I don't post much but I thought I would chime in on this. I read Brian's (in CA) explanation below of how the software is working the Living setting, and I was ...ummmm....skeptical.
So I tested it myself. My option setting was to automatically Set a person to Dead if they are over 99. Then I added a John Doe born 110 years ago, but without a specified death date. They are automatically set as dead, which is good. Then I clicked on John Doe in the Family screen to open for editing the Individual's Information. On that screen I clicked the radio button for Living, and then Save. John Doe was automatically set to dead by the software, and my manual setting was ignored. Brian (in CA) was absolutely correct -- sorry for doubting you, man... :-) My assumption was that directly selecting Living or Dead would function as an over-ride. That's what directly selecting an option and pressing Save normally means in my experience. Why else present the option as active? (Typically software would gray-out a choice that is not selectable.) So I will change my Default Auto setting to irrevocably assign somebody "Dead" when they are over 120. And being dissatisfied with how the software offers a misleading choice, I will pursue Dennis' recommendation and submit a suggestion to Legacy to *either* implement over-ride logic *or* eliminate/gray-out the misleading selection option. By the way, the software works as expected when a person is automatically determined to be Living and you manually over-ride that to declare them dead. They stay dead, so to speak. I feel better already, although I'm still amazed... :-) Mark in Knoxville On 16 Dec 2009 at 16:43, [email protected] wrote: > Greetings Dennis, > > OK, I thought I was going a little crazy here but after a little bit > of checking things out, it turns out that were are talking about two > closely related situations in which the auto-death setting comes > into play. > > For the first scenario, let's say my auto-death setting is 100 > years. I enter a person born in 1909 which makes him 100 years old > and there is no death date information. Legacy immediately opens a > window and says "This person has no death information and was born > (100) years ago. This person is currently set as living. Is this > person still alive?" If I answer YES to Legacy's question, that > person will be marked as LIVING and it does not change even if I > close the program and come back later. My manual setting of LIVING > is sticky. As a side note, Legacy is smart enough to realize this > may change and if I ever edit that person's Individual Information > again, Legacy will once again remind me that I need to decide if the > person is still living. > > Now let's change the numbers slightly for a second scenario. Suppose > I enter a person that was born in 1908 with no death date > information and my auto-death setting remains at 100. That makes the > persons age 101. Legacy does not even bother asking me about the > person because his/her age is MORE THAN the auto-death setting. But > what if the person were still living and out of 50,000 names in my > family file, he is the only person that lived to be older than 100. > Bad news, because Legacy will automatically mark him as NOT LIVING. > OK, no problem. On the person's Individual Information window, I can > go in an click on the LIVING-YES button and when I cursor off that > line, the setting seems to stick but when I close the window, it > reverts back to LIVING-NO. There is no way to override when a > person's age exceeds the auto-death setting. > > Perhaps I had gotten the mistaken impression that the OP was greeted > by that dialog box I talked about in my first paragraph thus my > reason for questioning why is was not "sticky" for the OP. In the > second scenario, it works as you described and as you state you like > the way it works. I also like the fact that Legacy has such an > auto-death setting and will magically go into a person's family file > and "kill off" all those old folk just hanging around for 200 years > or more where no death date info was ever entered. But I do have to > state that I should think a user should be able to pick one > individual who happened to outlive everybody's expectations (and the > auto-death setting) and manually set the person as still living and > have that override stick. Since the option to even pick LIVING-YES > on such people still exists within the program, I wonder if the > programmer's got it right, that is forgot about making the manual > override stick. > > Oh well, a little older and a little wiser. Mark myself as > LIVING-YES > > > Brian in CA > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2009 3:40 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Living? > > On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:15:55 -0800, [email protected] > wrote: > > >OK, I´m going to go out on a limb here and say that your method > in not necessarily correct and somewhat misleading (but then again, > maybe its only me that has been mislead). I believe that changing > the settings for the automatically assumed dead only applies to > individuals wherein no death date information has been entered. In > the example given by the OP, Legacy is trying to assume that the > person is automatically dead because the age exceeds the settings. > However, when the user specifically tells Legacy that the person is > still living, that is a "manual override" and from that point on > Legacy should be showing that person as still living. The OP has > stated that Legacy wants to override the user which is something > that should not be happening. > > > >Assuming that I´m not totally off-base here and the program > should work as I believe and apparently as the OP thinks it should, > then the question before us is why is Legacy not accepting the > user´s input? > > It has always worked the way the OP describes. If the OP wants it > to > work differently, he/she needs to adjust the settings. I have mine > set > to ask if over 90, and to set to dead if over 110. There is also a > setting for the Living Indicator Default which could come into > play. > > I like the way it currently works. > > -- > > Dennis Kowallek (LTools) > http://zippersoftware.com/ltools > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ltools > > > > > > Legacy User Group guidelines: > > http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp > > Archived > messages after Nov. 21 2009: > > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ > > Archived > messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: > > > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ > > Online > technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp > > To > unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp > > Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
