Terry Reigel

You're welcome. I just tested by sending the LoP report to a text file, and the creation of a new project worked. Where did you send the report that didn't produce the new project?

Use the secondary output (click Options on the report definition) of the List of People report to create a new project containing just those people in the List of People. Then open that project, create a backup, and send the backup. Your correspondent would then Restore the backup. You select who is to be included by 1) assembling them in a Focus Group, 2) selecting them in Project Explorier, or 3) using a filter in the LoP report. Complex groups can be selected by setting up a custom Flag, then filtering on that. If you have difficulty figuring out how to get the people you want, let us know the problem and who you want and we can help.

Teresa, I think there would be a problem agreeing on just what that means. For example, just what does "related to" mean? Does it include spouses? Parents of spouses? Siblings of spouses? Step parents and their children? Half siblings? Etc., etc. And will others agree with your definition? Then what does "by 3 generations" mean? Back 3? Down 3? Up 1 then down 3, or if you go up 1 do you only then go down 2? If you go up 1 (your parents), then down 1 (your siblings), then do you go up 3 for the ancestors of your siblings' spouses? And again, will others agree with your definition?

No, it gives you the descendants of everyone who is selected. So when you have gathered a person and his or her ancestors, click the "Select All" button, then add Descendants for one generation. That gives you the siblings of your "subject" and of all the ancestors except the oldest generation. If you don't want the children of your subject, de-select that person and spouse before adding the Descendants. In the Focus Group there is no such thing as a single "subject." You may view the first person you put in the group as a "subject" but the FG doesn't care. As far as it's concerned, it's only a group of people. The "Add Others" operations always refer to whoever is selected in the Focus Group when you click the "Add Others" button. You can select one person, everyone, or any specific group, and add others related to them in the way(s) specified in the "Add Others" box.

Mike, Don't we have that now by adding descendants for one generation? You do have to take care about the youngest generation if children exist that you don't want to include, and the oldest if you have cut off the common ancestor. But I find it works fine for most cases. Or am I missing something?

That's right - if you want to "upgrade" your existing installation, you first need to go to 6.00. Then you can update that to 6.07 in a single step. Yes, you can uninstall TMG5 and install the current version, which is 6.07. But you cannot update the existing installation of 5.15 directly to 6.07.

I'd guess you have changed e-mail addresses since you bought TMG5, and are using the new address rather than the one you used then. You need to use the same name and e-mail address that you used when you purchased the program, as the unlock code is keyed to them. I assume that you have not purchased TMG 6 - but if you did that could be the problem - the unlock codes for versions 5 and 6 are different.

The whole intent of having separate Data Sets in a Project is to allow them to be kept entirely separate, so you can import an examine data from different sources without any possiblity of contaminating your working data. As a result you cannot link people in different data sets. Different data sets can have different, and conflicting, settings for tag types, source types, flags, styles, etc. so merging or moving people between them requires resolution of all those issues. See the section "Potential Conflicts when Merging Data Sets" near the bottom of my article on Merging for discussion of how this is done when merging Data Sets. Since people in different data sets cannot be linked, merging them makes no sense. You can always copy the person into the other data set and them merge them if you want.

I'd suppose it's because Probate always comes after death, and, just guessing, this keeps the tag from showing up in the audit report as a "after death event." The will is always written before death; probate always occurs after death. I'd think that's the reasoning.

You're welcome.

I'm afraid locked is locked - the flags are part of the data, and cannot be edited while the dataset is locked.

I'm afraid there is no simple solution. A feature to allow easy copying of custom source types has been suggested, but so far has not appeared. There is a work-around you might consider. You could create a dummy person, attach one source of each type to that person, then copy that person to the other data sets (provided they are in the same Project - if not, merging of projects would be required). This may not work if the custom source types have the same names as source types in the receiving data set. It might be easier to Merge the data first (or copy those people you want to keep), mark them with a Flag, then go through and clean up the sources using your custom sources. One issue around cleaning up the sources in received data -- many users would feel that you should not enter the sources in such a way that it appears you have seen them, when you have not. In my view, the most straight-forward way to enter such sources is to cite the received file as your source, then note that the author has cited such-and-such as a source. Trouble is, I don't know any workable way to do this except manually. An alternate might be to leave the sources as cited, but add some sort of note to each saying you haven't seen it but it was cited by so-and-so. That you could do by editing each source definition before to do the merge.

Yes, there is a way. If you construct a filter like: Memo Contains - You will get all events that contain a hyphen. If you check the option on the Miscellaneous tab to include excluded information, and add the Memo to the output columns, you can then search the report and find them. Finding them is much easier if you sort on the column containing the Memo (thanks to Jim Bryam for that trick). You would need to do this for each field where you use exclusion markers. You could create a multi-line filter to look for them all at once, but then you would need to include all those fields in the output to verify them. Unfourtunately, the filter "Begins with -" seems to be broken - it would be more useful. That has been reported.

I'm afraid there is no good answer. If you want to refresh the imported data, you have to keep it locked - because if you edit, the program has no way to know what to do with your edits when the new data comes in on "refresh." Of course, that means you can't add data because it's locked.

You're welcome, Rhonda. Terry

Rhonda, First, note that source citations are not applied to persons, but to individual tags - name tags, parent/child relationship tags, and event tags. Next, note that the only tag related to a child that appears on the parent's person view is the parent/child relationship tag. So, if you added a citation from the parent's person view, the only tag in which that citation could appear on the child's person view would be the parent/child tag. If you go to the child's person view and open that tag (double click on the "Father" label just under the child's name) I expect you will see the citation you added. If you want the citation to appear on other tags, like the child's name tag and the birth tag, for example, you must add them there as well.

Mike, When you look at the burials picked up in the audit report, are you saying that the date is blank in TMG when you look at the tag? But when you look at the GEDCOM the same burial now has a date from another tag?

This may seem silly, but did you look at those tags in TMG and verify that they were correct? If so, can you tell where the wrong dates came from in the GEDCOM? That is, which tags had right and wrong dates, and are the wrong dates obviously from another tag?

If you are actually getting run-on sentences, it's because of the way your tags are constructed, most likely by use of long sentences in the Memo field. But it sounds like the problem is not run-on sentences, but rather long paragraphs with many sentences. By default, the IN report puts everything about the person on a single paragraph. You can change that by editing the Sentence Structures to add line breaks. Open the sentences screen (requires Advanced Mode), place the cursor at the beginning of the sentence, and choose "Carrage Return" from the right click menu. It will add the code [:CR:] at the spot where the cursor was. You probably want to add two of them since the IN does not use indenting. If you literally want want a separate paragraph for each tag, you can add the CR codes to the default sentences in the tag type definition screen. But I'd not advise that - it creates very choppy narratives, worse in my opinion than excessively long paragraphs. Instead, for each person use the Preview report (button on the Reports toolbar) and decide where the breaks logically should go. Then open each tag that should start a new paragraph, and add the CR codes. Alternatively, you can create "new paragraph" versions of each common tag type you use, and choose that version where you want a paragraph break. Or, you can create "new paragraph" Roles for you common tags, and choose those roles. If you are interested in either of the latter ideas and need help doing it, please ask for details.

You say "style" but I think you are talking about editing the Sentence in the Tag Type - right? If I am correct in understanding that you changed the sentence in the Tag Type Definition screen, it should be changed in all existing tags of that type, provided that you have not changed the sentence in the individual tags. So-called "global" changes to the tag type do not override changes you have previously made in individual tags. My article on editing sentences my help. You remove "local" sentences by opening the tag and deleting the entire sentence. The default sentence is then applied.

You're welcome, Wal.

Importing is only reading and interpeting - nothing is done to the original file. On import, TMG reads the original file, then creates files in it's own format and copies the data there. Export, by contrast, by nature requires writing a file in another program's format. It's the creating a file in another's format that is supposed to be an issue. To my understanding, the "rights" issue if not entirely settled legally, but is at least clouded enough to warrent caution by a small company. In my view you have hit the issue directly. Wholly Genes' GenBridge technology, which is used by TMG to import data from other programs, has been offered for some time to developers of other programs. So far as I know, there is no other general purpose genealogy program using it, or any other method for data import other than GEDCOM. I am aware of a couple of specialty programs, such as those for PDAs, that do direct import, at least some using GenBridge.

Yes, everything is normal. First, a "child" tag and a "parent" tag are the same tag - just viewed from a different perspective. When you see it listed in the Child's person view it's labeled "Father" or "Mother" and when you see it in the parent's person view it's labeled "Son" or "Daughter." But when you open it, it's labeled as "Father" or "Mother". Parent/child tags do not have dates or places. They create the relationship only. When you see a date or place next to a child tag in the person view of the parent, that information comes from the primary birth group tag of the child. To edit that information, go to the child's person view and open the birth tag there. Parent/child tags do have Memo fields, but they are rarely used, and only print in reports if you specify specific options to do so. They should always have citations - that's what tells you how you know this child is the son or daughter of this parent. Citations are added if you use the Add Person screen to add a parent or child, and include a citation in that screen. But if you add the parent/child tag manually you have to manually add the citation.

I don't see that result - when I renumber the data sets, they seem to appear in the new order. Where are you finding that they are not?

There is general method for when you want to create any sort of report, but want to exclude people that the available report options don't exclude. You create a temporary Data Set that does not contain the people you want to exclude, then run the report from that Data Set. You create the temporary Data Set with the List of People report, setting the "Secondary Output" option to "create a new data set." You tell the LoP report on it's main page who to include in the temporary Data Set. You can do that with either the focus group, or with a filter. It doesn't matter if you include extra people, just so long as you don't include those you don't want in the report. For your direct line issue, a filter like: Is a Descendant of ID# 123 AND Is an Ancestor of ID# 456 END should work. Here the two ID#s are the persons at the two ends of the line. You might also want to check the "Then add spouses" box. If you need more details, please ask.