Terry Reigel

Rowan, I'll give you my recommendations, but other's will differ. My recommendation is TMG. I don't see an alternative. Yes, several. However that doesn't mean they will import all your data, either because their program doesn't support features you have used in TMG, or because of issues with their import features. I can't help you there, other than to note that depends on which features of TMG are important to you. I suspect the best help you may find will be on the TMG-Refugees on RootsWeb. I would suggest you read my article on The Future for TMG Users and then make up your own mind.

Tom, That's very strange - I've never seen it before. She uses the same kind of note every time there is a blank line. On image 15 it's a little clearer - I think it says "See R. book pg pg 38 line 15." I believe this is a reference to a reference book, or register book maybe, where she made notes that explain why the lines were left blank. Blank lines are pretty common in the 1940 census, where the enumerators left blank lines for households where no one was home, then sometimes found they had left too many lines when they came back and got the information. You see notes about the neighbor having given them wrong information about how many people lived there. That may be what's going on here.

Tom, Typically such a line means that a family member appears on another page. I've seen that a number of times. If you could identify the specific census page we might be able to offer more helpful advice.

Wow! That's rough. I'm sorry to hear that. The good news is you can recover the program since you have the serial number. You can download the installer from the Upgrade Center on this website. Be sure to choose the one for TMG 8 since that's what your serial number is for. You can then install it and enter your serial number. What you are looking for on your cloud backup depends on whether you backed up TMG backups, or the actual project files. The backup will have an extension of ".sqz" and by default a file name something like this: Terrys Main 2015-01-29 10-43-42.sqz, where the first part will be the name of your Project, and the numbers the date and time the backup was created. If that exists it will most likely be the surest way to restore your project. If you backed up the actual project files you are looking for something like 100 files, all starting with the name of your Project, an underscore, a letter, and mostly the extensions dbf and fpt, but also a small file with the extension pjc which contains the "keys" to the others. Good luck!

Beetle, Sorry, I misread that you had checked the box at the bottom, for combined people and place index. That's not what you said - what you said was clear. Looking more closely, I find: 1. The lifespan choice is not a "box" - it's a "radio button" and one and only one of them is always selected. So that one doesn't count. 2. For people indexes you must chose either by surname or by given name, or both - if you don't no index is created. 3. The "Combined Index" box in the People section is a bit misleading - it's not really a type of index like the two boxes above, but rather an option that applies only if you check both of the boxes above. Checking this alone does not create an index - you also have to check one or both of the boxes above. I don't think these controls are as clear as they could be - it's easy to get no index.

Beetle, I think the issue is that you also have to make some choices in the check boxes in the People and/or Place boxes. If you don't tell TMG what to index it doesn't index anything, and you get the "no index codes" message. Checking boxes in one or both sections fixes that.

David, Do remember that if you install TMG 9 and add new data in it, you will not be able to open that project in the earlier version. Your TMG 7 Project will remain valid, but will not contain any data you entered in TMG 9.

Beetle, The Distribution of People report does just that.

It still works fine. The end of tech support doesn't cause it to stop working. However, you will now need to obtain any support you need from other users, on this Forum so long as it continues, or the the TMG - List on RootsWeb. You also should take a few precautions to protect your data, as described in my article on The Future for TMG Users.

You're welcome, Dave. Yes, the import from UFT does cause some issues. It imports the Sentences from UFT in order to not lose all the effort you may have invested in them in that program. But there are a few differences, like this one, that are not compensated for by the import.

Dave, It sounds now like the issue isn't the sections where each person has their own narratives, but in the list of children. Is that right? If that's the case the settings on the Tags tab of report Options will solve the problem. The box on the right side of that tab control how the statements about the children are presented. Children who are carried forward - that is who have their own section, always get an "abbreviated" list of events. The four check boxes under "Include only" control which events are included. The three radio buttons under "Format" control how the information will be presented. The first choice - "He was born in 1861" is the only one that uses Sentences for the children's list. Since the parent's name are produced by the [PARO] variable in the marriage tag, this format must be selected in order to get the parents' names. The other two choices produce very abbreviated formats that are not based on the Sentences. Finally, the first section, under "Applies to," controls whether the abbreviated formats specified below apply to all children, or only to those carried forward. If you choose "Only children that are carried forward" the children who do not have their own sections will have full narrative output like the people who do.

Dave, I think the issue of Memo text not appearing in either the preview or reports has the same cause - the Memo variable - [M] - is not in the Sentence of the Tag Types you are viewing. You can set an option in Reports to include Memos that are not in the Sentence, but a better solution in my view is to add the [M] variable to the Sentences - preferably in conditional brackets like this: so there will not be a problem with the Memo is empty.

Dave, I have no way of knowing where it belongs in your Sentences because I don't know what your sentences are. Try reading the articles on modifying Sentence Structures on my website, as Michael suggests. If that doesn't help, post back here what the current Sentences are in your Marriage Tag, and tell us how you want the result to read, and we can be more specific.

Dave, The issue of the name of spouse's parents being missing in TMG reports is caused by differences in the way that UFT and TMG treat them. As I understand it, in UFT they were added automatically by the report. In TMG, by default that is done by including variables for them in the Sentences of the Marriage tag. When you imported your data from UFT the Sentences were imported as well, and the imported Sentences to not include the variable for the parents names. The solution is to edit the Sentences in the Tag Type to add that variable to the Marriage Tags. The standard Sentence for a Marriage Tag in TMG is: [P] married [PO] The [PARO] variable produces the names of the parents of the other Principal, in the format: , son of Robert Jones and Mary Smith, So you would need to add that variable in the appropriate place in the Sentence(s) of your Marriage Tag. If you use Roles in that Tag you will need to add it to each Role.

"Traditionally"? Could you offer some examples of companies that have followed this "tradition"?

Marlene, I think you can get what you want but it's a bit indirect. You could create a custom Flag, then set it for the females with the surname using the Secondary Output of the List of People report. Then use that flag to create FGSs for the female subjects.

You're welcome, Jamie.

Jamie, TMG does manage properly multiple users accessing the same set of Project files. It allows each to open the project, but if more than one tries to open the same record the later attempt is forced to be read-only. The problem with your configuration is that each copy of TMG is reading local files. There is no other user visible to TMG, so it can't manage conflicting requests. Separately, as Michael says, there are many report of issues caused by keeping the working copies of the project files in a folder being synced by DropBox. Even if you manage the issue of another user accessing the files successfully, a number of normal TMG operations are interrupted by DropBox activity. The most commonly reported issue is that GEDCOM exports fail to work, but issues other operations have also been reported.

Kaye, To solve the issue with "par" showing up in the charts, try this: 1. Open the Report definition you are using. Click on Options, and on the General tab look at "Output Language" on the second line, and note which Language is shown there. Cancel out of the Options screen. 2. Run the report, and find a person that shows "par" for marriage. 3. Go to that person in TMG, and find that person's Primary marriage tag. Make sure it has the asterisk in front of it to mark it as Primary. 4. Open that Tag, then click the Tag Type button at the upper left, and click Edit in the Tag Types screen. 5. On the Tag Type Definition screen, first check the Language shown at the upper right. If it is not the same as in the report Options, change it so it is. 6. Still in the Tag Type Definition screen, check the entry on the General tab for Abbreviation. Normally it should say "m." but I think it will say "par" - which is the source of the problem. Now back to your issue of getting the Partner tag to show up. You can do that. But the Indented Descendant Chart will only show the Primary tag in the Birth, Marriage, Death, and Burial groups. So for a Partner Tag to show up, it has to be in the Marriage group, and has to be Primary for that person.

Kaye, This issue does not come from settings in report Options, except perhaps the Language setting as Michael suggests. The place to look is in the Tag Type definition for the Marriage Tag that is used for the people who appear in the report. In some Tag Type in the Marriage group the Abbreviation on the General tab is set to "par" for the Language you have set in the report Options.

Pat, As Jim says, this is usually caused by a window waiting for a response that opened behind another window so you can't see it. If Center the Current Window doesn't help get back and we will find some other suggestions.

Polly, You just install with the installer Jim pointed you to. That is the current version. You transfer your data by making a Backup on the old computer, transferring that to the new one, and Restoring it there. For further details on that process, see the article on my website on that topic - link to my website below.

John, I agree with Michael about the use of Second Site for sharing your work. It produces a much more reader-friendly result than FTST and doesn't require the reader to use any special software.

Jim, My understanding of the issue goes something like this. When you open TMG and it asks for your unlock code, it tries to save it in a location that it doesn't have permission to access if you are not running as an administrator. But instead of denying the save, Windows allows it to be written in a temporary location. The issue arises in Windows 8 because starting in that version Windows does "housecleaning" of those temporary entries from time to time, thus removing the entry. Using the run as administrator function when you save the ID number gives the program permission to save it in a permanent location. This my not be a technically correct description of the issue, but I think it's a fair approximation. I have no explanation for your observation that you saw the ID number when you bypassed the prompt, but no doubt there is one.

Your "mistake" was none of those. It was installing it on Windows 8, which periodically wants to delete the registration information. This issue has been discussed here at some length. The solution is to wait until next time you are asked for the ID number. Don't enter it, but instead close TMG. Then, right-click on the desk-top shortcut for TMG. On the menu that appears, choose "Run as Administrator." When TMG opens and asks for the ID#, enter it. When it's accepted, close TMG. After that you should be able to open TMG normally without getting the prompt.