Terry Reigel

Ray,

I'm finding myself a bit bewildered by this idea. You say you've found a source for several entries in your data set. But entries are tags, not people. How would the focus group get the citations to the right tags? I don't see how you could accurately apply the citations to the new source without comparing what you have already entered with the information in the new found source. Are the relationships, and the dates, and places for each person's birth, marriage, death, and other events, the same as what you already have entered?

No I am opening it from its actual location.

I don't understand what this means. Exactly how are you opening it? From what screen? What are you clicking on? From within TMG or from Windows Explorer or something else?

I can't figure out how to do it with List of People or List of Events reports, but you can with the Individual Narrative.

Make the sentence for the Principal of the researcher tag something like just: [:CR:][M]

Use the Individual Narrative, with a filter that finds all the progenitors. You might set a custom flag to do this, and filter on the flag.

In the IN, under Tags in Options, set to "Selected" and select only your researcher tag.

The result is the name of each progenitor, followed by the names of the researchers. You could "fancy up" the sentence structure of the tag to get more elaborate results if you like.

Ray, trying to better define your request...

Focus groups contain people, and citations are attached to tags, not to people. The existing "Cite Globally" feature allows you to attach citations (for everyone in the data set) to names, events, and/or relationships.

Are you suggesting an enhancement to that feature, which would permit the same choices but apply them only to people in the Focus Group rather than to everyone in the data set?

I can replicate this when starting with an embedded citation, but not from a regular tag citation. I'll report it to the developers.

Is each individual birth certificate a source?  If so, what goes into the citation detail field?

That's the way the default source templates are designed. Using it that way allows the child's name to appear at the beginning of the footnote, which is the suggested style in Ms. Mills' book, which is the basis on which the templates are designed. Used this way, there may be nothing needed in the Citation Detail. However, when I have several sources for an event, and they do not match perfectly, I show in the CD what that source said to support this tag. For example, for a birth tag a citation to a census would say "shows age 13 and state" while a citation to a birth certificate would say "shows date, address, city and state."

Some users don't like all the sources that result from making each certificate and individual source. So them make the source more generic, and put more details in the CD. They might, for example make one source for all certificates issued in one county or state, or just one for all of them. Note that this requires considerable modification to the standard templates, since they expect the child's name to appear in the source definition itself. It also means that you can't get the elements in the order shown in the style guides, unless you use the more advanced technique of "split CDs" - see the article on Customizing Sources on my website for details - link shown below.

There is only one date field.  How do I state that the child was born on a given date, but the record was filed a few days later, and the certified document was issued much later?   If the certificate has a stamped number, a book number, and a page number, do I put all of these into the number field?

In my view the date in the source definition should be the date the certificate was issued, or the date the original record was filed. However, looking at Mills' examples, it's not clear which was intended.

Is there an easier way to link one citation to several events (child's date and place of birth, mother, father, mother's place of birth, father's place of birth, names of child and parents, etc.) other than adding a new citation for each event, selecting the source, and using F3 to fill in the detail, memo and reference fields one at a time?

Citations are linked to events, as you note, and thus would be added to each event that you intend to use that source to support. F3 when used in either the source number or CD field will recall both of them. If you use the memo and reference fields, they are recalled separately by F3.

I know this is a dumb question - but what do you mean by "cd"?

It's not dumb if you don't know what it means.

CD means Citation Detail - the area on the Citation screen where you would enter any details about how this source supports this tag.

The idea she is describing is to create a Source that is very general, then put all the details, like in this case the name of the newspaper, in the Citation Detail when you cite this source. It's a way of avoiding a long list of similiar sources in the Master Source List.

I just reinstalled my software and the error appeared after I tried to open the project.  What can I do?

Can you open the Sample project?

I just downloaded 6.04 hoping that it would fix a problem that I have had with 6.03, but unfortunately it did not. The drop down menu for witness roles does not function.

I've never seen a problem with that drop-down. If I click on the name of the role itself, it opens, as it does if I click on the down-arrow. I do find it a bit touchy if I click on the far right edge of the little button with the down arrow - it sometimes fails to open then. But as long as I click somewhere near the center of the button it works fine for me.

I've added roles to the default Will Tag for executor/executrix, beneficiary, etc but I can't record the same person as both an executor and a beneficiary (though this often happens in a Will's provisions, of course) - the software tells me that this person is already included as a witness ad won't allow me to add them a second time. I can see why the program might do this, but can anyone suggest a work-around that would allow me to record the same person discharging two different roles with regard to the same Will.

Create a combination role of "executor and heir" - it will also read better in the narratives than two separate statements back to back would. For an example, see my article on Will Tags.

I just tried to enter a godmother-godson relationship as an Event in TMG, using the built-in Mother-God and Son-God Tags. The software then asked if I wanted it to create a marriage between the godmother and the boy's father! Even if you say no to this, the program creates a blood-line relationship.

All the parent/child tags are really the same thing. The different labels are only for your use in the Person View. If any of the parent/child tags are marked as Primary, they will behave as if the relationship is a blood relationship.

Is there a way to avoid the godparent/child Tags creating a blood-line relationship?

In my view the godparent tags are a poor way to record this relationship. Rather, I'd suggest adding the godparents as witnesses to the child's baptism tag as suggested by dadempsey. Probably the best way to do this is to create godparent roles in that tag type, so you can more easily reflect the roles they played, both in their own narratives and those of the child.

Yes. Do that by entering one of the parents, then attach both children to that parent.

In cultures that had children using the father's surname, it's easiest to add the father, giving him the surname of the children, if known. Other options are:

1. Enter the father (or mother) with any name, then delete that name after the parent is added.

2. Enter the father or mother, using a "placeholder" name, like "Parent."

3. Don't enter the parent at all, but "connect" the siblings with a note or custom tag.This will not cause them to appear as siblings in reports or screen views, but will cause the name of the other to appear in the tag list for each.

My article on Sentence Structures may help with the mechanics. The sentence I use is:

[P] never married

The Memo variable allows you to add comments at the end if you want, by entering them in the Memo field.

How does one indicate that a person never married, or can it be done in TMG?

You can add a Note tag, and enter something like "never married" in the Memo field. If you use the advanced data entry mode, you can enter a sort date to position that tag whereever you want it.

Or, you could enter a Anecdote tag, and enter something like "He never married" in the Memo field. Since the date does not print in enter a date in Anecdote tags, you can put a date in the date field to position that tag if you want, and it will not appear in reports.

Or, you can create a custom "NeverMarried" tag, with a suitable sentence. That's what I do.

I am test driving TMG 6.03.000 and have a problem I can't seem to find an answer to in the documentation.

 

I am used to inputting mm-dd-yyyy to enter dates in my old genealogy program, but the results are not the same using TMG for some reason.

 

If I enter 07-09-1960 I expect the output to be 09 Jul 1960, but what I get is 07 Sep 1960.

 

How do I change this behavior, or do I need to change the way I enter dates?

As Vera pointed out, you can select the way dates are displayed in preferences.

If you enter dates as all numbers, TMG assumes you are entering days and months in the same order as the display format you selected, and interprets them accordingly. However, if the one number is greater than 12 and the other less, it assumes that is the larger number is the day, regardless of the format you have selected.

Your choices are:

1. Select a display format with the same day/month order as the way you prefer to enter your dates, or

2. Enter months as alpha characters rather than numbers. Three characters are always sufficient, and fewer can be used but are some times ambigous - "J" will be interpreted as January, not June or July.

What were you doing when it happened? If you try it again, do you still get it?

Without knowing what you were doing there's not much we can suggest.

Is there any way to find the  two-"Principal" (i.e., no roles) events which have custom sentences?

The List of Events report will do it, with a filter like:

Principal 1 ...  Sentence (Local)    Is Not Empty  AND

Principal 2 ...  Sentence (Local)    Is Not Empty  END

But that will not distinguish which Role is in use.

But why would you want to? Nothing has changed in them until (unless)

you now change the local sentence. In other words, while they now have

separate local sentences, they are both the same.

You don't need to pay any attention to this new feature until you 1)

create a new tag, or edit an existing one, and 2) edit a local

sentence for the role of "Principal" in a tag with two persons entered

as Principal.

Assuming we can find such custom sentences affected by this change, when may we expect the future update with the option to have such sentences copied from one principal to the other automatically.

It's already happened for existing tags. I'd think Bob was talking

about a feature that would apply to new tags, and/or perhaps tags you

might edit in the future.

I don't commonly use the citation memo, but in brief tests, I find that F3 brings up the most recently used memo. Could you offer more detail about what you are doing and how it goes wrong?

Pierce, I think that the "Primary only" method of controlling which tags are printed is just too rudimentary to be useful. It requires the use of silly work-arounds like you describe. When it comes to most reports (excepting charts, which have limited space) there is a much better method. Set the report definition to "All Events" then control what gets printed by the use of the "Selected tag types" control.

Using this method requires some discipline in entering the tag information, but so does the primary method. The key is to establish different tag types for events you don't what to print, and for events you might sometimes not want to print. Then you select or not those tag types to include or exclude them.

Details are described in my web article on Primary Tags and Printing, and pp 118-120 of GTMOOTMG.

Kenny --

If you posted this to the Support Forum rather than in the Cruise forum you would be more likely to get a helpful response - I just happened to see it here.

>

The error message you are getting is usually Word's rather strange way of saying the file has too many endnotes. I'd assume that you have created a Journal with lots of generations and lots of source notes, right?

If so, possible solutions are:

1. Use fewer generations.

2. Try the "combined" feature on the source notes, so that all cites for each tag are combined into only one note.

3. Use "unique" endnotes, so each note appears only once - these notes are not in Word's endnote format, so Word sees them as plain text.

4. Some users have reported better results in this case if they specify an older Word format in the "File Type" drop-down.

5. You might experiment with the Master Document feature on the Publication Tools tab of options and see if that allows you to open the file.

Recently I was sent a gedcom file, that I have now managed to load as a project into TMG, and there are many people from this tree that I wish to merge with my main project.

 

I do not necessarily want everone one from the new project, and where the same people exist in both projects I want to ensure that my original data isn't compromised in anyway. is this possible and safe?

In addition to the two articles that Jim recommeded, I'd suggest looking at the linked article on Copying People - since you only want some of the people copied, you may find that rather than merging the entire Data Sets, it would work better for you to copy specific people from the imported data set to your working one.

They are called "Item tips" - you turn them on and off with the right-click menu. Right-click in the tag box and choose "Show item tips in the Person view."

Preferences are backed up when you choose a Backup configuration that includes "customizations." The specific customizations to be backed up are selected at Step 3 of the backup wizard.

You're welcome, Neil.

Terry

In printing my narratives, I would like to include information on the spouse, i.e., date of birth and death.  Can I do it?

The Journal reports offer "Spouse Events" as an option, which will include all the events for the spouses.

Beyond that there is no easy way. There are no options to do it automatically. You could do it manually in a couple of ways, but they are a lot of work, and don't not necessarily provide just what you want:

1. You could enter the focus person as a Witness in the spouse's birth tag, which would allow you to create a statement about the birth of the spouse in the focus person's narrative. But it would be sorted at the date of the spouse's birth, probably not where you want it.

2. You could manually add the spouse's birth dates to the memo of the marriage tag, and modify the sentences of that tag to add it to the output. This would produce better output, but would require adding the dates manually to each marriage tag.

I inadvertantly have two copies of the same project (I worked on my PC an laptop) that have slightly differing content.

 

What is the best way to 'merge' these indvidual in. If I for example restored the laptop project on to the PC, how would I first 'save' or 'export' the 8 people to bring them back after the restore.

First, before any sort of major surgury on your data, make a backup.

Then:

1. Restore the laptop project to the PC.

2. Merge the two projects, choosing A & B so that the laptop project is "unchanged." This puts the data sets from both projects in your PC project, but the data sets remain separate.

3. Collect all the extra people from your laptop data set in a Focus Group, or select them in the Project Explorer. Then use Copy Person(s) on the Add menu to copy them from the laptop data set to the PC data set.

4. After you have verified you have everyone, delete (in Data Set Manager) the laptop data set from the project on the PC.

For more details, read the articles on Projects and Datasets, Merging Projects & Data Sets, and Copying People on my website - link below.