When you specify a date, Family Historian will use this date for sorting purposes, unless you indicate that you do not want it to do this, by specifying a separate sort date. Why might you want to do that? Most of the time, you won't. Suppose, for example, that you have specified that a child was born, died and buried in 1987. If the only date you provided for each of these 3 events was 1987, you might think that you would need a sort date to specify which order these events should appear in - but you don't. This is because ordinary fact types ('Birth', 'Death' and 'Burial' in these cases) have something called a Normal Time Frame associated with them. You can also associate a Normal Time Frame with custom fact types that you create. The possible types of Normal Time Frame are:
The Normal Time Frames for Birth, Death and Burial are 'Birth', 'Death' and 'Post-Death'. Unless the dates stored indicate otherwise, Family Historian will order death events after birth events, and post-death events after death events. Other events are ordered as you would expect. The practical consequence is that in many cases, there is no need to specify a sort date - even if the ordering is not determined by the date alone - because Family Historian will do the right thing anyway, based on the Normal Time Frame of the events in question. To learn more about Normal Time Frames, see Work With Fact Sets.
Even if the correct ordering of events is not determined by the Normal Time Frame, there may still be no need to use a sort date. Suppose for example, you know that a person, Michael, had two children, John and Paula. Suppose you don't know when they were born but you know that John is the older of the two. In that case, you still don't have to use a sort date. You can simply show Michael's record in the Focus Window, and use the Move Up and Move Down buttons on the main toolbar, to set the ordering of the children, so that John comes first. You can do the same thing with spouses, to specify their ordering. You can also change the ordering of events in the Facts tab of the Property Box, using the Move buttons on the toolbar below the fact list, if the events are attached to the same record, and the ordering of those events cannot be determined by their Normal Time Frame, or by their date.
What this shows is that most of the time, there is no need to use a sort date. However, occasionally, the required ordering of facts and events cannot be determined in any other way. And in those cases, you can get the desired result by using a sort date. When you specify a sort date, you must specify a year, at a minimum. You can also enter a month and year - and leave the day field blank. Or you can specify a day, month and year (and even a BC date if you wish). When you specify a sort date, you are not saying that the event occurred on that date. You are merely indicating that you wish that event to be treated as if it occurred on the sort date, for ordering purposes. Sort dates are always entered as dates in the Gregorian calendar.
Sometimes you may want to enter a sort date on its own - that is, without entering any other kind of date. To do this, select the Date tab. Leave the year field blank, tick Separate Sort Date and enter the sort date you require.
If you want to clear all dates, including the sort date, untick Separate Sort Date. Select the Date tab. Leave the year field blank and press OK. You will be asked to confirm that you wish to clear all date information.
Sort dates are not displayed on the Main tab of the Property Box, unless you open the Date Entry Assistant Dialog to view them. They are displayed more prominently however on the Facts tab of the Property Box. Any date which has an associated sort date has a "(s)" suffix, in the first column of the Fact List on that tab. Also, the sort date is displayed as a link, immediately after Date field, in the bottom half of the tab. Clicking on this link opens the Date Entry Assistant Dialog.
See Simple Date Fields for help on the actual date fields. See How to Enter Dates for tips on entering dates.