Michael Hannah

Could you explain exactly what state you are in and what actions you take when you try to edit a tag and what you see when you do. Try as I might I cannot come up with a way to reproduce your symptoms. Are you in the Master Tag Type List and try to Edit a tag? When you go to the Roles and Sentences tab are the New/Edit/Delete buttons below the list of roles all greyed out? What else do you see that is unexpected that could give some clues? Have you done anything significant to either your computer, operating system, or TMG lately?

Happy to provide pointers. I think one of the best aspects of TMG is its great user community. While this is the official WhollyGenes site where members of the company are pledged to monitor posts and provide official answers if required, it is primarily run by volunteer users (like myself). You might want to also subscribe to the TMG e-mail list (see info here). The e-mail list is run strictly by and for users, and also has many users that can offer suggestions on how to accomplish what you want to do in TMG. When you have a question about TMG I suggest first looking in three places: the TMG documentation which includes its embedded Help, and the Primer and GTMOTMG books, this WhollyGenes forum with its search facility, and the archives of the TMG e-mail list using the RootsWeb search facility. While I think TMG is completely usable and easy to use "straight out of the box", I think some of its best capabilities come when you customize and think "outside" that box. As for learning its "seemingly endless options", good luck! I have been using TMG for five years and there are options and features I have never even tried! However, that is one of TMG's best characteristics, you only have to use those advanced features or customized options if and when you find the need. Good luck, and keep the questions coming,

If this is your goal, I would highly recommend getting Second Site and making a set of web pages. You can store the set of pages on a CD and the only thing the person needs to have and know how to use is a browser. Many of us have "worried" about our electronic database vanishing, but I suggest that the more important worry is the data itself no longer being accessible. Having the output in a web page is electronic, and decades in the future when it needs to be imported into some program not yet even conceived a translation program could be written to import such data. In the meantime you data will be much more accessible to relatives than converting to some genealogy program that may not survive over the years. Web pages will survive. Just one old man's opinion,

Welcome Dennis, As a user for several years I agree that one of the best aspects of TMG is its versatility and ability to be customized. Duplicate places are easy to merge in TMG. First, TMG is a true relational database, so a place name is only stored once. Multiple event tags all link to the same single entry in the Master Place List. If you modify an existing place in the Master Place List the change is immediately reflected in all the events that link to that place entry. If you change one place entry to become identical to another existing place entry, when next you run the Optimize function the identical places are automatically merged to a single entry. Merging people is also as easy, but there are lots of extra things associated with a person, like events and sources, that may themselves have to be merged. Terry Reigel, the author of the TMG Primer, has a number of valuable web pages, especially about merging. His main site is here. I highly recommend reviewing his explanation of TMG's basic concepts here and the issues about merging people here. There are lots of us friendly users who contribute to this Forum, so if you have questions don't hesitate to ask.

I also use such a source for the same reasons as Teresa. I cite this source on whatever tags for which the tombstone information provides clues, especially if the tombstone inscription is extensive or other family members are mentioned or adjacent. Possible tags that might have this source cited: Name, Death, Burial, Birth, Marriage, parent/child relationships, Military service, etc.

Shaun, Not sure how it got set to zero, but that was clearly the problem. Any Less or More column set to zero in the app.ini will not show even if the Column setting is checked Yes. The Yes is telling TMG to try to show the column but to allocate a width of zero for it so nothing shows. None of the More or Less values should ever be zero for this reason. We were confused because you posted non-zero values. Glad to hear you finally got it to work.

Now I am really confused. I copied your settings and pasted them into my app.ini for Version 6 and had no problems. What exact version of Version 6 are you using? The version I left on my computer for testing was Version 6.12. As Virginia suspected, just to be sure that you are really looking at the actual app.ini that is being used by the program. Close the program then go to that file, and using a text editor (e.g. Notepad, but not Word) change one line and save it. Change "Less2=43" to "Less2=143" (but obviously without the quotes), then save and exit the text editor. Now open the program and see if this makes any difference other than to make the Person ID column bigger, but make sure that the Person ID column is bigger. I am clutching at straws here, but we will not abandon you! We will keep trying to come up with suggestions until something works. My next suggestion would be to reinstall your Version 6 program, but lets wait a bit.

If you are looking for either TMG 4 or TMG 6 backup files of the TMG projects, their filename extension is ".sqz". Both TMG 4 and TMG 6 are different programs from TMG 7, but if you have the TMG backup files from either Version 4 or 6, Version 7 will read them and you will recover your projects with no loss of data. Versiion 4 ".sqz" files are "imported", Version 6 ".sqz" files are "restored" but the result is the same. If you are looking for the TMG program filename for Version 6 itself, it is "tmg.exe", and the download was called "tmg6setup.exe". You did not say what Operating System came with your new computer. If it is Vista, then you will want to use Version 7. While possible, due to changes in the operating system there are issues with installing Version 6 on Vista. Let us know the specifics of your system and we can help you get a working system complete with all your old data. You mentioned "I've noticed gedcom's by TMG seem to lose things", but that is not due to TMG. That is due to the GEDCOM standard itself. That standard is so old that many of the features of modern genealogy programs simply cannot be expressed within a GEDCOM file so these features are forced to be lost on export.

Perhaps, but what I intended to imply is that it is possible most users' bibliography output have no entries where there is a leading quote so few have encountered the issue. No, I understood that was what generated the problem. I was trying to suggest that a "workaround" whenever you have no compiler name would be to identify an equivalent to the compiler name and use an alternate bibliography entry form that would be legitimate and acceptable and where the leading name is not left blank. Again, as a "workaround" there are examples in EE where she places the name of the governmental entity that collected the records in the database at the beginning of the bibliography entry where you would normally see the database compiler, and instead identifies the database later in the entry somewhat like a publication of those records. I suggest that using this alternate form of a bibliography entry would be an appropriate workaround precisely in the few cases where you do not have a "compiler" name for the database or collection itself. If the database is clearly cited, but this alternate style of the bibliography entry is used to put that information later in the entry, that avoids the leading quotes. I suggest that this alternate style still provides the reader with clear indication of your source. I also suggest that such a "workaround" alternative style for the entry in those few cases where you do not otherwise have a compiler name is a recognized and valid style for a bibliography entry of a database or collection. I agree, so do I. However, I was simply trying to point out that a bibliography entry with leading quotes is probably very unusual and there is a legitimate "workaround" bibliography style to output that same entry that would avoid the leading quotes. Glad to respond, and hope you recognize that my response is simply one man's opinion, and as a fellow user the best I can hope to suggest are workarounds to any lack of built-in capability.

I was reviewing the Forum today and didn't see where any other user had commented on your questions, so I will give it a try. As I posted on another topic today, GEDCOM is a GEnealogical Data COMmunications standard that is very old and very minimal. It was developed years ago by the LDS church, last revised in 1996, and they have announced that it will not be updated. Most modern genealogy software packages today, such as RootsMagic and TMG, have many features that cannot be expressed using this data exchange standard. There are many features that must be discarded or altered on export since there is no way in GEDCOM to express them. It is unfortunate that GEDCOM is currently the only mechanism I know of to transfer either direction between RootsMagic and TMG, and this leads to your problems. There is no mechanism in GEDCOM to describe tasks, so when RM exported them it appears that they made them events, which TMG imported as event tags. There is no such thing as a Scrapbook in the GEDCOM standard so RM had no way to export those exhibits. As a fellow user I recognize your pain in dealing with different software packages, but in this case I can think of no solution but a lot of manual effort. You will find some users taking the position that it is better to re-enter the data in TMG using TMG's features and styles than to do a direct import, but that is a matter of opinion. You should also explore the various features in the donorware software TMG Utility. It may help in making wholesale changes to your import. I have not encountered the other error messages so cannot comment on them.

Since I noticed today that no other user has ever responded, I thought I would try. I also believe you asked about this sorting on the TMG-L e-mail list back in February 2008 where you mentioned following a GEDCOM file example on page 156 of Mills' Evidence Explained and also got no replies. TMG Help simply says that the Bibliography will be sorted alphabetically and does not address leading punctuation such as quotes. While you may expect it to ignore leading quotes it clearly does not, and makes no claims to do so. Thus whether we may like it or not, it performs as advertised. I am only guessing, but I think the issue may be that having a leading quote in a bibliography entry appears to be a very unexpected and unusual style, and thus not planned for. I did some research in Mills' Evidence Explained [EE] and in the Chicago Manual of Style [CMS]. On page 42 of EE Mills states that: "The Chicago Manual's Humanities Style has been the most effective for history researchers. Evidence Explained is rooted in that style." I was looking for more examples of bibliography entries that began with quotes. I could find no example anywhere in my edition of the CMS of any bibliography entry with leading quotes. The only examples I could find in EE (I may have missed another but don't think so) are her Source List (her more general term for Bibliography) examples of on-line databases and digital collections such as the GEDCOM file example you mentioned. These do begin with the database or collection Title in quotes. However, this seems to be contrary to the CMS guideline 16.139 of: "Titles of collections and descriptive designations such as Diary or Correspondence or Records are usually capitalized in a bibliography listing but not given in quotation marks." In fact, the EE examples that do begin with quotes (such as on page 556 for a Patent Office database, or page 730 for an on-line Georgia state database) appear to contradict some of her own other examples of on-line databases. When there is not a person that is the author or compiler, CMS suggests that either the name of the organization that compiled the collection be used, or the name of the depository housing a collection begin the bibliography entry. Following this name would be the title of the collection. EE also follows this guideline of a name preceding the title in some of her own Source List examples of on-line databases (such as the federal database on page 731). If this CMS name-first guideline were followed, then even EE would not use quotes on the leading element of a bibliography entry. Being only a user like yourself I have no idea if or when the TMG bibliography generator might change to ignore these quotes. Instead I would recommend that you modify your Bibliography templates to avoid having a bibliography entry that begins with quotes. For the EE example on page 156 you could start with the name of the compiler. For the EE example on page 556 or 730 you could start with the governmental entity that collected the records in the database. Making these template changes would seem to let your Bibliography style be consistent with several examples in EE and with all of CMS, while avoiding the sorting issue. Hope this gives you ideas,

If you have multiple projects notice that the Preferences / Current Project Options / Advanced / Exhibits path is specific to that project so you can have the exhibits for each project in different folders.

Helmut, I was reviewing the Forum today and notice that none of us users ever responded. If it is not too late to offer ideas, I will try. In my opinion there are three issues here. First, this "story" is from a source and should be cited as one. I assume you have already made the church register a source and the citation on Johann Niederer's Death tag would indicate the page within the register where this story was found. I would probably not include the entire transcription as part of the narrative for his Death tag, but would create a shorter story based on the source and simply cite the source. Second, you asked how "store" a transcription of this story in TMG. My recommendation would be as a text exhibit attached to the Source itself. When you open the source from within the Master Source List you can simply click on the Exhibit Log camera icon and then enter the text of the transcription in the exhibit. Note that exhibits attached to sources are not included in TMG reports (but links to source exhibits are made in Second Site). But if you only want to "store" the transcription, then this should be sufficient. Third, you asked how to connect this story to all the people mentioned. I agree that a separate tag with all the people linked to that one tag seems best, and of course there would be a citation to the source on this tag as well. That would link everyone to the story with access to the source exhibit transcription via the citation. It could be an Anecdote tag, or even a History tag. The one advantage of a History tag is that it has no Principals so you don't have to choose. Each linked person can have their own unique Witness sentence so each person's narrative can uniquely describe their role in the story. The question is whether you would also want to reprint the entire story transcription in each narrative. If so, you could attach it (again?) as a text exhibit to this tag and then chose to print event exhibits in your report options. Hope this gives you ideas,

It is possible that when the program appears to go non-responsive that there is a window somewhere waiting for you to do something. In TMG under the Window menu there is a menu choice "Center the current window". When the program "goes non-responsive" you might check to see if you can select that menu choice. If so, it may cause the window needing attention to move from off the monitor and appear where you can see it. This may not be your issue, but it is worth a try.

I would echo Terry's concern. GEDCOM is a GEnealogical Data COMmunications standard that is very old and very minimal. It was developed years ago by the LDS church, last revised in 1996, and they have announced that it will not be updated. Most modern genealogy software packages today have many features that cannot be expressed using this data exchange standard. Since TMG is probably the package with the most flexibility and the most features, there are many features (such as embedded citations) that must be discarded on export since there is no way in GEDCOM to express them. In other words, are you absolutely sure you must send your data to someone using GEDCOM? Maybe if you explained your actual goal we might be able to suggest alternatives which would retain more of your TMG data.

As Vera correctly states the lack of a scroll bar at the bottom of the column display area within the Expanded Picklist window only means you have very few columns checked to display and the Expanded Picklist window is large enough to show them all. Hmmm... I am confused. Vera's questions are appropriate, but I assumed that you were in Column mode since that is the only mode where the Options list allows you to check the box to show the persons name. If you are in Column mode one of your buttons on the Expanded Picklist should be "Event List" which, if clicked, would change you to Event mode. You say that "it just drags the current boxes wider". But that does not make sense. I suggested that you "put your cursor at the left of the ID column". Perhaps that is not clear. I mean for you to put the cursor inside the area in the Expanded Picklist window where all the columns are displayed and directly next to but to the left of the Person ID heading. If you are outside the column display area and at the edge of the Expanded Picklist window and drag you will simply resize the entire Expanded Picklist window, don't do that. If the cursor is inside the column display area to the left of the Column ID heading you should then attempt to drag to the right to expose the Person Name column that should be to the left of the Person ID column. Sorry if I was unclear. Could you try that? I feel sure your own suspicions are correct and that the Person Name column "must have been dragged to a smaller width". This is the way to drag it back to a larger width.

Congratulations. This will be a big step for you but well worth it. I remember that going from V4 to V5 was a major change, and V7 has a lot of new and valuable features. As you encounter issues, ask away, as one of us users will be happy to try to help. First, see the Help file under Accents for details of setting both the text and the background to whatever colors you want. Next, Accent colors don't show in the Simple Picklist so I assume you have that setting, which is default. I would guess that the programmers did not show them on this list because that list is [ahem] simple?? The Expanded picklist does use the Accent colors. You can turn that on in Preferences > Program Options > Lists. Hmmm... my copies of the official change logs only go back to 5.01, so I can't look to see if that was an issue from V4 to V5. I seem to recall you may have to recreate them, but I just don't remember. However, there are a lot of new and useful features for reports, so you may wish to explore the Help file on Reports, especially Options, and create new templates using these new features.

It should be to the left of the Person ID column. When you put your cursor at the left of the ID column it should change to a double-headed arrow. When it does, hold down your left mouse button and drag it to the right. The Name column should then show. Alternatively, do you have a scroll bar showing at the bottom of the columns? Perhaps you are scrolled too far to the right to see the Name?

Holly, There are dozens of files associated with a single TMG project. That is why the best way is to never copy/move individual files. Instead, do a backup of the project on one computer selecting all possible options and a restore of that project on the other computer. The only thing this might miss is if you have a whole folder tree of external exhibits. In that case you should use Windows Zip to collect the entire folder tree of these exhibits and unzip on the destination computer. The restore of a project will also be sure to put the files in a folder on the computer where you have user privileges and not put them in a reserved folder location on the computer where they should not go. The latter is what you did that caused your error message. Hope this gives you better ideas on how to move your files from one computer to the other,

Yes, Peter, that is the most important question. What is your reason for citing the source. Is it to record where you found the source, or to suggest to your reader where they may find the source. My taste is the first reason since I have seen many, many of my sources move to different repositories. No matter when I publish anything some of my sources will have moved. For that reason I have given up trying to track where sources move to as I found it nearly impossible to keep up. I simply record where they were when I viewed them and leave it as a problem for the reader to find out where they might be now. But again, that is my taste. A repository memo could say something like: "As of October 31, 2008, records of type A have moved to repository A, and records of type B have moved to repository B." An alternative might be using the Comments field in each individual Source. My taste is to only include the complete Repository information (address, etc.) in the Bibliography template, where I also include the Source Comments element. The individual Source Comments could say something like: "As of October 31, 2008, this source was moved from repository A to repository B." That way you would have different comments to reflect the two different destinations of sources, and the statement would be accurate even if they moved again later.

Glad we could be of help!

Hi Mike, Thanks for your kind words. Glad you feel I have been of help sometiimes. No, I do not have a web site. I only recently retired and have not had the time to devote to genealogy as I would like. However, I have been collecting notes to myself over the years I have been a user of TMG and often look to these for my tips. As a computer professional I have found it vital to document for myself "my way" of customizing any software such as TMG. It helps me be consistent in my data entry and aids in later searches. Further, if I spend some time figuring out how I want to do something in TMG recording that thinking in these notes saves me from having to go through that thought process all over again. At my age I have enough trouble remembering things that I need to make as many notes as I can. I urge everyone who customizes TMG "their way" to make some kind of record of their reasoning. A couple of years from now when the same questions come up again you will thank yourself. The new "reminders" feature can be a great help in that. I have thought of collecting my notes into a book or web page, but they would take quite a bit of work first. And as I am still doing some consulting I don't have as much time as I thought I would in retirement. Of course, I really would rather spend more time on my own ancestral research. Again, thanks for your thoughts,

Hmmm.... having to guess here with incomplete information, but... I am confused by your description of a "PostSealSp" tag. That is not a standard LDS tag in TMG. "SealSpouse" is a standard LDS TMG tag but is defined in the Marriage group. Did you add this custom tag yourself? or was it the result of an import of data from some other database? I would double check that this tag is truly in the Burial group. Could you describe your report Options for your Journal Report, including your settings for surety on the General tab and your settings for Events on the Tags tab? Based on your symptoms, I suspect that this tag is actually in the Death group, and marked primary, and your Options specify to only output primary tags. But that is just a guess. Hope this gives you ideas of where to look,

Absolutely correct, John, and I should not have used that incorrect term in my reply. I have corrected my posting to make that clear to anyone else viewing this topic.

True, but you can minimize the intrusion of the appearance of these 'dummy' people by use of Flags and Name Styles for their sort names, among other things. I have many 'dummy' people in my projects and have found ways that work for me. As for indexes to your main report, you can also use the 'book' feature of TMG reports to create your main report using a flag to limit the people to 'real' people followed immediately with a second report of only your 'dummy' people. Just a few ideas to think about so you don't totally dismiss the concept of 'dummy' people,