Problem Search
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Problem List
RootsMagic's Problem List shows you potential data entry problems in your database to help you detect errors before printing reports.
To search for problems:
- Select the Person page, then click the Tools button, then select Problem List.
- Select the options for the type of problems you want to search for.
- Click OK to run the search. If there are any problems discovered, RootsMagic will display the Problem List, which shows the person's name and a short description of the problem.
- From the Problem list, you have the following options:
- Edit person – Highlight a problem row and click this button to view the Edit Person dialog to investigate the cause of the problem. You may need to view several problems that seem related to discover where the root problem lies. If you discover the cause, you can fix it. However, you will have to run Problem Search again to confirm the problem has been cleared.
- Not a problem – If a problem in the list isn’t really a problem you can highlight the non-problem and click this button to have RootsMagic remove the item from the list so it will not be displayed as a problem the next time you run the problem search. (It will appear on the "Not a problem" list dialog.)
- Add to Task list – Click this button to add the problem to the person's to-do list so that you can work on it later.
- Print – To print the Potential problems list.
- Click Close to close the dialog.
Problem alerts
In addition to the Problem Search which looks for potential data problems for everyone in your file, RootsMagic offers Problem Alerts, where the program will display an indicator next to the name of anyone who has a potential data problem.
You can click on the problem indicator and RootsMagic will display a list of the potential problems for the person.
From this screen you can:
- Edit person - Open the person's edit screen.
- Not a problem - Mark the highlighted problem as "Not a problem". This is useful when you have a problem like "Person was 101 years old" if they really were. This tells RM to stop detecting that particular problem for that person. If you later decide it might be a problem you can open the "Not a Problem List" to have RootsMagic treat it as a possible problem again.
- Add to Task list - Adds the highlighted problem to your Task list so that you can work on it later.
- Print - Prints the list of problems for the person.
You can enable or disable Problem Alerts from the Settings page. You can also select which types of problems you want the Problem Alerts to look for.
Not a problem list
Often when you run the problem list you will encounter situations that may be extreme, but are not problems (like a person that really did die at 110 years old). You can mark those as "Not a problem" on the problem list so that RootsMagic doesn't keep presenting them as possible problems. The "Not a Problem" list displays items you marked as not a problem in the Problem list.
To see what "non-problems" RootsMagic is ignoring:
- Select the People page, then click the Tools button and select Not a problem list from the menu.
- Click the "Remove from 'not a problem' list" button – to remove items from the Not a Problem List so that Problem search will be able to detect them again, and show them in the problem list.
- Click Close to close the dialog.