Dave Dalton

Well, that should have been easy, but wasn't. Showing all occurrences of a person within the Descendant Indented Report is enabled simply by checking the "Repeat Duplicate Lines" in the Miscellaneous tab in Report Options. So that report does indeed allow me to quickly get to all of the connections from me to a particular ancestor. I found six different connections to one of my Mi'kmaq g-grandmothers! Still to find additional connections to four others. Thanks again. Dave Dalton

Perhaps I wasn't clear on this request, and my apologies for that. My records have nothing to do with DNA, but are the result of finding my ancestors the traditional way. Doris, on your suggestion I did generate a descendant indented chart on an ancestor that I know is related through multiple connections and did find my maternal grandfather in three places in that MS Word report, connected by three different ancestors. But both my mother and I were listed under him only once. I did not limit the number of generations, so I would think that I would be below my grandfather in that chart in each case. (I had run that report in the past and had looked only for replications of my name, with no success.) If someone has an explanation for this, please let me know. I will investigate it otherwise.

The ongoing controversy about a prominent American claiming to be a Native American and revelations through a recent private DNA test that she might be 1/64 to 1/1024 American Indian reignited my interest in doing some research on just what my Native American makeup is. My mother's side is mostly French Acadian and I have accurate records dating back to the early 1600s in Acadia. I quickly found my five Mi'kmaq Indian g-grandmothers and determined that I am 9/2048 Indian on my mother's side. But the problem is that this number comes from a single run from my mother up the tree to each g-grandmother, and she is related to many of the same Acadian ancestors through more than one connection. My question is whether TMG has support to easily find multiple connections to a single ancestor. For example, if a certain 12th generation Mi'kmaq g-grandmother is related through a single line, then I am 1/2048 Indian through that single line. But if another line also finds this same ancestor 12th generation up, the fraction now becomes 1/1024. Any ideas about how to get to this information quickly and easily? It doesn't appear that any of the TMG report formats support this. Are there any outside programs that I could, for example, dump a GEDCOM file into and get to this? Thanks, Dave

Thanks, Michael. I updated the project this AM and everything seems to be working well. Dave

Michael, thanks for the clarification. Yes, the trial version that I downloaded after the failed update to 8.08 is indeed at 8.08 (I had to re-register after installing the trial version). So if I read you right, my problem is not an older pre-8.0 project database, but simply that TMG wants to upgrade the project to properly support the enhancements to the roles functions. Please confirm, and I will go ahead and update the project when I open TMG again. Now if Wholly Genes would just fix these various update problems I've suffered over the last several years... Dave

I just encountered the same problem. I don't get to TMG on a regular basis, but do several weeks of marathon sessions about twice a year, during the dog days of summer and again in January/February. So when I went to TMG this morning to start my summer session, I let it update to 8.08, and lost everything. I downloaded the trial version and got it going again, but when I tried to open my main project, it told me that it has to update the project to the latest level, just like when I initially installed TMG 8.0 last year. Thinking that it must have been going to an old, pre-8 database, I refused the update (cancelled). It then set up my normal environment and opened my main database as usual, without any additional action on my part, and without conversion. My concern is that I may be using an older database, so I produced a report on last edit date, and found that it was in January. I believe that I have added some updates to the database since then, but can't be sure. I back up nightly, but also swap my backup drives to an offsite location, about 30 miles away, about once every 60 days, and my last swap was done in early June, which means my offsite copy would contain any TMG updates/edits from about early April through early June. I really don't have the time or ambition to pick up the offsite copy today, and hesitate to update the database until I know for sure. So what's going on with this effort by 8.08 to update my database? I cannot find another database on my desktop with a .PJC extension, and keep my TMG databases in a data location of my own choosing along with all my other important data (I've always refused to let Microsoft (currently Windows 7) control where my data is kept, since it is often difficult to find, buried under many folders and pseudo folders, when using their approach). Did TMJ 8.08 default to some other folder and perhaps a new file type for the database? I had a problem of a similar nature, fixed late last year with help from the kind members of this group. See the thread 'TMG V8 opens with "The file **** does not appear to be a valid PJC file!"'in this forum. Just a few minutes ago I restored the last backp of the PJC file for this project (updated in March), with no change in this behavior. I'm not proceeding with any more updates until I understand this problem, so please post your suggestions as quickly as possible. Thanks, Dave Dalton

Jim, that did it, very simply. My family .pjc file was 146 lines, the sample is 180, restoring a backup made a few days or so before I made any recent significant updates (provided by last edited dates from the report setup in my above post) yielded a family .pjc file of 196 lines. I replaced the "damaged" .pjc file with the restored version and everything now is back to normal. Thanks for your assistance. Dave

Michael, that should work (I knew about this once and used it, but...). I set up a people report to include and sort on the last edited date, with a "last edited date" ">comes after" and it will at least show me what has changed since that date, enough to jog my memory and for me to pull out the hard copy sources of these updates so I can do them again. It probably would not be useful for anything that was last edited more than a couple months ago, but for my purposes it is just what I need. That is, as long as the database is accessible before I need to restore it. Thanks much, Dave

Thanks. I'll wait for Jim's counsel. In the meantime, hopefully there a positive answer to my second question: Is there some way I can configure a report to give me a list of project updates made over a specified time range?. That capability would be handy for a lot of reasons, but I suppose it would rely on Foxpro time-stamping and logging changes to the database. Dave

Virginia and Jim, Thanks for the quick responses and helpful replies. I couldn't find any obvious problems with the .pjc file or any others such as the .ini file. So I will try a few point-in-time restores of the entire project folder (my backup program takes a backup every night of anything changed and I can go back as far as I have backups to do a restore). I will start recently at about when I believe the problem started and go back as far as I need to to get a good copy. But I have made a number of updates in the last several weeks that will be lost if I can't capture just what those updates were. So two questions: 1. Should I restore anything other than the project, such as documents and settings files like the .ini files and others that have been altered in the last several weeks? 2. Is there some way I can configure a report to give me a list of project updates made over a specified time range? BTW, the problem manifests itself now only as giving me the welcome screen on startup, upon which when I select the problem project, it fails with the above message. Then when I acknowledge the message and then kill the welcome screen it goes ahead and loads the same project without me selecting it, without any apparent problems. So I always eventually get to access the project. Still unsettling, however. It must be fixed. Thanks Dave

I installed TMG V8 Gold, upgrading from V7 Gold, a few months ago and this message just started showing up in the last couple of weeks. After I click the "OK" button TMG will either 1) disappear at which time when I restart it it properly reloads my family database file with no apparent problems or 2) load the file without first disappearing. I find this problem annoying and somewhat unsettling but haven't been able to find a good description of just how to fix it. I am running XP Pro SP3 and, as I always do with all my data (when I installed TMG V8, if I remember correctly ), relocated the entire TMG V8 Project folder, all the subfolders, and all the files to a Data folder off of my root C. The Preferences>>Options>>Current Project Options>>Advanced File locations all point to this location, although when I checked this morning I found that they all pointed to the default "Documents and Settings" location. I changed them again to my Data folder locations, but it still reacts the same way when I open it. How do I fix this problem? Thanks, Dave

Shucks! I suppose I will have to spend a few days sometime in the future manually changing place names to correctly identify what they were called when. Thanks for all the input. Dave Dalton

John, I missed that capability at the bottom of the screen. Thanks for pointing it out. However, it doesn't help with my specific need, as I would want to [Change Place Parts] based on a flag I set that results from filtering dates, and the [set Flag Filter] is not available for that function. But since you have already coded the [set Flag Filter], perhaps it would be a fairly simple task to extend it to Places and other functions? Thanks, Dave

Thanks all for some good responses, as usual. Virginia, it sounds like Family Tree Super Tools is just the thing. I will have my son download a copy for his use. Dave Dalton

I would like for my children to have access to the electronic versions of some visual chartform charts I have generated. Is there or can there be a runtime version of visual chartform that I could ship with the chart, or must they purchase the product to look at these charts? They are much too large to generate bitmaps or jpegs. Thanks, Dave Dalton