Sue036

Hi, Despite having used TMG for about 20 years I didn't join this forum and wasn't subscribed to the newsletter. Hence, I have only discovered that TMG has been discontinued having come here for help with some issues I have stumbled across. I accept that is my own fault. I have only ever upgraded to a new version when changing my PC and yes, my current PC is from 2008 and so I still have TMG 7 (UK version) running on Windows Vista. I appreciate that I should have kept the software up-to-date but of course it never seemed urgent ... My problem arose when I tried to add a spouse and got an error message. So, I tried again. This resulted in two identical spouses (with consecutive reference numbers) being added, with two marriages. I tried to delete one of the spouses but kept getting errors saying the person was still tagged in relationships. I then went back to the original person and deleted all the marriage tags but still couldn't delete either of the two spouse records. Eventually I merged the two spouses and married the original person to the merged spouse. This looked OK on the person view screen but I still got an extra "unknown" spouse on reports. I then tried adding the couple's daughter and although that again looks OK in the person view my descendant report is now showing the child as both a child and it's own mother's second spouse! I also keep getting error meessages whenever I try to do anything with this project file, so I fear the data may be corrupt? Naturally, it is a massive project that I have been working on for many years so not easy to recreate! I do have a recent backup of the project, but having never restored a backup before I am nervous about doing so in case it doesn't work. I cannot discover if there is a way to save the current data or if it will be overwritten by the backup?? I would be grateful for any advice as to how I should proceed. It may help to know that this project only has people and relationships in it, there are no sources or exhibits (I do store my sources, meticulously, just not in TMG). There are. however, over 1200 people. Thanks in advance for any help with this.

OK, it looks as though I have been backing up correctly. I think I did read the instructions back in 2008 but for a long time now I have just clicked next, next, next, finish, usually while in a hurry to close down the computer and get to sleep or get out of the house! I have now managed to backup what was the current data and to restore from the previous backup. Now I just have to hope that the corruption didn't sneak in before then! However, I have several years worth of backups so worst case I suppose I just have to keep going back in time until I find something that's stable? Thank you very much for your help, I appreciate it's a straightforward process but I was in unfamiliar territory and needed some reassurance that I wasn't about to destroy all of my data! I will now try to bring the project back up to date and fingers crossed that no one ends up married to their own child again

Thanks Jim, I have been making regular backups, even storing copies of them on memory sticks, external hard drives and in the cloud. However I have never been too sure what all the backup options meant so am uncertain if I chose the right ones. I know I should have thought about that sooner. Anyway, I understand from your reply that if I restore from a backup it WILL overwrite the current data. That being so, how can I be sure that if I create another backup of the current data first that I am actually using the correct backup options? If I just let it default everything will it be OK or could I have unwittingly changed the defaults to something not so clever? Assuming I get past that, then how do I ensure that I only restore the project files and nothing else?