Michael Hannah

Carol, I have heard of this problem possibly being a result of the particular drivers you have for your CD writer on your computer. The typical recommendation is to backup directly to your hard drive, then to write the .sqz file to your CD with your CD writing software. Also usually recommended to reverse the procedure for restore, copy off the CD first to the hard drive then restore from that file.

Best thing is to test it yourself. However your example has problems. has two variables in the same conditional brackets which is not allowed. Not sure why you would put the NP code in the second phrase as the first will always be there due to PF always existing. Maybe you could explain what you are trying to do and one of us users could suggest something.

These fields are described in the TMG Help under the topic "Source Definition: General". It mentions Author / Compiler / Editor, Unfortunately it seems to have left out mentioning Subject and Second Person whose fields work the same. I will post that as an update needed in Help.

Hi Vince, You are being misled by the column field name. The Place Detail field is one place field but can be separated into nine subparts using the double vertical bars '||' like memos can. 'Place Detail 2' is asking for the second subfield in the Detail field. If you want the Detail field of Place and have not subdivided that field, then you probably want just Place Detail. Place Detail is the second Place field, Addressee the first, City the third, etc. If you just use Place, then check the settings you want on the separate Places tab in the Report Options.

Hi Lori, When you did your export to GEDCOM, what options did you choose in Step 5 "Destination and Miscellaneous Options" of the TMG Export Wizard? Be sure that you chose Version: GEDCOM 5.5 and Character Set: ANSI, which are the settings that Ancestry.com recommends here.

I have never found a way to eliminate this trailing comma. Maybe some other user has stumbled upon a way, but I don't know of one. Again, this might require some kind of place style that adds some identifiable text, maybe to produce "Northfield, Massachusetts xxxCOMMAxxx," and then do another global search a replace. At least with TMG it outputs word processing files and you can post process the results.

John, As for the page break, I believe the internal code used for a page break differs depending upon the word processor. However, most word processors have a global search and replace where you could search for some unique text string you have inserted in the output (e.g. 'xxPGxx') and replace that text with a page break. I think this is the simplest way to accomplish what you are seeking. Hope this gives you ideas,

I don't know the exact rules that TMG uses, but my experience has been that if multiple place elements are output for then a trailing comma will be output unless it is clear to TMG that the location variable ends a sentence. That would be consistent with your not getting one for just "Massachusetts" but did get one for "Northfield, Massachusetts". I vaguely remember someone commenting that this was "proper" punctuation rules for a multi-part location, but I couldn't swear to that.

Yes, I see in the ListServ that the problem was with the spelling of the role that you assigned the Principal. Glad you found an answer

Hi Patt, You don't say which person you checked. The [RP] variable will return the pronoun based on the person with that role, not based on the person that has this tag. This output is what you would see if the person with this role has their SEX flag set to '?'. Looking at the way your sentence reads, I suspect you really want the pronoun for the person being born, which is probably the Principal of this tag. As this is likely not to be the first sentence in this narrative section, try simply using [P] which should give the appropriate he or she. %%%%%%%%%%%% Oops, wrote too quickly without thinking that through. What is unclear is who is assigned this role. If this is the Role sentence then it is to print in that role person's narrative. If you are assigning this role to a Witness then [P] probably won't work. However, if you are assigning this role to the Principal themselves, then [P] probably would work, but then so should the [RP].

Billt, obviously your reply to my comment did not make it. If you are having questions about how the Forum works, notice that there is a Help button at the top right of the screen that will show a list of topics about using the Forum, one of which explains about Posting questions and replies.

You are most welcome, George, It may seem "gruesome" to you now at first thought, but if you have the same people duplicated in both datasets, then it seems the two datasets are not really unrelated? One of the TMG features I find especially useful is the capability to filter in many ways, including based on a flag. As just one example, when you are looking for people either in the Project Explorer or the Picklist you can tell TMG to only list those people that have a certain flag value. For your purposes you might have a separate flag for each "group" you were considering being in a separate project, with simple values of '?/Y/N' for those flags. That way it would be easy for the same person to be 'Y' in multiple groups, but the filter for just one group would work. Hope this gives you ideas, And obviously your posting of your reply worked just fine If you are having questions about how the Forum works, notice that there is a Help button at the top right of the screen that will show a list of topics, one of which is about Posting questions and replies.

Welcome, George, Feel free to post questions on whatever you don't understand about TMG. As Terry replied, it is true that by design all TMG projects and datasets are completely independent. Whether this is a feature or a fault is a matter of point of view Many of us users appreciate this intentional separation. However, as Terry suggested, let us know your goals and maybe one of us users can enlighten you to features of TMG that can accomplish that goal without duplicating people in different projects or datasets. If you are trying to keep track of different subsets of your data, TMG has many features designed to do that with the data that is contained in a single dataset. One of the best examples is identifying and keeping track of different branches of the ancestral tree. You don't need to separate them into different datasets. TMG flags and accents and Focus Groups may do what you want. A good example can be found here where Terry describes identifying and accenting with colors people based on their relationship to a reference person. Let us know your goals and one of us users is bound to have an idea on how to do what you want in TMG.

Jeanne,If the menu option File > Maintenance > Validate File Integrity found errors you are not done. Whenever you run VFI, always run it as a pair with Optimize. First run Optimize, then run VFI. If VFI shows that it fixed errors, then always run this pair of Maintenance utilities again. Keep running the pair again and again (usually only takes two or three times) until VFI reports no errors fixed. Then run one last Optimize by itself. Once you have done all this, be sure to backup your project in this new clean state.

Hi Billt, Not sure what you mean by "address drop-downs". What screen are you in and what are you trying to do? Do you mean trying to access previous entries of a specific Location field when you are doing data entry? If so, check the Help system under the topic Repeat Keys where it describes the , , and - key actions.

Hi Vince, I spent some time in working out a (rather complex) way to record multiple kinds of formal and informal adoptions. First you appear to want to record the "event" of taking the children in, then have the children show as part of that family from that point on. These are two different TMG record keeping issues. For both of these look here for my suggestions for custom tags and sentences for situations similar to yours. For your "event" of taking them in I would use my custom Adopted tag with your uncle and his wife as the Principals, and the two girls as Witnesses with their roles as adoptee. I would construct the memos so that narrative sentences would show the reason for your uncle taking them in, and a note that no record of a formal adoption has been found. The act of adopting (taking in) children does not necessarily have to coincide with some legal action, so a tag like mine should work to show this event whether the adoption was legally formal or not. I would probably cite both the later census record and the source mentioning the parents' deaths as sources for this tag. As for showing them after this point in time as part of their new family, this is more complicated as TMG only links one set of parents as Primary for use with many reports and charts. I have chosen to create two separate TMG person records for each such child, where each "person" has only one set of parents linked and they are Primary. The first TMG person record would link to the birth parents and only contain events in the children's lives up to the deaths of their birth parents. The second person record with the uncle and wife linked as parents would include the Adopted tag and all events in the children's lives after their being taken in. I also use a custom AdoptLink tag to link these two person records to each other to make it clear to myself what I was doing, and provide the ability to jump between the two person records with just a click. In your case, since it does not appear they changed their names, I would alter the custom AdoptLink tag to have roles BirthPerson and AdoptedPerson with their respective role sentences as something like: BirthPerson (P1): "Events concerning [P1] following adoption<[D]><[L]> are recorded with [P2+].< [M1]>"AdoptedPerson (P2): "Events concerning [P2] prior to adoption <[D]><[L]> are recorded with [P1+] .< [M2]>" If you use SecondSite this tag also will link the two web person records. You may not want to get quite this complex, but hope this gives you ideas. If you try to use my custom system and have questions, ask away.

Hi Neil, I did an Internet search on your message and note that this error has been reported while doing installations of many different software packages. Those reports do seem to indicate that this error is caused by a problem with the DLLs on that particular operating system, so I don't believe it is a TMG error. Not sure what to suggest, but out of curiosity what OS are you running? (I am guessing XP, but what SP?) Were you doing the install with a login that had administrative privileges? What exact path did you choose for where TMG was installed? Since you seem comfortable with the rather advanced action of "messing" with system files and DLLs on your system, you might search the Microsoft site and follow their instructions on restoring a DLL from your OS install or recovery disk rather than from the other computer. I have also seen similar errors with the system file MFC42.DLL in the same folder. You might try restoring that DLL, but that is just a wild guess. Are your OS updates and Service Packs up to date? Often installing those will update any DLLs that may have problems. Finally, some people seem to have reported success installing other software packages that encountered this error by doing the install while the OS has been rebooted in "safe" mode. Otherwise, the only solution I have heard that seems to reliably resolve this is to re-install/restore the OS. Hope this gives you ideas,

That was not how I understood the request, Terry. I "think" Peter's request is for a completely new color capability that only affects the Flags. I "think" the desire is to be able to define a color setting for each possible value of a Flag when you define the Flag itself. Then whenever you set the Flag to that value the display of the Flag text in the flag box will use the color setting for that value. Did I understand you correctly Peter?

Hmmm... I guess that means I should not respond?? Pat, your idea has a lot of merit as a change to the default. However, many of us (including some of us users that have volunteered to be moderators) believe that the entire handling of places could use a major overhaul. The handling of prepositions is only one thing I would like to see improved. We are all free to suggest items for a Wish List, and based on many of the enhancements that have been added to TMG in the past Wholly Genes has shown that it does listen to these wishes. If a user (who might also be a moderator) agrees with the wish they should say so as wishes that many users desire seem to be more likely to be implemented. Beyond that, until such time as the program changes all that any of us can do is suggest workarounds.

Bonnie, Thank you for the clear description of what you are doing. I am just a user like yourself but I tried every way I could think of to duplicate what you are seeing and could not! You said: "... if I take the time to actually look at the source definitions, the source type has changed from "Electronic Web Site" to "Dissertation" ... " I assume you mean you open the Master Source List, then open that new source for edit and at the top of the Source Definition window under Abbreviation find that its source type has changed? Have the available Source Elements also changed, or only the name of the source type? Electronic Web Site has the elements TITLE, SHORT TITLE, and URL, but Dissertation has TITLE, SHORT TITLE, RECORD TYPE, AUTHOR, DATE, and LOCATION. Perhaps some internal pointer has a problem. Have you tried the project maintenance routines? It is usually recommended to run the actions Optimize then Verify File Integrity as a pair until VFI shows no errors, then do a final Optimize. Let us know if that helps. If not, maybe someone else will have an idea to try.

Hi Bonnie, Hmmm.... I am trying to understand what you are seeing. Could you be a bit more explicit as to what actions (the exact sequence of buttons you click, etc.) you take to get to where you "select the ELECTRONIC WEB SITE source type". Then what do you do and where are you seeing the name "DISSERTATION". Also, what kind of source categories are you using? This is shown in Preferences > Current Project Options > Other > Source categories. It is not clear to me whether you are adding a source type, editing an existing source type, adding a new source, adding a new citation, or what. I 'think" you are adding a new source, but am not sure.

I am only a user of TMG, just like Sam and Jim, but have to agree that you just can't do that. Windows 98 is too old. Even Microsoft ended all support of Windows 98 over 3 years ago. The announcements of TMG Version 7 made it clear both that Version 7 files would not be usable in Version 6, and that Version 7 would not support Windows 98. I understand that you want to actually modify the TMG data on your laptop, but the OS on that laptop is way too old. Sorry. The only alternative I can think of is to create something that you can read on that old laptop, maybe some kind of reports made in a word processor that can output an older file version that your laptop could read. You could then view your data and make notes to yourself of the changes you need to make when you have access to your main computer. I agree that it is frustrating to consider a laptop that functions perfectly well as too old, but current programs of any kind including any modern genealogy programs are unlikely to work on that very old OS. Michael

Hmmm... I just created a Journal Report with endnotes and sent it to MS Word and all my end-note citation numbers both in the text and in the endnotes section are superscripted. I "believe" that the format of these codes are controlled within Word, but I cannot find in either Word or TMG how to make them either superscripted or non-superscripted. I am not being much help, but wanted to note that I do not see this issue. Are you viewing your Word document in print mode?

As I have gathered from previous responses concerning this error, this seems to be an issue that cannot be reliably reproduced by the WG software people. I would guess that this would make it very difficult to find the root cause. Some users have even suggested it may simply be a timing issue that appears in certain circumstances. Virginia's suggestion to "start TMG with the Welcome Window option (Preferences - Startup and Exit)" seems to affect the timing during startup and for many people eliminates the error. It may be some comfort that I did search the archives and can find no mention so far of anyone's data ever being damaged by this error. If you do have a guaranteed way to reliably produce this error every time, you should probably contact Tech Support with that information.

Glad I was able to help!