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thjelmstad

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Posts posted by thjelmstad


  1. Michael,

     

    You are 100% right. However, Family Tree Maker, Legacy, and Rootsmagic all have direct synchronization capabilities. They don't use a GEDCOM. Instead, once Synched, when you make changes and then start a new synch, only changes go into Family Tree.

     

    And they get their sources placed as sources, not as notes.

     

    Do note that the latest disclosures state that GEDCOM sources will be input into the Notes basket and you can then move them manually to the Sources section - but the actual citation is part of the note and has to be cut and pasted.

     

    This means two things - you don't have to recreate the tree every time - or get very good at "cherry picking" only the changes out of a GEDCOM export. And you don't have to go edit the notes and move them to sources.

     

    Note that if you aren't good at "cherry picking", you'll have to re-create all the sources every time. I'm approaching 600 direct Norwegian ancestors each with 3 to 8 sources for just one small side of my family. I haven't even started the Germans, Danes, Polish, and Dutch - just the Norwegians.

     

    Basically, since I've spent the summer getting all these source documents, I have to make a choice - either hope that there will be a way to get them in Family Tree, or give up on TMG and use a program that will put them in Family Tree, or just use Family Tree directly.

     

    One good reason not to use Family Tree directly is that they don't really support PDFs, and they don't like "active" PDFs. All of my Norwegian Documents from Arkivet are active PDFs - if you click anywhere on the PDF, it takes you to the real original image location. A nice touch and one that TMG handles very nicely. Too bad the Arkivet doesn't advertise it so other archives will start doing this..

     

    So, is TMG interested in doing the Synch process? If not, I see an opportunity for someone. Otherwise, I'll have to make a decision.

     

    But I'd rather stay on TMG.

     

    Thanks,

    Tony


  2. Because of the New Family Tree policies on sources this is a problem - and a feature request.

     

    Background:

     

    Many of us or looking for a place to save our research to in case none of our relatives want it. Our choices tend to be limited to Geni, Ancestry, and Family Tree. If we don't migrate - or have a migration plan written, our research is subject to the vagueries of a family member taking it over. Web sites we've built with our research will go away when the contract is up, causing the data to be lost.

     

    The only solutions are

    1) to plan on a transfer to a repository and hope the heirs will do it

    2) to have a family member who will take it over

    3) to identify a repository and synchronise to it

     

    Because we don't like making other people pay someone else to see our hard-earned research, we've chosen the the LDS New Family Tree as our repository and would like to synchronize to it.

     

    However, New Family Tree requires sources and if no sources are attached to a person, that person is not considered to be a "good" record. When a GEDCOM from TMG is uploaded, the TMG sources are treated as notes rather than sources. When other major Genealogy programs use their "direct" link, sources remain attached.

     

    Basically, we'd love to stay with TMG as we like the program and know how to use it. But if there isn't plans to start doing what all the other major Genealogy programs are doing - synchronizing to The Family Tree - then rather than enter more data into a dead end program, we'll have to move to a program that is keeping up with the Jones'.

     

    So will TMG be looking to do this soon, or should we bail now?

     

    Thanks,

    Tony

     


  3. Is there a preferred method for saving cause of death information. Placing in the Death Tag memo field is what the import did. Several discussion groups describe that as normal. But what if the Death Tag memo field should/does contain other info?

     

    Ancillary to this question. We imported a very large FTM database which had many, but not a majority of people with a death cause in the Medical Record. Is there a way to report on TMG database pulling all people who have a Death Tag with a non-blank Memo field?

     

    Thanks,

     

    Tony


  4. I'm considering changing from FTM 8 because it doesn't export image file names to gedcom - even in the newer version - and I'm using phpgedview on my web site and want the scrapbook images.

     

    If I purchase TMG6, will it import the image files from the scrapbook in FTM-8 or will I need to re-insert them?

     

    We have issues wth the footnoting of sources in FTM as we started with FTM 3 and it appears that over the upgrades, FTM has "varied" the footnotes for sources from prior versions - they just don't appear correctly as a full set. Do you know of any issues with importing an FTM database that's been through several upgrades?

     

    There is some external forum discussion about FTM's notes section also. We have extensive notes on some individuals and there is some discussion about these not transfering via gedcom because of issues with field names, etc. Essentially, some forums indicate that transferring the notes is not reliable - some go and some don't. While I know that TMG uses a different importer, I'm concerned about this as it could be very hard to "know" all the places to looks for notes that may have been missed. Do you know of any issues with this?

     

    Thanks,

    Tony

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