Jane Neuman

Pam, First, welcome to TMG! Second, I was in the exact same boat a couple of years ago. The advice I got from Teresa Elliott on the TMG list was: STOP. BREATHE. It was good advice as it is easy to get overwhelmed with ideas, plans, questions, etc. We have all been there. I don't know whether you are familiar with Terry Reigel's TMG Tips website. He has an article about importing and cleaning up data imports that I followed when I did my FTM import. http://tmg.reigelridge.com/Importing.htm I'd say, jump in and go to it. I would also say that I have found that I am constantly refining my approaches on various things as I get more experience with TMG, learn more from the list, and run across new problems in my research. From reading the TMG list, I think this is the case even with the most experienced users. Most important of all ... HAVE FUN. Genealogy is a great hobby and you've picked a top-notch tool in TMG. Jane

I am a happy user of TMG. There are enhancements that I'd like to see, but overall I'm happy. Having said that, I really worry about the VFP issue too. I am not at all technical and have no idea about what is involved with changing the underlying database, but can imagine it is a seriously big deal. I also know Wholly Genes doesn't comment on future priorities or enhancements. I get that. As a customer and a user with a big time investment in TMG, I would just like Wholly Genes to say SOMETHING about their ongoing committment to the product and continuing to make it the best and most complete product on the market. I don't need specifics or timelines, but I would like to know that I'm not going to be obsolete in two or three years or that they don't plan to stand still because the underlying database is dead. I think it is completely natural for the user community to be concerned about this. Wholly Genes wants a committed user base and I think it reasonable for the users to want to know that Wholly Genes is also committed. The longer they stay silent on this topic, the more concerned I get.

Does anybody have any nice sentences which describe new or blended families? I'm thinking of cases where there is a death and a remarriage with children from first marriages combining into a new family. I'm just looking for some ideas. Thanks for sharing, Jane

I just add a custom tag named Children-No with a sentence that says there are are no known children. I do a similar thing if I know a person wasn't married. I suppose there are other ways, but that's how I handle it. Jane

Worked like a charm. I knew you brainiacs would steer me in the proper direction! Thanks much! Jane

Friends, I have a GEDCOM to import. For now, I just want to look at the file, rather than actually merge it in with my data. I just want to see if it has any of my family in it. On step 2 of the wizard I get "UFT-8 GEDCOM, can't be imported. Please see GEDCOM import help topic" The file has a .ged extension. I am running TMG 7.04 on Windows XP. From reading help, I gather that some programs produce a "non standard" gedcom file. One wonders why they call it GEDCOM if it isn't At any rate, I assume that is what I have here. Is there a workaround? I do own a couple of versions of FTM, would that help me?

Another potential option (depending on the number of events) is to add witnesses. You could add living children as a witness to the death of the parents, for example. Or, parents to the marriage of children, etc. Just a thought .... Jane

I've struggled with this, too. I guess I'm basically a lumper, except for the census where I lump by film number rather than year or locality. I go with the "Rochester Post Bulletin" as a single source and then in the CD, I put the date, page, column, etc. In the citation memo (I think that's the name of the second comment box?) I put things that are my personal comments, like "her sister Susie, who was still alive, is not mentioned in this obituary. If I am transcribing a whole article, I use a separate tag so that I can control when / where it prints. For the census, I do the same thing, except in the CD I enter my version of a census transcription and the memo contains comments about the census ... either readability or people living nearby or whatever. When I print things out, I include the CD in the notes for people who are fellow researchers (this makes a BIG set of notes), but just get a very slimmed down list of notes for family or others who are not that interested in details. I hope I don't regret this decision later as it would be a BIG task to rework it down the road. I just can't see setting up the same basic source over and over just because you refer to a different date or page number. Just my opinion! Jane

Pat, I like the idea! I'm frustrated with this, too, but have so far ignored it. Bravo for presenting a clean, concise solution. I'm sure there would still be some cases that would have to be worked around, but this would solve most of my irritations. Jane

Hey Michael! It is working great. I set up Germany with a child of Württemberg with a child of Hiltenzweiler Parish. I used name styles and everything! I attached some maps and photos and entered some general history data. So far I'm having a blast. Thanks

Hmmm. Thanks. That's a lot to chew on. I am always amazed at how complex and well thought out some of these strategies are. There is so much to think about and learn from you veteran users. You have developed these over time in response to your needs and your strategies often contain fixes for issues I've never even thought of! Who ever thought of having pseudo people getting "married" and "born" in a sense??? So, just to be sure I understand .... you have a pseudo source person who is a male and you marry that to a female pseudo location person? Why would you do that rather than just attaching a source to a tag in the pseudo location person? Same for pseudo surname people? I can see that this would give you the ability to see surnames that were associated with a location, but why wouldn't you just run a LOP report filtering for events in a location to get that info? When you're all done, what kind of output [either report or info in the PV] do you get for a pseudo location person using your method? Thanks for sharing, Michael. Jane Neuman

Hello New Mexicans and others, I have read this thread with interest. Michael Hannah, I would be interested in your conventions for naming your "pseudo place persons". I have never used name styles, but it might be time to learn! I would definitely support the proposal for a "bibliography only" source. I enter all the sources that I review, even if I don't have a reference to them. Maybe just a checkbox or maybe even the program could just "know" to do this as you say the "help" implies. I have been using "pseudo place people" for places, but I have a broad definition of "place". For example, I might have a county name with information about county history, population, county formation data, overall census statistics, etc. But I also might have a church building that has a photo of the church and maybe a history of the congregation, etc. I am also considering "cemetery people" but I haven't actually implemented that yet. One could include a cemetery map, location data, as well as linking the people who are buried there so one could produce a report on the cemetery and who is buried there. I am not exactly sure what I will do with this information yet. For now, I am just using it as a way to accumulate and organize information. I would assume that I would draw on this information to write custom memos, journal intro tags, etc. for my actual people. I was also thinking that it might be cool to be able to assemble a bibliography / source list for a place. Great discussion! Jane Neuman

Dennis, Welcome to TMG. Check out the Tools, Master Place List, option from the main menu. You can sort the list in whatever order seems most logical to you and then start the clean up. There really isn't a merge function. You have to edit the spelling / capitalization to be consistently applied. If you need to see events associated with a place during this process, there is an events button at the right side. In the MPL, you can use the Ctl-arrow keys to move an entry to the left or right so that you can get everything in the right "bucket". Sometimes things get messed up in the import. When you are done, I believe you have to go to File, Maintenance, Optimize and run that function in order to actually get the duplicate places to combine so that the MPL again lists only unique places. Finally, when doing data entry there are two tricks to help keep you consistent in your entry. You can use the F3 key to recall the last 10 entries in a field or you may use the F2 key to choose from a list of places. To use the F2 key, be sure you have your cursor in the most detailed level of the location. This is my understanding, but perhaps others will have other input. Best wishes, Jane Neuman

Thanks Teresa and Michael, I kind of forgot about the conditional memo option. I can leave my sentences alone for those 4th cousins I have hanging around out there, but jazz up the more thoroughly researched ones using the memo. Also, thanks for explaining the age variable. So ... it would be best not to use a circa date in the primary birth tag, I guess? Michael ... you rock!

Virginia, I have had fun experimenting with your chart. Thank you again for the step by step instructions that were easy to follow. I do have a question and I know it is simple, but I don't know the answer. When I print the chart, I can see the little gray dots that surround the individual boxes and the title text box and the date box. I'm sure there is a way to turn those off after you are done editing your chart. Jane