Family Historian has a number of methods for displaying facts related to individuals and families in a particular sequence. The most useful of these is the Normal Time Frame, which automatically sequences facts according to when they naturally occur. For example, birth comes before death, which in turn comes before burial, even if none of the actual dates are known.
In addition to this, child and family sequence can be defined explicitly by ordering the events in the Focus Window. So most of the time, sort dates are not required in Family Historian, and where they are not needed, the program does not use them.
Other family history apps may take a different approach, and define default sort dates for all facts, even if these are identical to the actual event date. They may even allow sort dates that are other than simple Gregorian Calendar dates, which is all that Family Historian supports (and all that is necessary to implement a sort date function).
This can create problems if databases from these products are imported into Family Historian, as unnecessary and invalid sort dates are not always removed on import. Note in particular that although they are implemented in many family history apps, sort dates are not a standard feature in GEDCOM. Therefore, they are generally only transferred by direct database import.
This plugin checks the users project for sort dates, and highlights the following dates:
- Sort dates that are not simple dates. These are usually not visible in your project unless you select the All tab in the Property Box or expand the displayed individual or family in the Records Window.
- Sort dates that are identical to the first date in a range. For example, if a fact has an actual date of “between 1834 and 1836” and a sort date of 1834, this is unnecessary, as Family Historian automatically sorts facts on the start of a defined range. These cause inconsistencies in how the fact is displayed in the Property Box.
To run the plugin, click on the Check sort dates button on the home screen. If any invalid or superfluous sort dates are detected, you will be presented with the option to either List them, or Delete them without further confirmation. Listing the sort dates generates a table of fact dates and sort dates, together with the fact and individual or family records containing the dates. Once you are happy that all of these can be deleted, run the plugin again and select the Delete option.
Plugin Check Sort Dates
Help content on this page is owned and provided by Mark Draper, the plugin's author, Calico Pie takes no responsibility for its content.