the same child. I never sorted that out. There was a marriage record on 1929 for her marriage that I could not select because there wasn't an option to Tag the Source. It shows 0 Sources because none are tagged.
Let me use a different example from today. Helen Lucille Jenkins LBPQ-7FW Married to Chancey Gerald Addleman LBPQ-W92 When I click on the the Couple marriage event to edit and add a source, There is not option to Tag Source like is shown in some of the examples posted above, even though there are marriage sources in both couples Source list. Other times, the Tag Sources link is there and works great, even if it shows 0 Sources because none are tagged. That was how I tagged the second marriage as a source in the original example.
For this example, you can see I had to copy the Marriage information out of her sources and paste it into the notes for their marriage event. Other times there is a Tag Sources and tagging the source is very easy. Why is there options sometimes to Tag Sources, and other times there is not an option.
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I'm sorry my explanation was not clear enough. Please forgive me if I now over explain what is going on.
Starting at your image, lets call this the Couple Event Edit popup, I have circled three items:
From left to right these are:
- A link to take you to the Couple Event pop up.
- A notation that states how many Sources are currently tagged to the Couple Relationship. It has nothing to do with the number of sources on either the husband, the wife, or the couple. It is only a count of the number of sources visible right there in the right hand half of this particular pop up window.
- The spot where the link to sources is located if that option is available. Currently is it not.
If you click on 1., the link to go to the Couple Event pop up, you come here:
Here you can see why the link to tag sources is not present in the first image. There are no sources to tag!
Here is how you fix this:
A. Go to the source tab for one of the couple. I'll go to Helen:
B. Click on the title of the source to open it:
C. Click on View to come here:
D. Click on Copy to Source Box to add this source to your Source Box.
E. Return to the Couple Relationship pop up and under Sources click on Add Source and choose Attach From Source Box:
F. This brings you to your Source Box:
E. I then click on the title then Edit to remove Copy of:
F. Save to close the above box then click Attach and attach the source to the Couple Relationship:
G. Going back to the Couple Event pop up you will see:
H. Because there is a source on the Couple Relationship, when you go back to the Couple Event Edit pop up you see:
I. It still says Sources (0) because no sources are tagged to the event. However, now the Tag Sources link is present. Clicking on it brings up:
Note that the only source listed is the one I just added to the couple because only couple relationship sources can be tagged to a couple relationship event.
J. I can finish tagging the source to the event:
To summarize: The program is showing no inconsistency in its function
- If there are Couple Event Sources present on the couple relationship popup, the Tag Sources link is available.
- If there are no Couple Event Sources present on the couple relationship popup, the Tag Sources link will not be present
This somewhat cumbersome process has been discussed in other posts here in Community and I think a lot of users would like to see this process streamlined. But for now this is how tagging works. If you are adding a new source through the Source Linker this is a bit easier because you can add the source to the couple relationship through the Source Linker right then.
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@Gordon Collett You have provided an excellent set of step-by-step directions to add sources for tagging marriages. I have used the "Source Box" method numerous times myself and have just learned your "Re-attach" method.
If I might add one thing to note. When there are multiple records for the marriage, the researcher should only select the record(s) that list the date when the actual marriage ceremony was performed. I've encountered some marriage records that have the date when the couple Applied for (or purchased) the License, and other records that have a date when the marriage was Recorded by the civil authority. The researcher should visually inspect and read each image to determine the correct marriage date and the specific record(s) to use.
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This was excellent help, the second method especiall because I do not want to fill up my personal source box with work I am doing for others.
I guess I have one additional quesion. Why do some sources work without this process, and some sources do not. Is it related to how the person originally attached the record? I'm not currently working on attaching marriage sources, but there is a project I could work on that does, and if there is a process to do it correctly it would be helpful for me to understand the difference.
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There are two determinants:
- In the not too far distant past attaching a marriage source only created sources on the two individuals. It did not create a couple source no matter what you did. I don't recall the year a programming update changed this. No couple source = no ability to tag.
- Often if a person is attaching a marriage source and the identical marriage information is already on the profile, the user won't bother to move the source data from left to right. I know I never would until I realized what was going on with the sources. if the data is not moved over, you don't get a couple source. Once again, no couple source = no ability to tag.
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@Gordon Collett Although I can't recall exactly when the Source Linker started attaching sources to couple relationships, it was at least 6 years ago. I know this because in 2020 I was comparing the functionality of the mobile app source linker with the Web source linker and this behavior existed on both mobile and web at that time. It may well have existed 2-3 years earlier than that, but it certainly existed in 2020.
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@Alan E. Brown I seem to remember that having the Source Linker put on a couple event source worked for a while, vanished for a while, then came back. In any event, if we take 2020 as the year it was consistently working, then the situation with Helen Jenkins is explained. Both of the marriage source on here were attached on May 10, 2018.
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