Creating a "Census Candidates" Search List II

TMG's filters employ only two Boolean logic operators, AND and OR. An important omission is the NOT operator. That operator can be incorporated into a filter by setting a flag value. In fact, if the final filtered result desired uses only OR and NOT operators, one can construct an efficient report sequence that achieves the desired final result by setting and resetting a Temporary flag. My Temporary flag currently has a default value, ?, and four additional possible values, N, Y, X, and C. Whenever I run a report that requires setting a given flag value, I reset this Temporary flag to its default value first.

This is a Venn diagram showing three filtered groups.

• A represents those people in the database known to be living on 1 April 1950, the official 1950 census enumeration date. These are people whose birth date, whether known or estimated, precedes that date and whose date of death comes after that date. These people all have a birth tag and death tag in TMG. I run a report that filters the database for these people and sets the Temporary flag value to Y.
• B represents those people whose birth dates, known or estimated, predate the census enumeration date, and whose probable life span suggests they might be living on that date. These people have no death tag in TMG. This second report filters the database for those people and resets the Temporary flag value to X.
• C represents those people for whom a census tag with Year Value = 1950, whether principal or witness in that tag, exists. A third report filters for those people and resets the Temporary flag value to C.

I use Book Manager to run these sequential reports. This TMG feature makes the process very efficient.

Look at the people in the solid blue section of group A. These people comprise the set A NOT C, or those people known to be living on 1 April 1950 for whom no census tag for that year exists. It's now easy to create a current problem-oriented census candidates research list in TMG's Project Explorer. The filter shown below selects only those people with a Temporary flag value of Y (those in the solid blue section in the Venn diagram) who are also in the current Focus Group (descendants of Josiah Beckley for six generations in this example). Note that if you want to include the individuals in the solid red B group (possibles), change the first line in this filter to: (Temporary = Equals Y OR Temporary = Equals X).

Ta-da! I only have fourteen names to check! Because my Project Explorer is linked to the Individual Detail screen, running down this search list is fast and easy.

For details on the filters for these reports, see the following post: "Creating a Census Candidates List - Filters."