Michael Hannah

Second Site produces a set of web pages which are computer files. You can store those computer files on any storage device of your choice, including a DVD. I have mine stored on a DVD for backup, on my desktop for ease of navigation, and on my smart phone to be able to refer to them when I am out and about. In your case I would have them at least both on DVD for backup, and on your computer to be able to have a window open of a person when you are trying to compare that person to RM.

David, You do not mention which version of TMG you are using. Assuming it is the final version 9.05, I do not foresee a problem for quite some time to come First, as Jim mentions it is possible some later version of Windows may cause an insurmountable conflict with programs like TMG which worked in Windows 10. However, Microsoft has historically taken steps to provide backwards compatibility to working programs, such as the existing "Compatibility Mode" feature in Windows. Next, even if one was "forced" into that new OS and it also did not provide a mechanism for some older programs to work, I expect a virtual operating system package, e.g. Parallels, is highly likely to allow a previous compatible version of Windows to run as a guest operating system under that new OS, thereby extending further the lifetime of such older programs. Thus I believe the probable working lifetime of TMG to be extremely long. And by then I would expect/hope that a more modern version of a personal genealogy program would exist which would be able to import most of the TMG data. I, for one, have no plans to convert from TMG, and expect to be long gone by the time it would be required. As for taking actions to preserve one's TMG data, I would periodically create a full backup fileset on some external media, e.g. CDROM, and store it off-site. Within that fileset I would suggest a four-tiered approach. First, I would at least include the TMG installer and required unlock data, all the external exhibit files, and the latest full TMG backup with options set to backup everything except the external exhibits. Second, I would on occasion generate a report file of a Journal report of all people in the project using options to include everything. (If you later become concerned about being able to read that computer media, just print that report to hardcopy.) Third, I would regularly generate a GEDCOM file of all people and use the Enhanced Export Options available in version 9.05 to export as much as can possibly be included in a GEDCOM. Finally, if I were really paranoid I would sometimes include files generated by the "export data" function of the TMG Utility which can export some of the internals of TMG, such as Places, Sentences, Sources, and Styles. Hope this gives you ideas,

Laura, You say you just changed computers. In addition to what Jim suggests above, I would highly recommend reviewing Terry's Tips about installing TMG on a new computer. See his web page here.

I don't know about other users, but I do all my image editing outside TMG. I find the TMG image editor very limited, and most other separate image editor programs have a lot more features and capabilities. My impression from comments of other users in the past is that most others feel the same. If you do not already have an image editor you like, you might consider the free program "Irfranview" which has been recommended by several users. By the way, I do know that the final version 9.05 of TMG does still have at least one known bug in the image editor which I have included in my list of outstanding bugs. But I was unaware of any action in the editor that freezes the program. I will try to reproduce it and add it to my above list of known bugs. Hope this is helpful,

You will need to figure this out since TMG, like most programs, requires administrator privileges to install it.

Have you tried to run the TMG installer and choose the "repair" option?

I don't know of a way to "filter" for the repository, but I would simply set the Report Options to output the filtered List of Citations in "Columnar" format. I would then select as one of the columns the "Source Repository Name" and set that column as the primary sort. That will group them together, and I could then just ignore the other lines of output.

If I understand your issue, the popup windows for "adding witnesses and sources have expanded". If this is correct, then those popup windows are normal MS Windows windows. You should be able to resize them like any other window by putting the cursor on one of the corners and dragging that corner into the popup window to make it smaller. Then you should be able to move that popup window to the center of the screen so you can now see the buttons on the bottom. Hope this gives you ideas,

Barbara, I can't say for sure what has happened to your database, but spurious extra repositories was a symptom of a known bug in older versions of TMG. A cause was finally identified in testing Version 9.0 as a bug occurring when a repository was copied. That bug which produced these spurious extra repositories was fixed as of Version 9.01. You can delete any incorrect repositories by hand and they should not reappear. Unfortunately I don't know of a way to delete them other than by hand. You can identify potential sources with this problem using a List of Sources report with a filter of: Number of Repositories // > Is greater than // 1 // END Hope this helps,

Mike, You said: What do you mean by this? The term "report generator" is not a term TMG uses for anything that I know of. Do you mean that you get this error sequence when you simply click on the "Report" option on the Main Menu? Or do get it when you click on any option in the Report menu, such as "Descendant Indented Narrative"? Or do you get it when you try to change to a different "Configuration name" when in the Report Definition Screen? Or do you get it when you try to "Create Report" within any Report Definition Screen? Or when? It sounds like we may be addressing the wrong issue. What exact action(s) (using TMG's terms) do you do in TMG which triggers this error sequence?

Glad to hear that worked.

See the pinned topic about TMG9 final installers which includes how to do a "clean" install here.

There is a "trick" to entering them. Make the "Date" an irregular date with an appended 'BC' so that will output in reports. Then use a 9's complement for the Sort Date year. For details see the discussion of BC dates in the Data Entry chapter of my book here. Hope this gives you ideas,

You are most welcome, Joe. The comment about unique endnotes Terry mentioned is also in TMG's HELP under the topic "Report Options: Sources": "Unique ... endnotes never produce an “ibid”. This option does not recognize split CDs or CMs." In the Source Guide chapter of my book I also mention unique endnotes here. As that discussion explains, this limitation is one of the reasons I choose not to use that report option as I regularly use split CDs and CMs.

No, you are not missing anything, Terry. I am mostly a lumper but sometimes a splitter. You are right, the above example is more of a "splitter" example in that it is a Source for a single article. But that seemed to me to fit best with what Joe put in his example bibliography, i.e. the specific page numbers of this one article. However, the "Article Title" is an optional element in that Source Type, as is "Pages", so one could use this Source Type to create a Source for a specific edition of a paper, or just the paper itself. But as I try to describe elsewhere in the book, that would require putting all the other information in the Citation data which could not appear in the Bibliography. Further, the very next Source Type in the book is a Source Type example of how one could “lump” multiple articles from the same newspaper into a single source record which only contained source element data about that newspaper on that date. It even discusses how multiple "split" sources can be "lumped" into a single Bibliography entry. And most of my other Source Types are even more "lumper" style, such as my "Birth Church Register" where I give an example of using this Source Type for a single Source of an entire Bishop’s transcript book with combined Baptism, Marriage, and Burial data from multiple churches. Talk about a giant "lump" of data. As we both have said, one has to decide what is desired in the Bibliography. The more one wants in the Bibliography, the more "split" the Source Definition will have to be. Everything else goes in the Citation data. And as my book points out, if you want less in the Bibliography but still want to "split" your Sources, with carefully constructed templates you can even get TMG to "lump" multiple "split" sources into a single Bibliography entry. I did say "I am a lumper" to point out that one can be a lumper and still use a Bibliography. But I should probably have more accurately said "While I am usually a "lumper" I use a Bibliography all the time". Regardless, as we are both trying to point out to Joe, the Bibliography automatically "lumps" to the level that is common among all the many citations to this source, so it cannot contain specific citation data.

Hi Joe, As Terry says, you cannot use CDs in the Bibliography. In fact the Bibliography template cannot contain any of the variables for any data which is entered in the Citation window as part of a specific citation: CDs, CMs, CREF. As Terry points out, you should design source templates so that all data that is common and unchanged among that unlimited number of possible citations is put in the Source Definition and its linked Repository Definition. The variables for any of that data can be put in the Bibliography. Everything that is specific to that single citation (e.g. page number, a short quote, etc.) should be entered in the fields on the Citation screen, and the variables for those fields can only be put in the two footnote templates. While I am a "lumper" I use a Bibliography all the time, and thus have structured my source templates accordingly. For my examples, see the Source Templates chapter of my on-line book. To use the data from your post to construct an example, my custom source type for an Obituary/Newspaper Article as posted in that chapter is here. I choose to have as the Source Definition the entire obituary article, and then quote data from specific items within that article in citations to multiple tags. I would probably enter a Source Definition for your example source using my source type as: NEWSPAPER = Daily Union SHORT NEWSPAPER = Daily Union ARTICLE TITLE = Long Time Resident Mrs. Mary Jones Dies SHORT ARTICLE TITLE = Mrs. Mary Jones Obituary SECTION = Obituaries AUTHOR = Fred Byline DATE = Sunday, February 2, 1936 DATE OBTAINED = November 13, 2013 LOCATION = New York, Schenectady LOCATION DETAIL = Schenectady, New York EDITION = Home Edition PAGES = page 34, column 5 to page 35, column 1 COMMENTS = This is a comment about the source. And this would be linked with the repository reference to "jim's" repository REPOSITORY REFERENCE = hjc8421-005-k001e001 REPOSITORY = jim's hosting website REPOSITORY ADDRESS =http:??test.web.com/gh Then for the first of the many citations I might have a citation of time and cause of death to the Death tag: CD= p.34, col 5, second paragraph CM= "Mrs. Jones died of a heart attack at 3 a.m. yesterday morning at her sister Willa's home." And I might have a second citation to the Burial tag: CD= p.35, col 1, first paragraph CM= "Mrs. Jones will be buried at St. Mathew's Cemetery." This would produce: Full Footnote from the first citation: Fred Byline, "Long Time Resident Mrs. Mary Jones Dies," Daily Union, Schenectady, New York, Sunday, February 2, 1936, Home Edition, Obituaries, p.34, col 5, second paragraph. Cited as "Mrs. Mary Jones Obituary", Daily Union. "Mrs. Jones died of a heart attack at 3 a.m. yesterday morning at her sister Willa's home." Short Footnote from the second citation: "Mrs Mary Jones Obituary," Daily Union, Sunday, February 2, 1936, p.35, col 1, first paragraph. "Mrs. Jones will be buried at St. Mathew's Cemetery." Bibliography: New York, Schenectady, Daily Union, Sunday, February 2, 1936, Home Edition, Obituaries, Fred Byline, "Long Time Resident Mrs Mary Jones Dies", page 34, column 5 to page 35, column 1. hjc8421-005-k001e001. jim's hosting website, http:??test.web.com/gh. Obtained November 13, 2013. This is a comment about the source. Your source type will probably be different but I hope this gives you ideas,

Glad it helped.

The log from running VFI should show the file it could not find. That log file will be named "Last VFI.log" and will be located in the same folder as your Project. It is a text file, so is readable with any text editor, such as Notepad. As for who has a missing exhibit, the quickest way I know of is to open the Exhibit log, change the Focus to "All Exhibits" and scroll through to find the icon (usually frowny face) showing a missing link.

If you find this report's lack of expansion of the people variables in memos annoying, you might consider setting the options to not output any of the memo text. Since this report does not display the sentence template where information also may have been entered, I often choose to exclude the memo text. I just use this report to get a sense of what tags are assigned to a person. Note that there are two places in Report Options where you would need to exclude memos: obviously the "Memos" tab should select the option of "None", but also the "Miscellaneous" tab should not select "Embed sentence [M]emo". Hope this gives you ideas,

Ruth, Maybe it will help to say it another way? As Virginia and Terry point out, a sibling of an ancestor is not your "direct line" ancestor in a genetic sense. You are not a direct product of their genes. While siblings are based on the genes of the same parents, each offspring of those parents can have a slightly different genetic code. The key point is that TMG is a GENEalogy program. While those siblings are part of an ancestral "family", they are not themselves a direct line genetic ancestor. TMG is giving you the correct genetic information. Or is there something else going on concerning these people which we do not understand? Hope this gives you ideas,

Note that the registration information consists of three parts: a name, an e-mail address, and an unlock code. All three must be entered exactly as specified in the registration.

All versions of TMG will only run on Windows operating systems. Partitioning your hard drive so you can reboot into either Windows or Mac, or running a program on the Mac that provides virtual partitions for hosting another OS such as Windows, are your only two options for running TMG on a Mac. Many TMG users successfully run TMG on a Mac using the virtual program Parallels. Search for posts with the term "Parallels" in this "Older Products and Versions" Forum, or start with the post of running the latest version of TMG under Parallels here. Hope this gives you ideas,

Hi Nancy, I assume that you are referring to the automatic "Relation" tag in the Tag Details area of a person's display. The most common cause of problems with the display of that tag is that it has not been refreshed/updated. It is NOT automatically modified and updated as you add people and change relationships. That would slow the program down considerably. After doing some data entry, especially if the new data will change relationships, you need to update the 'Relation' tag display. There are three ways to do that: Go to Preferences // Current Project Options // Other and click on the "Refresh relationships" button in that window. RIGHT-click anywhere in the tag Details area and select the 'Automatic "Relation" tag' menu item to turn off the automatic relation tag. Now RIGHT-click again and select that menu item to recalculate the relationships and turn it back on. Add to your custom toolbar (you do use one, right? ) the "Related" button. Clicking that will first turn off the automatic relation tag, then clicking it again will recalculate the relationships and turn it back on Hope this give you ideas.

Another common problem is creating the GEDCOM output file on a removable device like a thumb drive. Create first on the main hard drive then copy to the media.

Sorry, David, those are the usual issues. Did you check the actual file and folder mentioned in the error message to be sure you had permissions in that folder and to that file? That is the only other thing I can think of. Maybe some other user will have some ideas.