Sharing Facts

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While some events (facts) apply primarily to one person, such as education, illness, military service, occupation, many events involve other people. Some of these other people may be actual witnesses, but many just share the event. For example, there are witnesses to the signing of a legal document such as a marriage, a will or codicil, or a land instrument. Even though there are witnesses (best man and maid of honor) to the marriage, there usually are others involved who share in the event, such as the minister, the bridesmaids and ushers, ring bearer and flower girl, parents of the bride and parents of the groom groom, etc. For a census, there are no witnesses, just people who share the fact because they were enumerated at the same time. Similarly for an obituary, there are rarely any witnesses, but the obituary will mention relatives, some who passed away before the deceased person, and many who survive after the passing.

The "Share" feature in RootsMagic lets you share a person’s fact or event with other people in your database, by assigning roles to the other people involved in the event. For some events like marriage, the role could be a witness or minister, or best man or maid of honor, while for other events like a census or residence there would be no witnesses per se, but those mentioned would be assigned roles like wife, child (or son or daughter), father, mother, father-in-law, mother-in-law, nice, nephew, sister, brother, boarder or domestic, or a whole range of other possible roles.

There are three steps to sharing a fact:

1. Add roles and role sentences to the fact type (this can be done in the fact type or on the fly when adding shared people.)
2. Add the people to the shared fact (see below.)
3. Add the "shared" people into the fact sentence for the principal. (This is the step that shows all the shared people together in the main fact sentence.) Usually this is done by Customizing fact sentence.

Sharing Facts

To create a shared fact:

1. In the Edit Person window, select a fact and click Share:

share this fact

1. From the "People who share this fact" dialog, you can:
   1. Add a person – Click the Add a person button and select from:
      1. Choose witness from list – Opens RootsMagic Explorer to let you find a person to add as a witness to share the event. Click Select, and in the Edit shared event dialog:
         1. Select a role for the person from the drop list, or add a new role name.
         2. Enter a note associated with this person in the selected role. This will appear as a separate sentence following the role sentence.
      2. Just type in name of witness – Lets you add the name of a witness who is not in the database.
         1. Enter the first name and last name of the witness – this can include prefixes in the first name field such as Mrs. or Dr. if a given name is not known, or suffixes such as Jr. or Esq. in the last name field. However, if you specify the :first or :casual field option for the name, the first item in the field will be shown, even if that part is "Dr." rather than the actual first first name. Similarly, the complete Last name field contents will be shown if you specify the :Surname or :Reverse field option for the name.
         2. Select a role for the witness from the drop down list, or add a new role name.
         3. Enter a note associated with this person in the selected role. This will appear as a separate sentence following the role sentence.
      3. Click OK to save the entry as a person sharing the fact, or click Cancel to close the dialog without saving the entry.
   2. Add multiple people – Click this button to open the Select People dialog which lists the people in the database, each with a check box to let you select specific individuals. These people are added to the list, with the same role as the last role selected.
   3. Edit – To select another person, to change the role name, or to add role notes, highlight a person and click the Edit button to open the Edit shared event dialog.
   4. Remove person – You can remove a person sharing the event by highlighting a person in the People who share this fact list and Click the Remove person button. You will be asked to confirm that you want to remove the witness. Click Remove witness to confirm, or Cancel to close the dialog without removing the witness.

Editing a Shared Fact

The Edit shared event dialog lets you enter or edit the details about a person that shares an event (fact.)

When you are entering a new person, you can select someone in the database or add the name of someone who is NOT in the database. You can also select a role or add a new role as well as add a note for the role to appear after the shared person's role sentence.

When editing the shared event, you can select someone else from the database or change the name of someone NOT in the database. You can change the role and any relevant notes you want to appear in the narrative report.

In the Edit shared event dialog:

• This person is in my file – If you selected a person who is in your database, this option will be chosen. To change the person, click the Select button, choose a name from the RootsMagic Explorer window, and then click Select.

person in file

• This person is NOT in my file – If you selected a person who was not in your database, this option would have been chosen. To change the person, edit the First name(s) and Last name of the witness. While prefixes can be included in the first name field such as Mrs. or Dr. if a given name is not known, and suffixes such as Jr. or Sr. in the last name field, if you specify the :first or :casual field option for the witness name, the first item in the field will be shown, even if that part is "Dr." rather than an actual first name. Similarly, the complete Last name field contents will be shown if you specify the :Surname field option or use the :Reverse field option with the name.

person not in file

• Role – Select a role for the witness from the drop list, or select Add new witness type... to add a new role. In the dialog, enter the new role name and enter a sentence template for the role. (This will be added to list of roles for the Fact Type when saved.) Click OK to save the role, or Cancel to exit without saving.

• Note – Enter a note associated with this person in the selected role. This will appear as a separate sentence following the role sentence.

• Click OK to save the entry as a person sharing the fact, or click Cancel to close the dialog without saving the entry.