Kim & Kelly Derrick

It sure would be nice if TMG added DNA provisions for tests from 23andMe. 23andMe has a LOT of people in its database, and they have very accurate testing.

It's disappointing that the DNA log button is there, but essentially useless. I'd like to urge TMG/Wholly Genes to make the DNA Log more functional, with a generic Y-DNA or user-added selection. I have a similar frustration with the Relation tag. It's there, and it works most of the time, but it doesn't show up in reports, filters, etc. I've been given a bunch of DNA information for my family, but I will make a custom tag for it, as you suggest. Thanks for your help, Jim!

I had entered the Y-DNA haplogroup in the Memo field of a Note tag, however, the better solution is to keep all the DNA data in one place. Isn't that the idea behind providing the DNA Log? For now, I chose the FamilyTreeDNA 12 marker test, entered the Confirmed Haplogroup and explained myself in the Comments field. Not ideal, but somewhat functional. Perhaps I should do both, if that will make the information more available in Reports? I'd like TMG to add: 1. a generic Y-DNA haplogroup selection in the Y-DNA log (like the mtDNA selection) (essential), and/or 2. 23andMe as a laboratory, and/or 3. user-added laboratory and/or test. . 23andMe is a very well respected DNA laboratory and should be included by TMG. 23andMe sponsors the PBS genealogy program "Finding Your Roots", and all ancestral-DNA testing for "Finding Your Roots: is handled through 23andMe. I believe this area is going to grow and I'm sure there are other laboratories out there that TMG hasn't included. The mtDNA and Y-DNA haplogroup identification is the most important piece of DNA information. It would be easiest for TMG/Wholly Genes to just add the generic Y-DNA selection, but I do think keeping it all in one log is essential. I think I can establish a contact for 23andMe if TMG requires one.

All I really wanted to enter was the Y-DNA haplogroup. For instance, my males with the surname Redd are R1b1b2 Y-DNA haplogroup. I was able to enter my mtDNA haplogroup because it's that simple. My mtDNA haplogroup is HV9a. Why isn't there a way to simply enter the Y-DNA haplogroup, without defining the laboratory and the markers? I looked around the 23andMe website & couldn't find a list of markers. I am asking the question at the 23andMe forum, and my cousin that I found via the 23andMe forum. But it would help if I could just enter the Y-DNA haplogroup like I entered the mtDNA haplogroup.

Here's my problem: The LDS Ordinances of Endowment and Baptism tend to override the Christening tab, when there isn't a Birth tag. Then the person appears to be "born" in 1947, when they died in 1626. Here's what I mean: Person A Christening 12 Dec 1588 Died 18 Jan 1626 Endowment 06 Jan 1947 Baptism 05 Jan 1947 The Christening tag is NOT Primary, and the Endowment tag is Primary. Therefore, when I do a search, or look in the Picklist, etc. the person is sorted according to the Endowment date. I would love a way to mark ALL the Endowment tags as NOT Primary. This problem also occurs with Ordinance Baptisms. What would really be nice is if there was a way to make a tag NOT Primary in the Master Tag List. Then I could solve this problem with a couple of keystrokes instead of fixing them one at a time as I come across them. Alternatively, the problem could be solved if you could tell the system to automatically mark the Christening tag as Primary when there is no Birth tag. I even looked in the TMG Utility for a solution, but didn't find one. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks, Kim Derrick

TMG support has reported the problem as a bug. They are going to move the SealParent tag from the Birth group to the Other group.

As Terry mentioned, whether it was in a PAF or a GEDCOM file, if it is physically first in the file it will be processed first and be set as Primary. The Import processes from the first line of the file to the last, in order. That's exactly what I've been trying to say. I used PAF before I used TMG. Birth and Christening are the top two entries under the person's name, similar to TMG. This is true on the new person input screen, and the PAF version of the detail view. It's logical to start with the person's name, then birth, or in this case Christening information. In PAF, ALL the LDS ordinance tags are down at the bottom of the page. If TMG somehow pulls out the SealParent tag before the Christening information, it's behaving in a totally illogical manner. I'm just going to mention it to support.

The import file would have been a GEDCOM or a PAF. I don't remember which. I still can't imagine why the SealParent tag would have been processed first. If the SealParent tag was in the Other group, in instances where the only Birth group tag is Christening, then would the Christening tag have been made Primary?

To Michael: We've decided to change the group of the SealParent tag to Other. (I'll do the renaming, etc. that is required as outlined above.) To Terry: I can't even possibly imagine why TMG would process the SealParent tags first. All the Seal... tags should be in the Other group. PAF did not list SealParent with Birth and Christening information. They didn't list SealSpouse with Marriage. They put all the Seal... info separately down at the bottom of the page. Now that I understand better how this all works (thanks to you guys), I think these situations where the SealParent tag overrides the Christening tag is a programming mistake. TMG doesn't let SealParent override the Birth tag. In situations where there is no Birth tag, but there is a Christening tag, the Christening tag should be made Primary by default. It can't be that unusual to have hundreds of people with Christening tags, but not Birth tags. I realize that when Christening tags are entered in TMG, t I cannot see any situation where the SealParent tag should ever be Primary, and it shouldn't be in the Birth tag group. I don't know if it would be easier to fix the problem by changing SealParent to the Other group, or making the SealParent tag never Primary. (Probably the latter?) When you enter a new person with only a Christening tag (no Birth tag), the Christening tag is Primary. The problem comes when you import data. When you import data the SealParent tag should never override the Birth tag or the Christening tag.

Actually, TMG makes the first Tag entered in the Birth Group primary - there is nothing special about the SealParent Tag. It doesn't give either priority. It uses the Tag in the Birth Group that is marked as primary, which should be the first one entered.

Ooops. I asked for 27 generations because the Compressed Pedigree file said there were 27 generations. It just occurred to me that I know I was farther back than that in at least one place (back to 63rd ggf). I ran and Relationship Calculation between the 2nd ggf and the 63rd and there is a direct line, so I guess I need to generate an much bigger report than I thought. I need a school gymnasium to display it! Still, thanks to Virginia & Robin!!!

I need Ancestral box charts & Compress Pedigree that are in the region of 25 to 27 generations. I was able to generate them by choosing View (rather than save to file), as Virginia suggested. Then I saved the VCF from there. The first one is roughly 5ft x 90ft. I tried visual first several years ago with a lower version of TMG (obviously) and, of course, a computer that was capable of far less. I had better luck then by generating a saved file and then looking at it. I should have tried the visual first before posting. I was able to generate a visual Compressed Pedigree, but I can't save it. Many thanks to Virginia & Robin!!!

I know it is too late now, but when you import the TMG import process lets you choose what TMG tag type is to be used for each tag type in the importing file. Yeah, but I didn't know enough about TMG at the time. Hindsight is great, isn't it. Well, ahem, yes, if that is the event which they are really identifying. Oh but there is a way. It is called the TMG Utility, a donorware program written by John Cardinal. It has a feature called "Change Event Type" which can do exactly that. And if you have set a Flag to identify only "some" people who need this change it will restrict the change to only those people, otherwise all such events will be changed. THANK YOU!!! I use the Utility all the time, but not for this. I had forgotten that the Utility would do this. I have now converted all the Baptism tags to BaptismLDS. i still have a problem that this didn't fix (see below). Yes, that would help a lot. But I know of no way to do that except view each person, select the Christening tag, and hit the '*' asterisk key to make the tag Primary. You can filter for all people who have no Primary event in the Birth group to get a list. Yeah, but now I have realized that the problem is the SealParent tag which is in the Birth tag group. I apparently have over 300 people who have a Christening date (without a Birth date) and a SealParent tag (and usually an EndowmentLDS tag). TMG makes the SealParent tag primary, not the Christening tag. When you look at these people as children, the "birth date" shown is the SealParent date (not the Christening date). In other words, I've got Lisa Smith, no birth date, christened 1620, sealed to her parents in 1974. When you look at her listed as a child under her parents, her "birth date" is shown as 1974. I have followed your suggestion and found a way to write a Project Explorer filter that gives me a list of over 300 people with the problem (SealParent overrides Christening), so I can fix them one at a time. I wish there was a faster way to fix it. I assume by the "problem" you mean what you mentioned earlier, If the Picklist sort is set to "Surname, Given name, Birth date" I know of no way for it to sort other than by a date from a tag in the Birth group. The Picklist has a column heading for "Birth". Are you seeing the Endowment date listed in that column? If Endowment is really in the "Other" group I don't understand why you are seeing what you are telling me you are seeing. I miss spoke when I included the Picklist in the problem. I didn't realize what was really causing the problem until our discussions here. What is really causing the problem is the SealParent tag. The dates on the Endowment and SealParent are the same, so I erroneously thought the Endowment tag was involved. It is the SealParent tag that is actually causing the problem. The problem is that the SealParent tag overrides the Christening tag. I appreciate all your help. I hadn't looked at the problem in terms of Tag Groups. That is the heart of the matter - SealParent is overriding Christening and both are Birth Group tags. Thank you for having the patience to help me see what was really going on. It would be helpful if TMG gave the Christening date a higher priority than the SealParent date. Failing that - the Christening date becomes Primary when there is no Birth date. Failing that - a global way to toggle Primary. Failing all those - Project Explorer and fix the problems one at a time. THANKS AGAIN !! I am .

I just checked in my projects. Endowment is an Other tag, and yet this is the one that most often causes the problem. For some reason, I have quite a few (probably thousands) people who only have a Christening tag (not a Birth tag), and that Christening tag is NOT primary. This is a condition that has existed since I imported from GEDCOM PAF all those years ago. Maybe what I need is a way to make the Christening tag Primary.

The tag "Baptism" and "Endowment" were created when I imported GEDCOM PAF files many years ago. When I imported them, TMG automatically interpreted the PAF "LDS Baptism" and the PAF "LDS Endowment" as "Baptism" and "Endowment". I inherited those PAF files. Perhaps the person who originally started our projects in PAF used the wrong tags when inputting that data. I'm guessing the next thing you're going to tell me is that I need to change all the Baptism and Endowment tags to BaptismLDS and EndowmentLDS tags? I guess that means I'll just have to live with the problem. I have 3818 Baptism tags and 3764 Endowment tags in the largest of my 4 projects. So I guess what really need is a way to group convert all the Baptism tags to BaptismLDS tags, and the same for Endowment,and I doubt there's a way to do that?

The project I am having trouble with is big -- 1 GB. I need a report that shows my direct line for two 2nd great-grandparents. The Ancestor Box report gets as far as opening the Visual ChartForm, but then I get the error message: VCF has stopped working and the only choice is to close the program. I did set it to Save to:, not View in VCF. When I run the Compressed Pedigree, it calculates the number of people, generates the text, but then the blue circle is there for at least 2.5 hours. I gave up then. One of the CPed reports says it's calculated 5286 grandparents, 27 generations, the other is 6207 & 25. I have feeling you're going to tell me the reports are just too big. I suppose I need a mainframe to produce these reports, not a PC. I thought I'd ask the question just in case there's something else I can do. We've got a family reunion in July and we'd really like to show what we've got.

I am having some vision problems and I'm having a really hard time seeing the text on the tag entry screens, especially when I'm entering new people. I know how to make the Detail, Family and Tree text bigger, but nothing seems to make the tag screens bigger when you are entering new data. It would help me immensely if you could tie the text size I have assigned to the Detail, Family and Tree to the tag entry screens, especially when I'm entering a new person. I tried using Windows Display Magnifier, but that was very frustrating!

Thank you Michael & Virginia. I had already tried all of Michael's suggestions. Unfortunately they don't affect the tag entry screens. Virgina's did affect the tag entry screens! I am detailing what I did, hoping it would be helpful to others. I had to do some experimenting with "Change the Size of All Items" and "Change only the Text Size". I had the "Change the Size of All items" set on "Medium 125%" before. Changing that to "Larger 150%" made things too big, causing lots of problems. Then I clicked on "Custom sizing options". It has a small window ("Scale to this percentage of normal size") where you can enter any number you wish. There is a drop down with some standard settings. I chose to enter my own values. Then I discovered an quirk of Windows 8. Notice, at the bottom of the "Custom sizing options window, there is a "Use Windows XP style scaling" tick box. Unticking that box made a huge difference! If you choose one of the standard (smaller 100$, medium 125%, larger 150$) radio buttons on the "Change the Size of All items" window, that box is automatically ticked. The same holds true if you enter 100%, 125% or 150% in the "Scale" window. I ended up using 123%, and NOT using XP scaling. This actually made the text on the TMG tag entry screens LARGER than the Medium 125% with XP scaling! Go figure! Anyway, I hope this helps someone else. And thanks to Michael and Virginia!

When I try to open TMG 8 I get: ErrorMarker: Invalid subscript reference. 2056 CREATEROLESDBF2 [ABORT] [Retry] [ignore] ErrorMarker: Alias 'ODS' is not found. 9 CUSPLCOLUMNMANAGER.MRECALCDS [ABORT] [Retry] [ignore] I pressed Abort each time. (See below for what happened when I pressed Ignore.) I'm guessing you're going to tell me to uninstall and reinstall. If so, my next question is: When I reinstall, is it going to overwrite the files in the Project and Exhibit file folders? If so: I know I can move the exhibit files and then reattach them later, but what about my project files? Can I just copy or move the main Project folder without losing the connections between the .pjc files and the other files that belong to each project? Just before this started happening I got a 301 error when I was trying to attach an exhibit. I thought this was odd because I am now using external links to exhibits, rather than internal exhibits. So I closed TMG, but when I reopened I started getting these other errors (shown above), so I never got to retry attaching the exhibit. When I pressed Ignore: ErrorMarker: Invalid subscript reference. 2056 CREATEROLESDBF2 ErrorMarker: Alias is not found. 1172 TRANROLESNEW804 ErrorMarker: Variable 'LC_T' is not found. 1174 TRANROLESNEW804 ErrorMarker: Variable 'LCLOGR' is not found. 1176 TRANROLESNEW804 ErrorMarker: Variable 'LCLOGR' is not found. 1177 TRANROLESNEW804 ErrorMarker: Variable 'GAL4R' is not found. 1191 TRANROLESNEW804 ErrorMarker: Alias 'ODS' is not found. 9 CUSPLCOLUMNMANAGER.MRECALCDS

OK. I did the uninstall and reinstall and I'm still getting the same errors. PLEASE HELP!!!

Oops. Sorry. I see there was an answer to my question pinned to this Forum. I did run a search trying to find an answer, but none came up. Sorry. I'll try the reinstall.

I am having trouble with the TMG 7 Automatic Relation Tag. This is not the Ctrl+R Relationship Calculator, which is working fine. This problem is with the Automatic Relation Tag at the top of the big Details window. (You turn it on in Files>Preferences>Current Project Options>Other> Automatic Relation Tag.) My family is very interwoven. I frequently have a line that weaves into another line, changing (for instance) a cousin into a grandparent. When I re-run the Automatic calculation, the cousin's relationship should change from cousin to grandparent. Most of the time, the relationship changes, but sometimes the Relation Tag retains the old relationship (it still says cousin instead of grandparent). When I run the Ctrl+R Relationship Calculator, it shows that the "cousin" is indeed a grandparent, but sometimes I just can't get the correct grandparent relationship to show next to the Automatic Relation Tag. I also have an Accent running that highlights my direct line in turquoise, so I have two other systems that verify that the "cousin" is a grandparent. It bugs me that the Automatic Relation Tag keeps the "cousin" relationship, though. I have tried 1. disconnecting, re-running the calculcation (on the Other page) and reconnecting. This method is time-consuming. When I hook them back up, and re-run the calculation, the relationship reverts back to cousin. 2. I tried turning off the Automatic Relation tag, re-running the calculation and turning it back on. That didn't work either. 3. In desperation, I even tried turning off the Accent (I have one marking my direct line), and turning it back on. That didn't work either. Is there a fix for this? Thanks, GeneQueen (aka Kim)

First, thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately they didn't help. In reply to Jim: I don't know if this is the same Auto Relation Tag problem that Support was working on a few days ago. I've only posted to the forum. I didn't contact Support directly. I hope they're working on it, but I don't know if they are. I did the Preferences>Other>Refresh Relationships>Apply many times. There are just some people it won't change to grandparents. I did steps 1 & 2 because I was desperate and trying to think of anything that might hang up the recalculation. I ran the Maintenance>Validate File Integrity and Maintenance>Optimize. Validate File Integrity fixed one potential problem, so I re-ran Preferences>Other>Refresh>Apply, but that didn't help. I even ran Maintenance>Reindex. I'm just trying to run everything. As far as I can see, everybody is Primary unless there's some other place to look for Primaryness (is that a word?). All the people are bolded. The people in question are showed in bold as children. There aren't any with a second set of parents. Is there another way to mark a parent or child as a primary that I'm not thinking of? Thanks for the offer to look at the project, but I have to warn you, I have over 16,000 people in it. I guess I'll wait a while longer to see if someone comes up with a fix before I take you up on it? In reply to Mike: As far as I can see everybody is marked as Primary, unless there's some other place or way to mark them as primary besides having them bolded in the Details window. There aren't any with a second set of parents. I think this is the problem: I put family A in with parents and children. The parents are direct line, and let's say for this example 2 of their 6 children are also direct line. Then later I'll be working on another direct line (for this example Line and it happens that Line B feeds back into Line A changing a 3rd child in family A into a direct line/grandparent. When I re-run Preferences>Other>Refresh Relationships>Apply sometimes the Auto Relation Tag gets changed to reflect the grandparent status of that 3rd child, and sometimes it doesn't. I tried Refreshing after I ran the Optimize, etc. It didn't change the trouble-makers. If anybody thinks of anything else to try, let me know. I hope Support is working on this. Maybe I should contact them directly. Thanks everybody, Kim

I've read a couple of posts that were 3+ years old about problems entering BC (BCE) dates. I'm running into this problem now. I can see a sort of ugly way around, that I will use. My question is - Are you planning on fixing the problem? We need to be able to use BC (BCE) dates just as much as AD (CE) dates. I chose TMG v7 because it solved a number of other problems I was having with other software. This problem is an important one. I hope you're giving it some serious thought.

Bless your hearts. I was struggling with this problem. I put a text copy in a Note tag, this PDF is a download from Google Books and I wanted to be able to see the actual scans of the pages of this book that was published in 1919. Now I can! Thanks