Change Legacy Gender

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Legacy
Gender Change Instructions

Legacy 5 does not permit recording of same-sex partnerships, nor marriages between intersexed or transgender individuals and a spouse who appears to be of the same gender. If you are have Microsoft Access (or the database application from Star Office) and are comfortable making a minor change to information stored in one table of your Legacy database, the procedure below will give you some relief in recording same-sex relationships.

NOTE: The following information and instructions are for Legacy 6. When Legacy 7 is released, a new set of instructions will be added. Please check back when Legacy 7 becomes available.

Copying Your Database

Before you make any changes to your Legacy database, make a copy of that database for backup. You will find the name of your Legacy database, and the path to where the database is stored from within Legacy.

  1. Select Help > General Information.
     
  2. When the Family File Information dialog box opens, check the Family File text box for the name and location of your database.

Changing a Recorded Gender

After copying your Legacy database, do the following to change one or more recorded genders:

  1. Open MS Access
     
  2. Select File > Open.
     
  3. In the Open dialog box, change the Files of Type option to All Files (*).
     
  4. In the Open dialog box, locate and select your Legacy database (<name>.fdb). Click Open.
     
  5. From the list of tables, double-click on tblIR to open this table.
     
  6. Identify the individual for whom you wish to change the gender. (The IDIR column is the RIN, otherwise use the Surname and GivenName columns to search for the individual.)
     
  7. In the Gender column you will find a 0 (male) or 1 (female). Change the number present to the correct number.
     
  8. Save your results.

Limitations of This Process

As with any ‘work around’ where a process must be designed to accomplish an action the software should have included but does not, there are limitations to making a change of gender in your Legacy database. While I have only limited examination of all possible Legacy actions following the above change, I have found the following:

bullet File > File Maintenance > Check/Repair — Running Check/Repair automatically reverses the changes you make to genders recorded in your database. Legacy does not even ask, assuming the now correctly recorded gender is wrong.
 
bullet Reports — Some reports work fine with the changes to gender. Both Family Group and Pedigree reports work fine, providing information about both members of a relationship. Descendant, Individual, Timeline, and apparently some book reports do not include information about the spouse.
 
bullet Chronology View — This feature acts oddly. In one quick test I ran, the ‘husband’ record did not include the relationship or information about the spouse. Switching to the ‘wife’ and the relationship and spouse were present.
 
bullet GEDCOM export — Creates a GEDCOM 5.5 file that contains the changed gender information. Accurately imports the desired gender into other genealogical software such as Genbox and GedStar.
 
bullet Legacy Add-Ons
 
bullet Genelines for Legacy — No. Excludes spouse and children resulting from changing the Legacy database.
 
bullet Legacy Charting Companion — No. Excludes spouse and children resulting from changing the Legacy database.
 
bullet TreeDraw Legacy — No. Excludes spouse and children resulting from changing the Legacy database.
 
bullet GENViewer — Yes. Shows both spouse and children resulting from changing the Legacy database when directly viewing your data.
 
bullet GenStar Plus — Yes. Shows spouse and children using both the direct conversion of a Legacy database and from a GEDCOM.

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Copyright © 1997-2008 by Denise L. Moss-Fritch. All rights reserved.
Revised: 13 Apr 2008 21:14:08 -0700.