Michael Dietz

[edited... jeb] It seems the big complaint with TMG is lack of communication as to the future of the product. I believe that is a valid concern. Many of us have been stranded in an airport with no information as to why or when the conditions would improve. It is beginning to feel that same with TMG. Just my 2 cents. Mike

As Jim and Michael say you can have the comment field be printed (displayed) with the list of places report. The problem is that report is a columnar report, not a free flowing or narrative type report where the comment can be any length. So maybe this should be a wish list item. It would be nice with the other reports, narrative, journal, etc., to have a narrative report of the places in the report, ie., the birth, death, etc., places. This could be similar to the end-notes for sources which does handle large comment fields. An example would be to look at John Cardinal's place listing in second site. It handles text and images from the exhibit database. I have used it with text descriptions of the places many times and works fine. If somebody is interested enough in the locality to read more about it, the information is available. It does not add the comment into the body of the report but does have it in the place listing. Just a thought. (the other) Michael

One Caveat about renumbering all. If you have specific individuals as subjects of items, such as charts, text files, etc, that are based upon the id number in Second Site, renumbering that individual will break the link to the desired item. Mike

Jim, You have just solved one of my most perplexing problems with locations. Thank you Mike

Dan: I am assuming you are referring to the FoxPro crashing with a highly technical explanation of what the problem is and asking if Microsoft should be informed about it. This was quite a topic of discussion over a year ago with the following consensus. And you might fit the profile to have this happening since you have a high degree of expertise with computers. The most frequent occurrance of the popup was when a person clicked something to open a different view such as another individual. Apparantly FoxPro can not handle a rapid change in the focus and so would bomb. The solution for me was to slow down a bit in my navigation of the program and since then I have had very few occurances, generally when I get a bit sloppy or am in a hurry. This is just a suggestion. As for the question of the relative worth of the two programs, I bought Legacy at the last NGS conference for $20. I had heard so much about it I thought I would get a first hand appraisal about it. So I skipped a fancy dinner for just a chocolate milk shake. In my opinion Legacy was not worth missing a nice meal. Thank you for the good analysis of the programs. Mike

When I was at the NGS Conference in Salt Lake City I picked up a full copy of Legacy. They were selling it for $20 and I had heard so much about it I thought I would find out if all the talk was true. I found two things I dislike about it in the first 30 minutes I was using it. I enter all variations of an individual's name into the database. With TMG I pick the primary name and group the other names in displays and reports using what TMG calls the sort date. As an example the wife's grandfather has several names. He was born Samuel Francis Graham. I have found him also with the name Samuel F. Graham in a census and Samuel Frank Graham in a letter from a friend to another. He ran away from home because of his step mother and apparantly (this is conjecture) had a falling out with his grandfather after whom he was named. He switched to Francis Samuel Graham, Frank Samuel Graham, and finally Frank S. Graham. This latter name is the one he used for the last 70 years of his life. I have Frank S. Graham as the primary name and have all the others listed in approximate chronological order, not the actual dates but the sort date. I have several custom name tags to identify the type of name, i.e., census, abbreviated, nick, etc. I have not been able to replicate this in Legacy. Maybe it can be done but I never found out how. The second one is even more discouraging. A 3rd great-grandfather, named Charles, married three women. With the first wife, named Elizabeth, he had four children including the 2nd great-grandmother. With the second wife, also named Elizabeth, he had three more children, and with the third wife, named Mary, he had four more children. In Legacy I could only view the data related to one of the three families at the same time. I could view either Elizabeth and the Mary which was no problem but if I chose to view Charles I had to select which wife. This really got frustrating with the first two wives who were both named Elizabeth. If I was not careful I could easily have confused them. In looking at a census record I would see all seven children from the first two wives but would only have the children of the selected Elizabeth displayed in Legacy. This is an extreme example of how that could be unusable. A third great uncle marries a woman who has a daughter and they have three children. The mother dies and the uncle marries the step daughter who has been married twice in the interim and has two children. Then the uncle and the step daughter have five more children. It is difficult enough with TMG to keep everybody straight but impossible in Legacy. As I said I have only used Legacy very sparingly so my concerns about it may be unwarranted. But I would think these are basic attributes to any genealogy program. TMG handles them, Legacy does not as far as I can tell. Mike

I do not think there is any direct way to save the custom tags, at least I have found none. I too have numerous custom tags and several projects. What I have done is have a "master" skeleton project with the custom tags and the sources in it but no individuals. Whenever I start a new project I simply copy this skeleton project and rename the project to the desired name. That way I have the set of custom tags. It is a bit of a kludge but it does work, just takes a bit of preparation. If I create any new custom tags I do have to create those custom tags in each of my projects but I have been doing this long enough that I very seldom create any new tags. Mike

I am a bit confused about your post. Are you looking for a set of criteria which form a basis for such a proof, something like an application form? Or should the several dozen items in the GPS be formalized into specific tags in TMG? I can see where such a feature would be very useful to the professionals who use the GPS all the time. If the latter then anybody could create a set of custom tags for that purpose. And I can imagine they would be made available through the Internet similar to the several web sites with tips and custom tags. Mike

I have a gentleman whose name is given as U. S. Jamerson in every source I can find him. When I try to create a sentence with only his given name (U. S.) it gets truncated to just the U. portion. For instance I have a sentence which terminates with"... relevant to the family of [PF] and [POF]." What I get is "... relevant to the family of Ella and U.". Another example is "U. married Ella Crockett ..." instead of "U. S. married Ella Crockett ...". Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Mike

Thank you for the responses. I had looked in the Help many moons ago and as soon as I saw First Name I took that to mean the given name. My sloppiness. Mike

Is there a way to capture the number of children value in the Other Info Box? What I would like is a generated Number of Children tag. I know there is a Num Child tag available but it requires manual entry of the value. Thank you Mike

Thank you Michael. I too use the Num Child tag to list individuals where no data is available, such as the Living markers in Ancestry.com. Those cousins in the generations following mine can run them down as they are closer to them in age as well as societal norms than me. Michael (also)

Your statement is absolutely true from a research angle. My reason was one strictly of convenience. I have asked numerous siblings and cousins what they would like in a report on their ancestors. The vast majority have five things, BMDB and the number of children. I can provide the number of children manually but with approximately 400 couples to visit I was hoping I could be lazy and just have it automatically generated for me. Thank you anyway. Mike

I just bumped into an unusual circumstance. I just found out a fifth cousin of mine died in the Philippine Islands in 1923. I thought I might look in the 1920 census for him but Ancestry has no search category for the Islands even though they were under the control of the US. Which leads me to my question. How are US citizens enumerated in the federal census if they are residing in a foreign country? I know the military personnel are listed but what about all the non-military people. The description of the 1920 census states that Guam, American Samoa, the Panama Canal Zone, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands were included for the first time. But nothing is mentioned about any other foreign country. Were thousands, possibly millions, of people not included? And if they are how do you find them in the census? Thank you Mike

I do not use Google Chrome, however I was having similar problem(s) about six months ago. They got corrected when I reset the wireless router connected to our satellite modem. Don't know if your situation is the same but maybe this might help.

Rob: I have a custom name style for the European names with the 'de', 'fitz', 'le', 'ap', etc., presurnames. In the primary name I put the given name in the given name and combine the presurname with the surname in the surname. This allows me to search either by the "presurname surname" or just the surname. Example: Primary name: Given Name is "Roger" Surname is "de Basset" and sorts with all the other "de" names Medieval name: Given Name is "Roger" Presurname is "de" Surname is "Basset" and sorts with all the other "Basset" names The other thing to make sure is the surname sort template in the custom name style. There you can include the presurname field which is not in the surname sort template for the US style. My template starts with: [sortHouse], [sortGiven] [PreSurname], ... where SortHouse is what I call the surname in this custom name style. It works very well for me. Mike

This is probably not possible but I will still ask. I use text files to hold information common to several individuals. That way if the data in the text file changes, the change is instantly available to the individuals' records. A good example would be the variety of spellings for a given surname, e.g., Jacob, Jacobs, Jakob, etc. If a new spelling is found it can be entered into the text file and all associated individuals will have the new data. I realize the text file can be attached to an event tag within the Details for the individuals. However that does have one drawback. In order for the person looking at the details to read the text file it is necessary to click on the little camera icon in the event to which the text file is attached. What would be better tactic is to have the content of the text file be temporarily placed in the memo field of the event. By temporary I mean only while that event is the focus window. The text does not actually exist in the memo field, it is only placed there when the event is viewed and is not stored within the event. That way the person looking at the event would not have to do a secondary click. The data would be presented directly to them. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thank you. Mike

Jim: As my father always said, "If all else fails, read the directions.". Thank you. Terry: I don't know why I didn't think of your idea. I use it all the time only for group photos, census pages, etc., where the object is an exhibit. I also have a few entries where there is only a couple of people involved, such as not knowing which wife is the mother of a child, having my thoughts about who it is as a comment with memo in the child with the two possible mothers as witnesses to the comment. Maybe my lapse of memory and laziness is because it is June 1, the weather is great, and I am just vegging out. Again thanks. Mike

I have found a family in the 1910 and 1920 census in Chicago. The mother, three daughters, and one son immigrated in 1909. In the 1920 census one of the daughters is listed as "AL" in the naturalization column indicating she was still alien. The other two daughters are listed as "NA" indicating they were naturalized. My question concerns the mother and son. They are listed as "PA". I can find no explanation for this code. Any suggestion is greatly appreciated. Thank you Mike

Thank you Jim and Terry. I have bookmarked the instructions. It is very obvious the son is relation. In the 1930 census he is still PA. So he never did finish the process. And I have a new meaning to apply to this (and to me), Procrastinating Again. Mike

[edited... jeb] I agree it would be nice not be pinned to VFP. If it was written in a "normal" programming language the number of people who could do add-on's would grow exponentially. But it is not and so we live with it. I have a small suggestion. Would it be possible to form something akin to an open source group and have them parcel out features of TMG to be written in a common language, all of which is under the guidance and ownership of Wholly Genes? Once that set of programs replicates TMG, or at least the most commonly used features, then have TMG prepare a conversion and those who are looking for such things as Unicode could start transferring over. This could drastically reduce the cost to TMG and the burden upon the existing staff. Having written commercial software for the last 25 years I probably have bumped into most of the problems with upgrades and conversions. While they can be a mess, the TMG community has a great deal of expertise within it. And we like TMG and we would like to see it constantly being more "modern" and better. I for one would volunteer for such an endeavor. Just a suggestion. Mike

How should I handle the following situation? I have a direct ancestor who had three wives, two of which had the given name of Elizabeth. Sources are ambiguous as to which Elizabeth is the mother of one of the children who is my direct ancestor. They do not have the date of death of the first wife or the marriage date of the second and so the child born around that time has been assigned to one or the other of the mothers. Where this is important is the assignment of the correct mother as the primary mother of the child. If I assign the wrong one then reports such as Ahnentafel, Ancestor Box Chart, etc. will not have my maternal ancestors from that point on. This situation also happens when one of two brothers is my ancestor, the other is just an uncle. Or unrelated individuals with the same surname are given as the parent. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Mike

I need to find about 100 records from a population of 650 based upon a memo in a specific tag for each of the 650. The filter needs to find the 100 records based upon the case of the first word in the memo (I forgot to capitalize the start of the sentence). All the records have the same first word in the memo. However the filter automatically places the search value in all upper case and so finds all 650. Is there another way to search based upon case? I would like to have the parameters for the search to be: Field = Tag Name Subfield = Memo Operator = Begins with Value = the but the value is changed to THE Thank you Mike

It worked like a charm. I had to look for more than just "the" as some of the memos had the word the in the text. But those also had a different key word so two runs. One to change all the "the" words to "The" and the second to change all the "The only" phrases to "the only". Thank you much Jim.

I need to respond to this thread. I have been using TMG for many years. I had started with the good old 3 ring notebooks and 3x5 index cards. I still have boxes of these which I need to go through and transcribe some of the stuff into my current database. I then switched to Family Roots version 2. I used it on my Apple 2E and when it went bust with version 3 I started looking for a replacement. By then I did have an IBM clone and was running Windows. I searched the Internet for reviews of software and found TMG. I am quite satisfied for the most part with the product (now using 7.4) except for a couple of minor things I would like to see. But I am troubled by one aspect of TMG. At our local genealogical societies (I belong to two of the three) there are many users of Legacy, FTM, and PAF. When I ask them why, they say ease of use, especially the FTM and PAF users. I think it would behoove TMG to have two products, TMG as it now is and TMG Lite. The lite product would only have the basic features, i.e., similar to PAF or FTM. It would also be completely compatible in an upwards direction to the regular product. That way those beginners or researchers who only want a simple database to record the basic stuff would have a product which would compete with others on the market. My aunt is one of these type. She has a couple of thousand relatives in her database using FTM. When she looks at my stuff she says it is too complicated. In the context of this discussion, the lite product could have the interface into the Internet that many people want. They are basically looking for an easy access to easily found data for the most part. However for those individuals who want to expand because they really get into the capabilities of the project(s) they would be able to upgrade easily into the full TMG. At that point they would be at the level as Terry says of doing their own searches. Just a thought. Mike