Schnarps

Thank you, Terry. Unfortunately this is not the reason. In fact, the overwhelming majority of names appear without commas, only very few even now have a comma separating them. I changed the name style to a custom name style but again the style is the same for comma-separated and non-comma separated entries. Given names and surnames are entered in the correct fields with the surnames appearing in capitals in the Person View, just as I defined it in the Preferences.

I have run maintenance and optimization on my database, no change. Would you have any other suggestions? I'd be very grateful, thank you.

When I go to the Simple Picklist (clicking the Search Icon) in order to find a person, I have recently noticed a sort order problem (Current Setting is Surname,Given Name, Birth Date but it does not matter, it appears in all settings like this):

Some of the names are displayed with a comma between the surname and the given name, and some are listed without a separating comma, resulting in a sort order problem. For example for the surname RIESZ the order looks like this:

Riesz Sigmund

Riesz Simon

Riesz Theodor

Riesz, Alexander

Riesz, Edith

...

I.e. the comma-separated names appear after the non-comma separated names.

Did I inadvertently change a setting? I'm stumped. Thank you.

After 2 weeks of attempting to get a report to print to Word, I am giving up.

I encountered one error message after another, beginning with Conversion Error #3, followed by a "Canot find file wpt.sp1" error. Trying to uninstall yielded a "Cannot open install.log" error and after manually removing all TMG folders as well as relevant Registry entries (as per instruction from Phil DeSilva), I was right where I had started - at Conversion Error #3, followed by "Cannot find wpt.sp1...".

Phil then deferred to Jim Byram but he couldn't help either.

I also disabled and then uninstalled AdAware, disabled Windows Defender and upgraded to NIS 2009 from 2008 - no change whatsoever.

I am beyond frustrated, and after using TMG for 7 years, I will now have to tediously move my data to a different genealogy program (Legacy) because I am unable to successfully generate a Word report.

Getting my brand-new WinVista 64-bit system won't help me either because TMG report functionality apparently does not work (yet) for 64-bit systems. And my Win Vista 32-bit laptop - well... see above (error messages, just like the XP desktop).

Nonetheless, thanks to Phil and Jim for trying to help. And to all the others who over the years have helped me out with one thing or another. It was always appreciated.

Irene

Thank you for the firewall suggestion but I know that this used to work just fine with the firewall.

I'm just hoping that Phil will be able to come up with something, I'm still emailing with him...

Irene

Irene -

 

During your testing did you try a barebones report without endnotes, footnotes or memos?

 

Virginia

Hi Virginia,

Yes, barebones, no endnotes, footnotes or anything else that could be set to NONE.

BTW, in hopes of helping someone else:

The original hourglass mystery was solved. Turned out that it was caused by AdAware (spyware protection program). On the notebook, a notification window popped up informing me that an .exe file wanted to run and if I wanted to ALLOW or BLOCK this. As soon as I hit ALLOW TMG proceeded - regrettably only till it showed the Conversion Error 3 :-( That message never displayed on the desktop (I'm in the process of replacing that system anyway)...

Irene

UPDATE:

After a week of emailing back and forth with Phil (TMG Tech Support), Phil suggested I should reinstall TMG. Before doing that, however, I decided to try generating the report on my laptop, a less than a year old and rarely used Dell XPS M1330 running WinVista and Office 2007.

To my surprise I got the same Conversion Error 3 on the laptop. Since I had used a recent backup from the desktop (which runs Win XP and Office 2003!) where the problem first appeared, I decided to go way back in backups and use one from early July 2008. However, the problem remains.

It also appears when using the sample project on the laptop which was NOT copied from the desktop and which I never worked with/altered in any way since initial installation.

So in short, I have a situation where Conversion Error 3 appears on two systems. One running Win XP / Office 2003, and the other running WinVista / Office 2007. Since it even shows up in the sample project (on both systems)that came with TMG, I am now really at a loss. And also cannot imagine that reinstalling TMG would make a difference.

Does someone have another suggestion? Thank you!

Thanks Virginia, you tried and I appreciate that. Already mailed tech support. Hopefully they can help.

Thanks again, Irene

Irene -

 

During the creation of the report, TMG uses a temporary scratch file on the local drive. I suspect the problem may be writing directly to the external drive. Try saving the report to your local drive and see if that works.

 

In order to create a report - whether to a file or even to Print Preview - the program needs formatting instructions from a printer driver. Usually it makes no difference whether there is a printer attached or whether you have selected the default or a specific printer, but it's one of the recommendations I usually make - along with resetting the report configuration - just to eliminate possible problems there and cover all the bases.

 

Let us know how it goes -

 

Virginia

Thanks again, Virginia - I learned something. :-)

Tried to save to local drives C: and F: and both times got an error msg that reads as follows:

Conversion Error #3: Could not create or open CONV_LOG.TXT on scratch drive.

Irene -

 

In the report definition - Properties button, if you have the default printer selected, try a specific printer.

 

Can you post an example of the path you are using for the report output?

 

Virginia

Thanks for responding so quickly, Virginia.

Here is the path:

N:\Genealogy\Family Trees\Ahnentafel.doc

with N: being an external drive which works properly when accessing it directly.

As to changing the printer, I did that (tried Adobe PDF, WG PDF Writer, my default Canon printer) but it didn't make a difference, the situation remains the same as described.

May I ask how that would influence the output as a file? I would think that which printer is selected wouldn't make a difference if I don't actually print to printer. I was just wondering about that, don't mean to be facetious at all (just thought I'd clarify ).

I am running TMG v 7.03, Win XP Pro, and am encountering the following problem when trying to create a file output (vs. printer output):

I tried various report formats (Ahnentafel - Direct Line, Descendants Indented Narrative) as well as various output formats (Word for Win 2000 and later, older Word for Win versions, RTF) and am only able to get an output when chosing ASCII Text. Here is what happens:

I select the report format as well as an output format. Then hit CREATE REPORT. TMG then goes through the various popup screens (Calculating text..., processing endnotes...) but then nothing further happens and all I am getting is a never-ending hourglass symbol. The way to get back to a functioning TMG is only by ending the program through the Windows Task Manager. As soon as I hit "End Task" there, a TMG popup screen appears stating "The file was created successfully, would you like to open it?" When I hit YES, the file opens but is empty. I've checked and it is always created with a 0 byte size. (Note: When the Task Mgr gives me the choice to "End Now" or "Cancel", I CANCEL ending it...). TMG then appears to be back to normal but the problem remains.

PDF format works but truncates the surnames (Schlesinger appears only as Schlesi).

Here is what I tried so far:

- Reindexed, optimized and checked file integrity

- Reset the report definitions to defaults (as was suggested as a solution in a post to a similar problem)

- Restarted program

None of this worked. Any suggestions? Thanks a lot!

Irene

Thanks again to the both of you! I used custom flags in the past and might do that here then.

Have a good week,

Irene

Michael and Terry,

I very much appreciated your help and thoughts with regards to this issue. It really helped me to understand this much better. Also I am very relieved that I won't have to enter all possible relationship tags, just the "-can" tag.

I still wish there were a way to, let's say, color-code such presumed relationships to make them stand out more strongly visually. But I will quite happily go with the "-can" tags as well...

Again thank you much!

Irene

You have two issues:

1) a possible relationship between two people in the dataset

2) two people in the dataset that are possibly the same person

 

For issue 1) <..> For possible parent/child relationships I define a full set of "*-Can" relationship tag types for these "candidate" or potential parent/child relationships to be recognized, but there are pros and cons to doing that.

Michael,

Thank you, this was very helpful - I like the Duplicate tag solution. Especially thanks for giving this much detail. That'll make it much easier for me to implement.

Would you mind elaborating some more on the "*-can" relationship tags? I have never created custom relationships before so I am a bit unsure as to how to proceed with this. Thank you very much for your help!

Irene

I was wondering if I could get input from other users regarding presumed relationships:

I have a few people I recently came across who might or might not be related to an ancestor of mine. At this point, the evidence is circumstantial at best (an official address book entry from 1848 lists my ancestor and this other person as living at the same location). I do not even have a full first name for this person, as he is just abbreviated with an S.

I am assuming at this point that this person was a brother or a cousin to my ancestor. How do other users handle this? I can't very well enter him as a brother because I simply don't know that to be true. But I want to enter him into TMG nonetheless AND clearly indicate the possibility/likelihood of a relationship.

In addition, I have quite a few pieces of information (wife, children, place of birth etc.) on someone with the same surname whose first name begins with the same letter S. Based on other circumstantial information I can assume that this person and the S. from the address book entry are one and the same. But I do not know for sure. So now it becomes complicated - how do I enter this man, his wife and their children into TMG and link them somehow to the other S. AND my ancestor without making this definite?

Thanks for any input - I just might not see the forest for the trees here but this has been a problem for me to figure out.

Irene

Repaired and returned the project.

Just a "public" thank you as well to you and the programmer who fixed my project. This was a great support experience from beginning to end! Thank you.

Send me a backup of your current project (including just the project files, accents and filters). If it's larger than about 6 Mb, upload the backup to the Wholly Genes server using Help / Message Manager / Outgoing tab and send me the backup file name so that I can retrieve it.

 

You can send me an email by clicking on the link below...

Jim Byram

Thanks Jim. I just mailed you the backup...

Please update to v7.03 if you haven't done so.

 

You might also try deleting all of the index files (.CDX) in the program folder. Exit the program first. The program will recreate them when it is next run.

Jim, Thanks for your quick response. Unfortunately there is no change. I am running 7.03, and deleting all .cdx files for the project didn't help. Except that now the number preceding the PCKSUM is different: 3541.

Do you have any other ideas? I've also tried in the meantime restoring from older backups but I am as far back as a month now and am still getting the same error.

Thanks a lot!

I am getting the following error message every time I am trying to optimize my project:

Memo file C:\<full path>\[project name]_P.FPT is missing or invalid. 3694 PCHKSUM

I checked the PROJECTS folder (where this file should be), and it is there. So I assume it is invalid. How can I fix this? Checking data integrity does not show any problems with the project. I also re-indexed, no change...

Thank you in advance.