Please add reorder Sources in Source box and Family with Sources listing

LegacyUser

Susan Plass said: In FamilyTree: I really appreciate being able to reorder the sources listed for a person. Thank you!

Now I'm greedy: I want to be able to reorder the sources in my Source Box, and I want the Family with Sources listing to list the sources in the order I've arranged them for the person current when I ask for the print.

LegacyUser

Cathy Anderegg said: I don't keep sources that I have attached in my source box where no one can see them. The only sources I keep in my source box are master sources, like books or websites for families, that can be used over and over again.

LegacyUser

Susan Plass said: I'm glad that works for you. I never source books or family sites for more than one item, and then if there's no original source, but I do a lot of census records, obits, early vital records, which have multiple persons per record. I rarely have more than a couple of hours per week to work on this, so the records hang around while I'm plodding through people I care about. Trying to make sure I have all census records for all 12 children in a family takes weeks. And I always find I need a record to attach for a relationship or child I haven't gotten to. Being able to group by family lines helps, but I'd rather look at them by chron order of the records instead of chron order in which I created them.

LegacyUser

Cathy Anderegg said: You can also make folders for families and/or list them as sources such as census, and put those in Chronological Order. Folders can be used anyway you want. You can move sources from all sources into folders, but still see them in Home or All Sources.

LegacyUser

GeneJ said: The different ways we use these fabulous tools is so interesting.

Several users have expressed a preference to arrange sources on the person
page in some kind date order. This might mean birth records first, then
marriage records followed by death and burial. I suppose census and other
records would interspersed.

I know other folks who like to see sources grouped by record type (vital
records, census records, deeds, probate and court records, newspaper
items, etc).

Although not related to printing, per se, I have rearranged the sources on
a person page so that perceived high value sources for that profile appear at the start of the list.

I at least suspect the arrangement on the personal page is open edit. What I'd like in the source box is some arrangement option that helps me quickly find a particular source or group of sources when I want to update the source entry or copy it over to use it again. (P.S. ... or incorporate the reference in a reasoning statement!!!)

LegacyUser

Susan Plass said: I do have all of my sources in folders by family line, but I haven't found a way to change the order in each like I can on a person page.

And even though all the sources for a person on his/her page are now in chron order, they don't appear in that order when I try to print Family with Sources -- they're back to order as entered. Having birth, then census, then death, with marriage where appropriate in order on a family group sheet makes it much more useful.

LegacyUser

GeneJ said: I've pretty much used my allotment of folders

It is probably a difference in the way we work, but the family arrangement didn't work very well for me. As time permits, I've been eliminating the family folders that I'd once created.

I have four folders that are catchalls (home, master, and then two that hold any FamilySearch sources that I didn't delete). The other folders are for certain periodicals/journals, serialized works, particular authored works. I ran out of folders, so, for example, I group entries from the journals together. Likewise, I grouped together deeds and court records, but kept some items, like probate and Torrey's New England Marriages prior to 1700 in their own folder.

The two folders, "Home" and "Master" remain difficult for me. It does seem to me that the more time we invest "re-finding" a source, the less time we have to spend adding sources to the profiles, etc.

LegacyUser

Cathy Anderegg said: You are aware I am sure that if you attach a source into the Source field on a Person's Page, and then you tag the source to all the data it proves, and also put it in the couple box and parent/child relationship, then that source could be seen on the page 5-7 times. If that's the case, keeping it in the source box seems a waste of space to me.

You also are probably aware that you can take one census record and personalize it for everyone in the family just by clicking on the name of each person, which changes the extracted/indexed information for the person who now appears in the title. I

t is quite easy. But the FamilySearch guys also are talking about doing an automatic personalization for each family member on the census. How that will work, I do not know, but it should save you a lot of time.

LegacyUser

Janeen Lambert said: I also only keep sources in my source box that are books or websites. I currently have 14 and may add more. I do not want to have to stick them in a separate folder. That would add an additional step each time I wanted to attach the source to an individual.

I would like to be able to arrange the sources in my source box alphabetically so I don't have to go up and down the list looking for the source I want.

LegacyUser

Janeen Lambert said: It is a year since I last commented and I would like to reopen this topic. I hope Ron Tanner sees this!

I now have 22 master sources in the main folder of my source box and I will soon have more. I want to be able to arrange them alphabetically! Please make some provision to arrange these sources. It would be nice to be able to drag and drop them the way we do the sources attached to an individual.

LegacyUser

Rod Stucker said: Arranging alphabetically and by date would be ideal. I thought the Source Box had this capability already, but now I don't see it. I currently have over 16,000 sources and alpha-numeric sorting features are much needed.

LegacyUser

Patty Ogden said: I would love to be able to reorder my sources too. I use the source box as a catch all for sources that can be attached to several people. It’s hard to find anything in there. Also, it would be nice if we could have more than 50 folders.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The original design (which I think still applies) is for the user's Source Box to be a temporary storage place for a source while it is being attached to all of those to whom the source applies. Once attached to all profiles, it would then be deleted.

The folders provided a means by which some sources could be kept. Some of us were using one of these to store non-source source entries that we used as separators. A number of discussions in this forum talked about the possibility of providing separators for the source list.

FamilySearch FamilyTree sources are person-centric and as such, each source entry (even of the same base source (that is, a census) has its own unique title as it applies to the person. Personally, I do not care for this approach to sources and prefer the sources to by source-centric so that, for instance, a census page can be sourced to each person listed on a page. However, that isn't the way FamilySearch set up sources.

So, the need for the user's source box was expanded because the initial setup of sources was person-centric, rather than source-centric.

And with it, the need to be able to order (somehow and beyond folders) sources became important.

I don't know what FamilySearch is going to do, if anything, with respect to the source box, but there needs to be a place for source-centric sources, which can be attached to individual and family profiles. There are currently some major issues created by a "it is easier" mentality when working with "other" entries that has leaked over into the Family Section of a person's profile.

I've seen hints that there is something that is happening with sources that could have an impact on the source box, or maybe not. I'm hoping the entire system is given a much-needed revamp, including the ability allowing users to create an orderable source listing,