All these scripts were authored by me and work in my system. If you find any errors, or better methods, please let me know. My working templates are here in my ORA Collection Report. You are free to copy these templates for your own use, but please be aware that they are 'tuned' to my Family Historian layouts, and as such, I am not responsible or liable for any consequences from their use, or guarantee that they will work on your system.

CHANGES and UPDATES:
21 December 2023 A lot has happened since my last update! I found that a couple of my library templates, Initvars and WriteCitation, we becoming a bit of a nightmare to maintain - I was updating the wrong service sections and wondering why it wouldn't work! Result was that I split those two library templates into a template for each service, and has made it easier to maintain and update. Next thing was that John Cardinal added a Parent Collection feature. At first I couldn't see its' worth, but after experimenting for a few days, realised that it suited my Generic BMD AutoType mechanism, so spent days checking and converting to the Parent Collection Concept, and documenting what I had done. I do forget sometimes what I had done and how, so write it down! Now John Cardinal has just released the ability to export and import Library Templates, which had been on my wish list for some time. Now I am going to take advantage of that, and create a seperate section in this website for my latest text, autotype and library templates.
see My Generic AutoType BMD as a Parent Collection
25 November 2023 Over the last month, I have made some minor adjustments to my Generic BMD Autotype, and it is managing to do what I expected when I first started out on the project. I suspect that I will always have to 'tune' the libraries as I find more peculiarities in the results that ORA extracts from the various Services. I made changes to buttons 1, 5 and 6 so that the Source search will use the Short title as well as the long. This was to overcome the issues of the services changing their Source Names, and I now correct my sources to the latest descriptions. I am spending more time with my research now than I used to when initially coding ORA scripts.
see My Generic Auto Type BMD template docs
23 October 2023testing with Alan Medows, we have discovered that if a var.fieldname variable is defined or used in a library template, it is not necessary to have a Text Template with that variable name. This has resulted in my removal of all the redundant Text templates from my Generic BMD auto type template, and it does not look so scary now😃
I have made a few changes to the Generic BMD autotype and is now at version v 1.12, and changes and updates mainly in the Initvars library and WriteCitation library.
13th October 2023generic BMD Autotype is now up to v 1.10 with an extra library [lib.CheckEventType] which shows the calculated event type and allows for cancelling the autotype if necessary. A lot more fields added to the [lib.Initvars] and output templates in [lib.WriteCitation]. I now have it running on 5 different Services and over 70 different Collections. I am slowly replaceing my old autotypes with the Generic BMD autotype as I come across them in my research.
3rd October 2023 Added new autotype prompts to my Generic BMD Autotype to allow the saving of an image to the source citation. Also involved new library templates : [lib.WriteImageToCitation] [lib.PathToImageFileName] [lib.SetKeywords] Also catered for Probate records from Ancestry. latest version of the Auto Type is v1.08
13th September 2023 Still stabilising my Generic Auto Type BMD template, by adding more Collections in Ancestry and FindmyPast that use it. In each new case, I test first, and then maybe have to add new fields in the Library InitVars, and define the Citation output to suit in the library template WriteCitation. These minor additions are making my sourcing of BMD including Baptisms and Burials - BBMDB? - a lot quicker and easier. Have found some anomalies in FMP where their Record Sets have two or three different document types in the same collection!
9th September 2023 Added a new autotype button to the UK census autotypes, that will create a new child for the family on the focus window.
3rd September 2023: Created three new autotypes to handle to 1916, 1921 and 1931 Canadian Census records. I learnt something new with doing each one, so I hope I have captured enough data in each.
31st August 2023:In the process of developing a Generic BMD Auto Type template that will cover Births, Baptisms, Marriages, Deaths and Burials, that is cognisant of the Event Type and Service, (ie whether Ancestry, Family Search or Find my Past) that will cater for all the various field names used by those services, and will output a common text, etc for the generic sources and citations. So far, have tested it on 15 different collections from the 3 Services with successful result. I will document the processes and make a downloadable zipfile bundle with the templates and library templates once I am completely happy that any changes will be minimal.
31st July 2023Added a few more templates, nothing specific
2nd July 2023Completed my templates makeover. Added a step by step guide, Basics of writing an Auto Type template, under the Miscellaneous Code Tips.
28th June 2023:Still playing with ORA's Control Panel to save real estate used by comments. Changed colour scheme for my entry displays. Completed existing Ancestry, Family Search, GRO autotype templates, and still to fo Findmypast autotype templates. Fixed 1911 England census to properly handle number of children, etc. Built a Male and Female Names table in a library template - lib.DetermineGender - which will parse up to two given forenames, and return whether Male or Female. Used in GRO search and Ancestry Family Tree templates, at the moment to set the FH Sex dropdown. 28th June 2023:Still playing with ORA's Control Panel to save real estate used by comments. Changed colour scheme for my entry displays. Completed existing Ancestry, Family Search, GRO autotype templates, and still to fo Findmypast autotype templates. Fixed 1911 England census to properly handle number of children, etc. Built a Male and Female Names table in a library template - lib.DetermineGender - which will parse up to two given forenames, and return whether Male or Female. Used in GRO search and Ancestry Family Tree templates, at the moment to set the FH Sex dropdown.
16th June 2023:Changed ORA CP layouts on Ancestry Census and other records, to regain more cp estate by moving instructions from the Read Me First to the Autotype reminder fields. Added divider line - [lib.DividerBar]
Created or updated FindMyPast census record templates for 1881, 1891, 1901 England, Wales & Scotland Census templates and 1911 Census for England & Wales, and related library templates..
6th June 2023: I have completely rewritten my ORA autotype templates for ALL the Ancestry Census records, and added a few new relevant Library elements as well. The Census templates are now all in the same screen operational format, with underlying variants for each of the years. All run creating Generic Sources based on the ora cp [Source.Title] or [Record Set]. I save my census images under the name of the Head of House. You will need to change a few Text Templates, etc to match your system. Text Template #2 FHproject to your FH project name; the last numbered Text Template for the Image filename location, and similarly the Auto Type template 1. The number of back-slashes are critically important! You will also need to create a Rel. to Head attribute fact which now gets populated during the processes.
Operationally, for each census year,

• Highlight your person of interest on the FOCUS Window. This is important!
• search for the Ancestry Census for a year and person of interest.
• Right click on the thumbnail fo the census image, and Open Link in New Tab
• fill in the name of the head of house, ie Richard Fox
• click the copy icon against the Image filename, which should have built to match FH's folders
• Change to the Image tab which have the census image, and save it to your computer, pasting the Image filename over the suggested location. This will save it under your FH Media structure
• Fill in all the other ORA cp prompts
• Run Autotype 1, then click on the image page Edit button, and run AutoType 2. Then delete that Residence fact that has just been created. This process adds the image to your FH images record, and can now be linked
• Make sure you are back on the Focus window of your person, and highlight them.
• Run Auto type 3. This will set my flags (- yours could be different); create the Residence, Occupation, Rel. to Head facts and the Census facts and source all of them linking the census image.
See my demo on these new Census scripts

24 April 2023:This update was general, and I did not keep a note of what I changed!

4th January 2023:I have recently tidied up all the autotype text scripts so that the starting focus point is common, ie in the Name field on the INDIviduals Property Box Main Tab. There are a few which still require other focus points, like my census templates, and hopefully I have listed them in the READ ME FIRST text template. There were a few autotext templates I made redundant, and will re-generate them when necessary. As a warning, FamilySearch.org have redesigned their display pages, and the ORA extracted field names changed as a result. I have had to correct all my Family Search templates!
~~~
WARNING! The templates will switch from adding the Fact entry on the Facts tab across(or Down) to the Cite Existing Source pane. They do pass the Source Title through to the Filter and will eliminate Sources that do not match the passed Source Title and will highlight the Source. Once highlighted the template script will run to completion.
I am in the process of updating and testing my templates - ORA version 1.69 and Family Historian v 7.0.21.
A Few Gotcha's to check....

• GRO : Note that the library template SetGROasSource expects the FH Source Title 'General Registry Office, Southport, England'. If your Family Historian Source Title is different, change it in the Library Template.
• Ancestry and FamilySearch. I have found over the years, that Ancestry and FamilySearch rename their collections by updating the date ranges on their Collection Titles, whenever thay add new records to that existing collection. For example, the current collection title England, Select Marriages, 1835-1973 may change in the future to say England, Select Marriages, 1835-1985 when they add the next batch of marriages dated 1974 thru to 1985. Once they do make a change such as this, our source Titles will become 'redundant' as we will not be able to search on the old title. Again, I have now removed the above sentence logic, and will search for the exact Source Title. If I find that a collection title has changed, it is easier for me to add the newly updated source name, and then merge the old into the new within Family Historian.
  The other alternative that I am considering is to use MY Family Historian Source Number instead of the Name. I could build a table of the Source Titles I have and return the number to the searches? But, each AutoType is exclusive to a Collection and Collection ID, so maybe a var.sourcenumber set for the Collection. BUT, I have multiple projects in my Family Historian, and in each one I may have the same source name, but created at a different time with a different source ID, so that won't work!
• Remember, if you get unpredictable results, you can use the 'Edit->Undo' to clear up the mess before checking your templates and starting again!

Home