Linda (Babbin) Jones

It worked! Thank you so much! I recopied the project folder and then when I went to select the .pjc file, I realized I had tried to use one in the wrong folder. Once I opened the right .pjc file, it opened. I really appreciate the support!!

Thanks so much, Jim. Unfortunately, it didn't fool TMG. Because all the files were there, I selected "open project" instead of "restore backup," but TMG started indexing anyway, and it failed again in the same way. Is there perhaps an index file that's somewhere in a different folder from the projects folder where all the other files are, all of which I copied? Thanks so much for any hints. Linda

I have a similar problem. My old laptop isn't working well, so I bought a new one and I'm trying to install 7.04. I have a tmg7setup.exe file which I used to install from. TMG seems to be working and accepts my full version info. It works fine with the sample database. But when I try to restore a backup, it says the restore was successful, but when I try to actually go on to open it, it says it is creating indexes, but then stops at names with a big white box full of fatal error information. Does this sound familiar, Jim? I checked and both the old computer and the new one are running 7.04, so it's not an incompatible version problem.

I'm trying to print a Descendant Indented Report, and a 5-space indent is just too much, resulting in overflow or truncation, neither of which is a good thing. I set the indent to 3 spaces, but the report is still indenting 5 spaces. Tried 2 spaces, just for the heck of it, but it's still indenting 5 spaces. I'm exporting to a .pdf file. There are way too many different variations on the lines to be able to do a search and replace. I really would like to get a report I can publish with a smaller indent. Can anyone help? And while I'm on the subject, I don't see an option to print longer lines. Is that something I can change somewhere? At least that would prevent truncation or overflow, even if a person might not see the whole line without scrolling a bit. Linda

Hi, Terry- You're right of course, that it isn't a "tab" but it's definitely an "indent." The very fact that it involves a lot of different characters and conditions is just why I need it to be corrected while generating the report, because it's almost impossible afterwards--you have to worry that each time you replace one set of characters, you're changing the relationships of other characters whose spacing you want to fix. This was actually possible back in the DOS version, and reports I generated with it are still online. When I got the first Windows version and saw that this feature had been lost, I thought surely it would be addressed soon, but I've been waiting for years. It's one reason I continued to use the DOS version until new computers with new versions of Windows wouln't run it any more (memory issues). I'd really like to update the online files to help out people following my lines, but I'm really unhappy with all the wrapped lines. Has nobody else ever asked for this in all this time? I guess I should have been more active in the forums....

Hi, Virginia- Thanks so much for taking the time to work on this. My report is 7,000 people, and goes to 11 generations, so the indent becomes really serious as you get past 4 or 5 generations. I've been using TMG for over 15 years, and I'm just stunned that after all this time, I can't specify the indent on this report, nor can I specify how wide my lines can be. I have switched to landscape and you're right, I should set the margins as small as TMG will accept, and that will help some. But I really, really need to be able to set the indent. It's aggravating that the option is there, but it just doesn't work. I dearly love the program, but honestly, reports haven't improved since the DOS version, at least not the reports I need.

Hi- Ancestry doesn't mind if you upload more than one tree. So I have one tree online that I keep there permanently. It has pictures, which can't be uploaded with a gedcom. Then I upload an additional file by gedcom every 10 days or so. One thing I've noticed lately is that it takes more than 10 days for the upload to appear in the index for others to find, so now I actually have 3 files online. My original file with pictures, and then two versions of my much more complete file with no pictures. I keep each gedcom online for about 20 days, and upload one in the middle, that's "ripening" while file #1 is visible. Then when I upload gedcom #3, I delete gedcom #1. If you aren't making a lot of changes or if you aren't concerned about making the info available for sharing, then of course you don't have to bother with the additional gedcom.

I ran a journal report for a filtered group, and the resulting report is very nice and could be used to publish a book. Except that it is full of duplications of people. Considering that each couple gets a full page, that's a ton of wasted paper and a lot of extra junk to wade through. Can someone please explain if there is anything I can do to prevent people from being duplicated in this report? I also posted a message about duplicate people in the List of People, and received no replies. That's very annoying, but it's only a tool I use for myself, so I can live with it even though I don't like it. But I really can't use the journal report with all these duplicated people in it. And no, I'm not talking about couples listed under both the husband and wife, although I'd love to be able to turn that off. I'm talking about two pages that have identical content. Linda

Right, I've used it and I like it, and will probably still use it, but I'm looking for something a little sexier. Thanks, but I kinda like the Journal Report in its default form. That's very clear, and I'm going to try it. I really think I can get pretty much the output I want using this approach. Since I add people all the time, I was hoping for something I could run on the fly, and maybe upload updated results weekly or so, and this takes an extra step, but I think it won't be too bad. This part puzzles me a little. Can't I just directly filter on the location instead of creating flags to correspond with the location and filtering on that? I really appreciate it. I'll try this out and if I have any more questions, I'll be sure to take advantage of your kindness.

Thanks, Terry, that's really kind. I have an ancestor with 200,000 descendants (that I know of so far). I would like to create a tool that's useful to someone looking for his descendants with the same name. I have (15 years ago) created indented reports with just the same-named descendants, but people find these hard to follow when there are thousands of names. And the amount of info that will fit on one line is limited. So I was excited about the journal report because people find these easy to read and understand. Plus they can include details about things like occupation, residence, and cause of death. But I don't want all the descendants with different surnames (I want each of those in their own reports) and I DO want all the people with this surname who aren't connected to the main tree yet. And since the family is broken up into 3 main groups--those in Nova Scotia, those in Quebec, and those in Louisiana, I really wanted to have 3 completely separate reports. A person in Louisiana trying to connect his great-grandfather doesn't really care about all these people in Quebec. (Well, unless he's as crazy as I am, in which case he can still read all 3 reports). So, if you're still with me, I'd like a report that looks like the journal report, and acts like it in the way it organizes and numbers the members of the families, but that restricts the descendants to just the filter I specify. Is there any hope for me?

But as I have already said in an earlier message, my List of People reports are in fact full of duplicates.

Thanks for the response, Terry. Both the List of Persons and the Journal allow filtered groups, but you're basically telling me I can't actually use those filters. This is really a horrible disappointment. I've got 2500 people with the same surname--so far--who are all descended from the same couple. Plus of course their spouses. But I can't yet connect every single one of them. So I have maybe 30 to 40 lines, and I don't know who is at the head of each line--that's what I thought the filtered journal would do for me--include everyone and sort them into families. Since so many of them are not yet connected to the original ancestor, a list of that ancestor's descendants would leave out half of them. I thought the filter was a great tool, but frankly I don't see what's the use of it if the reports can't deal with it. Programming a report to exclude duplicates is not at all difficult--after all ID numbers are unique--so I'm kind of stunned that after TMG has existed for so many years, this has not been done.

I'd like to have people with different versions of their names show up as separate entries in the List of People just like they do in the picklist. So if I have a Charles Pierre who also goes by the name of Pierre, I have a primary name and a name variation, and I can find them in the picklist by either name. But the List of People doesn't work that way--or I don't know how to make it do that. Is there a way?

Yes, we were talking about the PE. And thanks for confirming that it doesn't display all the information I'm looking for. I was pretty sure that was true. I hadn't look at the expanded picklist in a long time, and I just checked it out. You're right--it has a lot more information than the simple picklist. I'll switch to that from now on. Thanks so much for the suggestion! Linda

That's a little harsh. You were rather cryptic, and I didn't understand that I could use a complex filter for the Project Explorer. The little icons on the page aren't all that obvious, either. This seems like it could be a useful tool, but I don't like having to click on each person to see his/her spouse. It also doesn't let me specify that I want one generation of ancestors, and it doesn't display the birthplace. I don't see any way to display more fields. But what I think could be kind of cool, is that it's not a report, and therefore updates dynamically, like the picklist. It that right? If I add more people that meet the criteria, they will be in the list the next time I look at it?

Create a custom temporary Flag, maybe called LOP, with a default of 'N'. Now run your List of People report with your desired filter, but don't create the report. Instead, set the Flag to 'Y' for these people on the Secondary Output Options of the report. Now simply run your List of Names report with a filter of "Subject... // LOP // = Equals // Y // END". That will produce all the names, but based on the List of People filter. Hope this gives you ideas, Hmmm....you're definitely giving me ideas, and I'm sure that in the long run, I'll be doing something like this. My reservation about this approach is that I currently am working in about 12 counties, and I rerun each LOP two or three times a day, because I'm adding up to 100 people each day, and editing others, so as I find new babies and I'm looking for the appropriate parents to see if they're already in the list, I need a report that includes everybody up to that moment. So this would be a lot more time-consuming than it is now, where I just select a LOP that I've already defined and hit "create report." Oh, and wait a minute, I just checked the output options and I can't include the spouse name in the List of Names report. So that makes it way less useful when I'm trying to find the Joseph who married a Madeleine--very important when you're trying to find a baby's parents.

Thanks for the suggestion, but as far as I can see, you have to add people individually to a focus group, which is not practical. (You can add their ancestors and descendants automatically, but that doesn't help me.) I'm not finding focus groups to be nearly as effective as filters, when I'm dealing with thousands of people. Also, I don't see a way to list spouses on the same line as the individual in Project Explorer--that's one of the huge advantages of the List of People. I also list their date and place of birth in the LOP. All stuff that helps me determine if this is the correct Joseph Babin out of the 240 Joseph Babins in the database.

Hi, Terry- Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, in a list of names report I can't create a filter that includes places, so that wouldn't be what I need. Now, if the List of Names report would use the filters I created for the List of People reports, we'd be in gravy. But it won't. Linda

I'm having an annoying problem and I'd love to know if there's any way to prevent it. I'm creating various reports of people who live in different counties, since I have 2,000 people with the same surname, and it's gotten very difficult to find the person I want just using the picklist (one of the wonderful things about a List of People is that I can display the spouses, which also makes it easier to pick out the person I want). So I create a filtered group and specify the surname and the place name, and then at the bottom of that screen I select the boxes for include spouses, include ancestors (1 generation), and include descendants (250 generations). A lot of the people in the resulting list are duplicated and some are even triplicated (I think I just made up a word). I suspect it's because some people are the parents of more than one child--but after all, that's to be expected. So why doesn't the report program recognize that these are duplicate entries and only show them once? My reports are coming out a lot longer than they need to be, editing by hand would be a huge nuisance, and I don't want to print them like this. Anyone know something I'm not doing that I can do? Thanks, Linda

I can't figure out how to add an image to a person. I was stunned to see that the word "image" does not appear in the help topics, even though one of the links on the toolbar is "image." Can someone point me in the right direction? thanks.