Terry Reigel

Joe, Are you talking about Helmut's last statement or to mine? If you had a person entered a Principal you should be able to assign them any available Role ("Witness" will not be available) with the drop-down next to the ID#. If doing that generates the error message you mention there is a problem.

Joe, You can assign Roles to people entered as Principals - use the drop-down box to the left of the ID# - which by default shows the Role of "Principal." It sounds like you were trying to assign the same person as both a Principal and as a Witness. As you found, you can't do that. But both people entered as Principals and those entered as Witnesses can be assigned Roles other than the default Roles of "Principal" or "Witness."

Ketchell, You say that Fileapp works better for you than Goodreader. In what way do you find it better?

You're welcome.

The basic process to create a new Project or Data Set is to use the Secondary Output of the List of People Report. You find that under Options on the Report Definition Screen. You create a list of People you want to include in the new Project or Data Set, by use of Filters, a Focus Group, or selecting them in the Project Explorer. I think think the easiest way to do what you have in mind is to use the Focus Group. I would suggest this process: 1. From your wife's Details screen, make her parents non-primary. That will keep her ancestors from getting included in the following steps. 2. Add yourself to an empty Focus Group. 3. Set the Add Others parameters to add Spouses, Add Ancestors for more generations than exist in your data, and Add Descendants for several generations. 4. Make sure you are selected, and click the Add Others button. 5. Click the Select All button, then the Add Others button again. Note the number of "Names in the group" at the top left. 6. Repeat step 5 until the number of names stops increasing. This process will pick up all ancestors, siblings, descendants of siblings, spouses of the preceding, parents of spouses, etc. that you may have entered. Once you have created the Focus Group you can then use the List of People report to create the new Project. Then make the backup as you suggest. One separate issue to think about with your plan. If your brother adds information, getting that returned and merging with your own data has the potential for creating quite a mess. If he adds people you don't have, you can copy them into your data. But if he adds information about people you already have you will be confronted with an issue. If you simply merge his data with yours, you will have hundreds of duplicate people in the resulting project. Merging them and sorting out the new data will be a huge project. There is no simple way to identify the new data, I'm afraid.

There is a way to set up a file to import people with their birth and death information, using the Add Family feature. But it sounds like you want to import the census and other data itself, not just the people identified from it. There isn't a way to do that.

John, Sure. Or better yet, send it by email to this address. It would be best if you could send the report to Word or PDF and attach it to the email. Also, could you make a screenshot of the Details view of the person who is subject of the report and send that too?

Sounds like you figured it out. If the missing spouses were "other" spouses of the spouses of the descendants, you would need to repeat the process as you describe.

Marney, The Copy Person command defaults to copying within the same Data Set. To copy to another Data Set you have to specify that on the Copy Person screen when it opens. I'd guess you didn't do that. However, why do you need to create a new Data Set in order to create a fan chart? You should be able to do that from the original Data Set.

If you want to publicly share your work I think a much better solution it to create your own site with Second Site and post it on a web host. Such a site can not only include exhibits, but can have narrative output if you like, real citations as you format them in TMG, links to other people created by joint Tags or other methods, and extras like maps, charts, and photo galleries. There are some advantages to putting a tree up on Ancestry, mainly it is easy for other researchers to find it. But not only exhibits, but much else you record in TMG cannot be successfully uploaded to an Ancestry tree. Further, you cannot update an Ancestry tree from your TMG data, but can only replace it, losing any notes or other entries you have made on Ancestry. In my view a better solution is to put only a bare-bones tree on Ancestry, with a notice leading to your "real" website for those who want to see details.

John, Well, maybe not "several," but I think you are saying it is at least two - birth and marriage. And, I'm guessing in the case of the second report it's three. Compare the settings on Tags tab under Options for the two reports. I think you will find a difference that's causing a third Tag to appear in the Descendancy Narrative.

John, Does all the text come from one Tag or several? Assuming it is from several, my guess is you have a tag "printing" in the first case that has no text output, and is not selected in the second case. Perhaps a Tag with an exhibit attached but no text?

Yes, I knew that the two principals in a family event had to be a "family" - that is married or have children together. I should have mentioned that restriction. That's often a problem, because the event, if imported, may not appear in the receiving application where one might expect it. ...or have children together, as Jim mentions. Any event, if the type is set to EVEN. But few of the standard Tag Types are. So if one wanted to export an event with a non-family tag type one would have to change the GEDCOM tag type to EVEN, with possible consequences to the receiving application.

Jim, I have very similar information on my Dad's uncle. His narrative, with an explanation of how I created it, are in my article on Creating Flowing Narratives. Perhaps you will find some ideas there.

Jim, Also, GEDCOM doesn't accept two-principal tags except for recognized "family" tags, such as marriage and census. I'm not sure whether "EVEN" tags qualify - maybe Michael can check. As to the homestead grant tags, I use the Land Grant Tag Type I described above and add the information about whichever type it was in the second Memo segment.

Jim, I have four custom land tags: Land Buy: Principal: [P] Land Sale: Principal: [PF] Land B/S: Principal: Enter Roles for Buyer and Seller Buyer: [R:Buyer] bought from [R:Seller] Seller: [R:Seller] sold to [R:Buyer] Land Grant: Principal: [PF] granted a patent for In each, the first Memo segment is used to describe the land ("40 acres on the river") and the second segment for other information, such as price and the name of the other party. The Buy/Sell tag is used when both parties are entered in my database.

Graham, I'm not quite sure what you have in mind. Are you thinking of a report that lists events and the places they occurred? If so, you might try a List of Events Report. Use a filter like: Principal 1... ID#... = Equals ...123 ... OR Principal 2... ID#... = Equals ...123 ... OR Any Witness... ID#... = Equals ...123 ... END (this last only if you want to include events in which the person was a Witness) Then in Options set the Columns to whatever you want to display. I'd think you want Date (and sort on that) Tag Type Label and the Place, either as a separate column or in parts.

Lance, If you just want a list of people you can use the List of People report. You can run it on all people in your Data Set, or you can include only selected people by use of Filters, the Focus Group, or by selecting them in the Project Explorer. Under Options, on the Output Columns tab, specify the information you want to display for each person. One of those choices is age at death. You can specify how the list is sorted by entering numbers in the "Sort Order" boxes.

John, Sentences can be modified in two places - in individual Tags, and in the Tag Type. Changes made to individual Tags only apply to that Tag. Changes made to Tag Types apply to all Tags of that type, provided that a change has not been made to the individual Tag, in which case that remains unchanged. When you get into customizing Sources, the same concept applies. Changes made to Templates of individual Sources apply to only that Source, while changes made to Source Types apply to all Sources of that type except to those in which a change has been made individually. With regard to GEDCOM, most of the advanced features that make TMG worth while do not translate to GEDCOM. So if you are going to make use of the more worthwhile features of TMG you need to restrict use of GEDCOM to the most basic data, if you use it at all.

John, Some thoughts on using Witnesses... First, don't restrict your thinking about Witnesses to the concept of physically seeing an event. Think of it also as a participant, or one effected by the event. For example, some users add a widow or widower to a spouse's death tag, not because they actually saw the death, but because they were widowed by it, a significant life event. Likewise, you can enter heirs and executors to a will tag because they are named in the will, not because they actually saw it be drawn up. As to why one would choose to add a Witness to a tag. I see two reasons, only partly related. One is that you have several people involved in the same event and you want to record it for each of them. A good example is a Census tag, where everyone in the household was enumerated. Another is a Moved or Immigration tag where a family moved to a new location together. By using Witnesses you enter the details once, and then each person has the tag appearing for them. With this approach, each person has in essence their own tag for the event, but there is really only one Tag, and you only had to enter it once. (One caution - if transferring your data by GEDCOM is important to you, GEDCOM doesn't recognize witnesses so none of the Witnesses will have the tag appear in the GEDCOM.) A somewhat separate use of Witnesses is so in a report about one person you can have other participants mentioned who shared events. For example, many users construct their census tags so that in the narrative of the head of household all the other members are mentioned. Doing this requires creating custom Sentences, as the standard Sentences do not mention other participants. This subject is described in some of the articles on my website (link below). This last gets to your question about entering the mother as Witness to the birth of your children. TMG's genealogy reports display the children in various ways, but they do not include their births within the body of the parents' narratives. If you wanted to do that, you could enter one or both parents as Witnesses in the children's birth tags. These last applications of Witnesses require that you construct custom Sentences for the Witnesses. It makes little sense for a mother's narrative to say she "...witnessed the birth of Jonnie on {date} {place}..." which is what the standard Sentence for Witnesses would produce. Instead, you would probably want something like "Her son Jonnie was born {date} {place}..." Use of Roles, also discussed on my site, is helpful in getting these kinds of results. In the end, you can use Witnesses to cut down on the creation of duplicate tags, or to produce richer narratives, or both. Whether it makes sense for you to use them as ways to enrich output depends on what results you have in mind.

Do you see the other source types shown in the screenshot in my tutorial? If so and there is no E-Mail Message source type, I can only assume it has somehow gotten deleted from your Project. If that's the case, it's easy enough to restore it with these steps: 1. From the Tools menu, choose Source Types. In the Source Types screen, click Add to open the Add Source Types screen. 2. In the top field, Custom Source Type, enter: E-Mail Message 3. in the "is most similar to" drop-down, choose E-Mail Message 4. In the Full Footnote field, copy and paste: [AUTHOR], "[TITLE]," e-mail message from ([ADDRESS]) to [RECIPIENT]. 5. In the Short Footnote field, copy and paste: [AUTHOR], "[sHORT TITLE]," e-mail to [RECIPIENT]. 6. In the Bibliography field, copy and paste: [AUTHOR] "[TITLE]." E-mail message from [AUTHOR E-MAIL] at [ADDRESS]. 7. In the Reminder field, copy and paste: Source Definition: - Title - enter the subject of the e-mail. - Short Title - enter the subject of the e-mail, shortened if it is long. - Author - enter the name of the author in the form "Surname, GivenName". - Recipient - enter the name of the recipient in the form "Surname, GivenName". - Date - enter the date of the e-mail (optional). - Address - enter the physical address of the author. - Author E-mail - enter the e-mail address of the author, e.g., "samplename@samplebusiness.com". Citation: - Citation Detail - enter notes about how the source supports information in the tag (optional). Click OK and you are done.

Rosanna, I can't find your question about charts. What is the issue?

Rosanna, There is only one version of the Word output in TMG 8, and it does produce a "doc" file. That means it can be opened in either newer versions of Word or the older ones. There are no macros in the file that's generated, so a .docm wouldn't be appropriate. I suppose you really mean .docx, the normal format for newer versions of Word, but there is no need for that since they can also open files in the older format. As to why you get an unknown person, I'd guess either you are specifying an ID number that doesn't exist, or you have the surety settings set so that the subject is excluded. For the broadest acceptance, they should be set to No Threshold and Include Bland Surety should be checked.

Jonsops, I don't think you can, and if you did your serial number would no longer work. The serial number is tied to the email address you used when you obtained the license. Since you have advised WG of your new address you should get any emails correctly. The address in the Help>About screen really doesn't do anything other than to remind you of the one expected by the serial number. BTW, you will need to enter that email address if you should have occasion to install this version of TMG on a new computer. When a new major (paid) update is issued you will be able to use your then current address for it.

Jonsops, I'd assume you are using the UK version of TMG, which means the Source Types supplied are the UK versions. It looks to me like there are two E-mail Source Types in that version - one for single emails and one for multiple ones. Do you not see them? The output templates are a bit different than those in the US version, but you can change them if you prefer that version.