Michael Dietz

Is there any way to set the font size for the footnotes in the narrative reports when using Word? I know I can set the text size to say 10 point and then after the report is saved, manually change the footnote sections to 8 point. But if you have 30 pages to do that is a lot of manual adjusting. No big deal, just a way to automate a desired function. Thank you Mike

Tom, Thank you for the suggestion, however if I read Terry's description of the macro(s), they deal with endnotes and not footnotes. Mike

Sometimes when I run the Book Manager I will get the following errors. Variable '145' is not found. Conversion error #3: Could not create or open CONV_LOG.TXT on scratch drive. Not always and not always on the same reports. Hitting ignore goes on and everything appears fine. Any suggestions are appreciated. Mike

I am trying to import a GEDCOM but get errors. Sample error messages are: Variable 'GC_CIRCA' is not found. 170 ATOF Variable 'GC_BETWEEN' is not found. 189 ATOF Variable 'GC_BEFORE' is not found. 154 ATOF I hit Ignore and the procedure runs until the next error is detected. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thank you Mike

I have a g-g-g-grandfather who was married three times and had children by all three wives. His second wife is my g-g-g-grandmother and so I am interested in the family group sheet for him and her. However if I call up the report with his id I get him and his first wife and their children. The only way I can get the report for my direct ancestors and their children is to call it up with her id but that makes it appear she is the head of the household, i.e., she is in the subject box and he is in the spouse box. Is there any way to call the report under his id and specify which spouse? Thank you Mike

Virginia: I thought I was still having the problem but then I looked at the entire group sheet listing (actually print preview) Since I was interested in the second wife I had only looked at the first page of the report and it is always with the first wife. DUH!!!. The other wives are listed with their families as the second page and the third page. As my father said, "READ THE INSTRUCTIONS" or in this case the entire report. Thank you for the help and sorry for such a dumb question. I did not know about selecting the primary spouse as I very seldom use the family or tree views. So I did learn something. Thank you. Mike

I had a custom birth tag which consisted basically of "x was born <> <> . Alternative or variant data on PP birth are listed below" and which I used when I had varying data for the birth. This would be the primary tag and the variant data would be in another custom tag stating it was in variance to the primary. It worked well until I started preparing my book. In the book I would have a chart or pedigree and also individual narratives. The tag worked well for the narratives but looked dumb in the chart where it stated there was additional data below. So I tried this. The regular birth tag and then a custom tag which would concatenate onto the primary birth tag with the sentence structure "[+]. Alternative or variant data on [PP] birth are listed below.". In theory I could then have the primary birth tag in the chart and in the narrative and place the concatenation in the narrative to achieve the desired result. However I discovered since there was no date (other than the sort date), no location, and no memo data in the concatenation it never appeared. I resolved the problem by changing the sentence structure to "[+][M] Alternative or variant data on [PP] birth are listed below." and then placing a period in the memo. That works fine except if I forget the period and it does look a bit strange in the tag entry list. Is there any other workaround or should I enter a wishlist to have the ability to concatenate a constant valued sentence onto another tag? Thank you Mike

John, This is now embarrassing. I have been trying to replicate the problem for the last hour. Unfortunately I bumped into it two days ago and have changed the data and the report formats since then. Now it seems to be working correctly. I will continue to work at it to see if I can find the configuration that caused the problem. The Birth-Plus group was other event and not birth. Mike

Whoops I did not preview the post and now see an error. The revised Birth-Plus tag sentences should be [+][M1] Variant or alternative data on [PP] birth is listed below<[M2]> without the period after the [M1] variable. Sorry about that. Mike

John: Here is more detail on the situation. In the birth tag I had the primary role as given by TMG. I also had a role, named Alternative, which had the sentence structure of: [PF]< [PAR]> was born <[D]> <[L]><. [M]>. Variant or alternative data on [PP] birth is listed below. Then for John Doe where I had a couple of possible birth dates I would select the Alternative role for the primary birth tag and then later (using sort dates) would list the other birth date(s) using a custom tag named Birth-Altrn with the sentence structure of: It is also reported [PF] was born <[D]> <[L]><. [M]> This worked well as long as I was using the individual narrative report. Then I looked at the Journal report where I listed only primary BMDB tags. Since John Doe had the Alternative birth role the journal stated there were other birth data listed below. This was incorrect since I was not listing the associated Birth-Altrn tags. I then removed the Alternative role from the birth tag and implemented a custom tax named Birth-Plus with the sentence structure of: [+]. Variant or alternative data on [PP] birth is listed below<[M]> I would then enter John Doe using the primary role in the primary birth tag. I would also place the Birth-Plus tax immediately following the birth tag expecting it to concatenate the sentence onto the birth tag. It did not. I resolved the problem with the Birth-Plus tax being: [+][M1]. Variant or alternative data on [PP] birth is listed below<[M2]> and placing the period in the memo box. Mike's (the other one) idea removed the need to put the period in the memo box. I have no idea why the situation existed since I also thought any tag which was not excluded in some manner would be printed/displayed. I guess there must be some type of formatting of some variable in the sentence structure in order to generate the actual tag. I have many constant valued tags throughout the database for documentation but they are not concatenations. So maybe the condition only exists with the [+] concatenation. Thanks for looking into this. Mike

Mike (also): Thank you. While this does not 'fix' my problem of having to kludge the system to get the sentence to appear in the narrative report it is a much more acceptable kludge than mine of having the period as the memo. Thank you (and please send some rain to us. Half of our trees here in the Manzanos and Sandias are dying). Mike (again) ps. for those of you who do not know it, Mike and I live about 60 miles from each other.

How is that obvious? TMG 7 itself works perfectly on my 64-bit system, and has for well over a year. The only thing that doesn't work is the third-party code that produces reports to word processor files, and that has nothing to do with FoxPro. I will play a bit of Devil's advocate here to Terry's remarks. Please note that I am not rebuking TMG here just asking a rhetorical question. If the problem is with the 64 bit THIRD-PARTY code and since that seems to be the big hold-up for version 8, why not release 8 with the widespread knowledge that the problem is outside TMG. And hopefully it will be fixed in the future. That way many of the people on this thread will be happier and as far as the problem, we will be no worse off than we are now.

Delete the tag. Do not re-enter it. Then export the file to GEDCOM or print a report for the individual. If the tag is still there than you have the duplicate Terry has mentioned. If so delete it again. The other Mike

Terry's idea works quite well except if you want the from location to appear in the location master list or the place index in Second Site. 95% of the time the from location will probably be in some other event such as birth or marriage but for the other 5% it would not. Just a potential consideration depending upon your individual situation. His idea does reduce the number of events in the database. Mike

I have a similar situation, i.e., where there are two locations involved but space for only one in a tag. Mine involves a source(s) giving a location which did not exist at the time of the event, generally a county which was formed from a county. A good example would be Montgomery County, Maryland, which was formed in 1776 from Frederick County, Maryland. For example I have numerous sourced events giving so and so was born in prior to 1776 in Montgomery County. I have a custom tag (which I have called Locale) with a sentence structure "The source(s) lists the location as [L] which was not created until [M]". To use it for a birth I enter the birth event with the date and the actual county which existed at the time of the event. Using the sort date feature I immediately have the Locale event following the birth tag with the later county location and the date the newer county was formed in the memo. This gives me two events similar to the following: John Doe was born in 1760 in Frederick County, Maryland. The source(s) list the location as Montgomery County, Maryland which was not created until 1776. You could have a similar pair of tags. You could use the Address tag for the from location and then have a custom tag with a sentence structure similar to: "From there he moved [D] <to [L]><. [M]>". The memo could give any particulars about the move, the reason, etc. The order and grammar could be changed around into several different forms depending upon what you like. Hope this gives you a start on the situation. Mike

I have just come across a family tree with a very obvious error in it. One individual is listed as being born in 1613 which seems correct based upon the birth years of his siblings. He has one son born in 1650. No problem there. But his marriage year is given as 1830. Whoooops!!! Obviously an error, probably a typographical one. My question is a philosophical one. I have two alternatives. I enter him into my database with the marriage year as 1630 thereby correcting the error or I enter him into my database with the marriage year as 1630 and a note or memo stating that the original source had 1830. My question: is it being too nitty gritty to choose the explanation option? Thank you Mike

Jim, I agree this error really caught my eye. The document I am looking at has the individual listed under his parents, his birth year, his wife's name, his son's name (with birth year), and the marriage year. So I don't think it is a mixture of two individuals, especially because of the span of over 200 years. I can see several explanations for the error. The typographical error of having the 8 instead of a 6 is the most likely. Another would be the marriage year should be 1650, the same as the son's birth year, but that would involve a typo on two digits. And another would be the given wife is not this marriage which would seem reasonable given the span from 1630 to 1650 for the birth of the son. There are no other siblings of the son listed. In that case the marriage year could be for an unknown couple. The name of this individual is John Stapp, not a very common name. His descendants do include Johns but by then (the 1700's) the surname had changed to Stepp. I can enlarge upon your comment about being skeptical by entering the "corrected" marriage year with an associated comment or memo stating the original source had this date. That covers the possible date of the marriage and also indicates there might be some unknown conflict in the data. Thank you for your comment. Mike

I assume you are wanting to add a general comment to the data for the individual. In that case use a Note tag and fill in the memo field with the text. If you wish to add the comment to a specific event for the individual you place the text in the memo field of that tag entry for the event.

I had posted this message in response to the claim by other posters that other software was becoming better and would replace TMG. I did not think it would be inappropriate to give my evaluation of software that was being touted by other people.

[The contents of this post were completely inappropriate and off-topic. And have been deleted. jeb]

I just noticed the following in a custom Source Type: I have the beginning phrase of the Full Footnote and the beginning phrase of the Short Footnote to be identical, i.e., [HOUSEHOLD] household, (obviously these are from custom census source types). However when I print or display the actual source statements with the value of Household = Crockett, Samuel T I get the following: The Full Footnote begins with Samuel T Crockett Household but the Short Footnote begins with Crockett Household Is this a preset function of the Household element to only list the Surname in the Short Footnote? If so is there any way to force the full name in the Short Footnote? Thank you Mike

Thank you both for the replies. The idea of using a custom element for the given name works very well.

Thank you very much Patt. I will trying it as I am trying to give something to my 20+ first cousins about our common heritage.

Links please to the mentioned postings of Patt and Teresa. Thank you Mike

You can get the complete list of Temple codes and their locations at: http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/codes/ I simply use this list and place the location in the event tag and do not use the temple code. Mike