Michael Hannah

Setting the flags does not have to be done "per person", it is much easier than that. First create a custom flag (maybe called INCLUDE) with some default value that is appropriate for most of your people (e.g. 'Y') and at least one other value for the people you want to not include (e.g 'N'). Just creating the flag sets it for everyone in the dataset to the default value all at once. Build a Focus Group of the small group as mentioned by Jim above. With the ability to add descendants to multiple generations and "spouses" in one click this should be very quick. Then run a "List of People" report where the Subject(s) of the report is that Focus Group. Under Options under the Secondary Output tag tick the box to Change Flag and choose the INCLUDE flag to be set to 'N'. You probably also want to tick the box to Suppress output. Running that report will set the flag for all the people in that Focus Group at once. Actually, setting this flag may actually be easier than deleting the people. And your project can stay this way with your flag already set whenever you update your SS site without need to again delete these people. Hope this gives you ideas,

As you noted, one can remove the name of the focus on the Options General tab from the title of the report. When I use the ID report (which is seldom) I often create a group of them at once and change the title to describe the group or purpose for creating the report, and do not include the name of the person in the title. Of course, since the report can be output to a word processor, doing a global "find and delete" for either the Subject line or the Reference field is not terribly difficult.

As Jim says, you cannot do that in your single project. However, if you really, really want to use the List of Events report against just these people for some reason, you could do the following. Use a List of People report filtered on your Focus Group to create a temporary new dataset or project of just these people using the Secondary Output option. Then in that temporary dataset/project you could do the List of Events report you want of all these people. I would make sure to delete that temporary dataset/project when you are done so you don't get confused with it later. This is an abbreviated explanation. If this is not clear, ask. Hope this gives you ideas,

If you are doing GEDCOM compares, these files are just plain text files and various programs exist to compare such files, such as "diff". Glad we could give you ideas, and keep you from looking for something that is not there!

Hallo Hans-Jürgen, I recommend using both the new tag described by Teresa and the Citation Reference field as mentioned by Jim. With the Citation Reference your citations will identify their document number. Even if you do not include it in your Footnote templates for reports, using the Citation Reference will make it possible to list everywhere a particular document is cited. For example, you could run a "List of Citations" report. In the Options choose Columnar format, then choose the Citation Reference as one of the Output Columns and sort by that column. Other output columns could be "Linked Record; Subject 1; First Last" to identify the people who had citations from this document and "Linked Record; Tag Type" to identify what tag had that citation. Hope this gives you ideas. And don't be concerned about being 65, many of us TMG users are that age or older and probably think slower than you!

I agree with Terry that this is an extremely difficult problem, and basically you can't get there from here. However, I am one who likes to "think outside the box" and would offer the following as a possible aid in this process. If you are using Windows and have the Office products, then you might make use of the feature in MS Word that identifies differences in documents. Perhaps you might do the following: Recognizing that an export will lose a lot of data, first export and then import the export into a new project. Next run an MS Word report, perhaps the Individual Narrative, on all people using all tags, and including both excluded and sensitive data. Now you modify your exported data in the other program. Then you import that modified data into TMG as a new project. Run the exact same MS Word report as before. Use the MS Word feature to compare the two documents, and then do the copy/paste that Terry suggests to enter the new/changed data into TMG. As for taking your data to the library, you might look at the companion products for TMG (GedStar or Pocket Genealogist) that fit the actual TMG databases onto portable devices. But even when I had my full TMG data on my Palm I found that I preferred to make separate notes of the source information that I found and do the actual modification of TMG back in my office. Now I have my highly portable OQO with the full TMG with me at the library and I still often find it better to make separate full source notes and do the actual TMG data entry back home. Just my preferred way to do the work. Hope this gives you ideas,

My customized sentences for the Death tag type are very similar, but you may want to customize them with more than just the cause of death: Male: "[P] died " Female: "[P] died " I have [M1] provide the details or cause of the death in all the sentences, with [M2] an optional comment that only appears in the Principal's sentence and [M3] an optional trailing comment that I include in both the Principal and Witness sentences. I attach the spouse with the Role of "widow(er)" and that Role's Witness sentence also includes the Principal's memo part that identifies the cause of death like: Male: "[W] became a widower when his wife [PF] died." Female: "[W] became a widow when her husband [PF] died." For example, the Principal memo might be: of a brain tumor||along with four surviving sons and eight grandchildren. The final months of his life were very difficult for him and his family||The local branch of the VFW gave a solemn presentation at the funeral. The spouse Witness memo might be: She lost fifty pounds during his final months over the strain of nursing and finally losing him. For him I would get as output: He died of a brain tumor on 22 Mar 1999 at Big Community Hospital, Anytown, Anystate at age 73 leaving his wife Sarah a widow along with four surviving sons and eight grandchildren. The final months of his life were very difficult for him and his family. The local branch of the VFW gave a solemn presentation at the funeral. For her I would get as output: She became a widow when her husband John died of a brain tumor on 22 Mar 1999. She lost fifty pounds during his final months over the strain of nursing and finally losing him. The local branch of the VFW gave a solemn presentation at the funeral. Hope this gives you ideas,

Ahhh.... I see! The problem occurs in using them in Source Element fields, as opposed to in memo or sentence fields. Of course [html:][:HTML] codes are not defined as available/legal for Source Element fields, nor are [WEB:][{:WEB] codes. That would explain it. I had missed that subtlety.

"Clutching at straws" here, but... since it only occurs on one project what are the exact names of the projects? By chance does the one that has problems have special characters in the project name?

Do quotes in the HREF value also interfere with the processing of the HTML codes, i.e. would HTML codes work where WEB codes don't?

Not sure if this is related, but it is possible you are getting this error because TMG must "restart" after doing a backup. In a previous forum post the String too long error was related to startup. If you have turned off the "Welcome window", then this may also be your problem. You might try turning it back on in Preferences. If that doesn't work or doesn't apply, repost and maybe some other one of us users will have another idea.

While you are running tests, you might also check whether using the codes instead of the [WEB] codes works better. Since TMG must parse and process the [WEB] codes, but completely leaves the [html] code alone, [WEB] might be the source of the issues you are seeing.

As stated in the TMG Help files [WEB:]www.whollygenes.com;Wholly Genes[:WEB] is equivalent to: [html:]Wholly Genes[:HTML] I have found that if I am doing anything unusual it is better to actually use the [html:][:HTML] pair and code exactly what I want. While this does not address how to use the WEB construct and include attributes, or whether there is an error in the processing of WEB with quotes, it is a simple workaround. In your case instead of using [WEB] you could directly use in TMG:[html:]California[:HTML] (added comment after seeing John's reply) As for this particular HTML attribute, it is just my opinion but I completely agree with John. Having worked with HTML for well more than a decade (yep, since its very beginning), I strongly recommend using the simplest HTML code possible in TMG data. Relying on some special attribute is very risky as I have seen all too many such attributes deprecated and dropped as HTML changes over time. I would find this especially an issue for user-entered TMG data as one would like to believe that your genealogy data will exist far longer than particular HTML attributes are likely to exist. Let updated releases of programs like John's wonderful SecondSite change and modify the HTML codes they automatically generate as the HTML specifications change. Don't hard-code specific HTML attributes in your own TMG data.

Bob, I think that any of us users that would want to offer suggestions will need more information. Are you using the latest TMG version 7.03? How are you generating this report? Is it to the screen, or to a word processor? and if the latter what version? Further, have you viewed the event tags for these citations in TMG and verified that they are linked to the correct citations? I tried to reproduce your symptoms and was unable to do so with my database.

The first obvious question is have you run the maintenance routines? VFI, then OPTIMIZE as a pair until VFI reports no errors?

Glad to hear that helped. Since you say you are new to TMG, don't hesitate to ask further questions on this forum. There are lots of users with clever ideas eager to help.

I haven't tried this, but the following might work. Try a "List of People" report using a filter mentioning all valid values of the LIVING flag and then use the Secondary Output to set it to a valid value for everyone that does not match. For example try a filter of: LIVING does not equal Y AND LIVING does not equal N AND LIVING does not equal ? END This should identify all people with a blank LIVING flag. Then in the Secondary Output I would set the LIVING flag for all these people to '?'. Finally, I would use the TMG Utility to change all appropriate people that now have a '?' to 'N'. Hope this gives you ideas,

Hiya Michael and thank you for your patience I do understand the concepts of sources, citations and events etc ... just not yet sure how TMG handles them ... The "Source Type" birth certificate has fields for: title, name of person, event date, registration date, registration district and "Rd Ref" but nothing for say Mother or Father. I can add other things like "Informant" or "Second Person" and I can even create something called "Mother" or "Father" (based on the "Second Person") but I can't add both since there isn't a "Third Person" Could you explain how I can set these up please? Many thanks You may understand the concepts of these terms, but my point is that TMG handles these terms in specific ways, and Terry's tutorials can help you understand how. For example, there are a limited number of TMG Source Elements that can be defined for a TMG Source. I suggest you review this web page from Terry's Tips about Source Elements describing the limitations and how to customize both the elements and have your field names automatically print in the Footnotes, etc.

The "Source Type" will have fields that identify the source. If you choose to have a separate source for each birth certificate, then you could have Source Elements for each of these fields. In addition, there is a TMG feature called "Reminders" that can aid in reminding you how to enter data in Sources and Citations. Check the TMG Help file on that topic. Hope this gives you ideas,

TMG can easily record all your information and produce the output you desire, you just have to know where it expects you to put certain data. It sounds like you have some basic misunderstandings of the various elements of TMG and what they are designed to do. "Tags" are to record information about events in a manner that will print appropriately in various reports. "Sources" refer to things like documents, books, and records where you obtained the information about the event. A "Citation Detail" (i.e. "CD") records where in the source you found the information and what you found there so this information will print in footnotes. These are the terms you have been using so far, but of course there are others. I highly recommend you review the web page written by the author of the TMG Primer that describes TMG Basic Concepts to get a beginning understanding of the parts of TMG and their intended purpose. It will save you from trying to put data where it is not intended, and trying to put a "square peg in a round hole". Hope this helps,

Sorry, you can't accent "tags" (and Marriage is an event tag) you can only accent "people" as described in the references mentioned above. Thus in the Details view the "spouse" in the Marriage tag would show the accent color defined for that person.

From my testing my notes about the age variables are as follows. The [A] variable produces output in years only when both the primary tag in the Birth group and the tag that contains the [A] variable contain the full (day, month, year) dates, and the age is over one year. (If either date has an appended question mark, then the age will have an appended question mark.) [A] returns no value when the age can not be precisely calculated (e.g. incomplete dates that have only the year). If the [A] is bound by conditional brackets “” then the sentence variable is ignored for incomplete dates or an age less than one year and no age is output. An unconditional use of the variable will return “at an unknown age” for incomplete dates. The [AE] variable will produce an exact age (years, months, and days) if both dates are complete. It will still produce output even if one or both of the dates is approximate, but it will only output years. The TMG documentation calls [AE] an “exact” age variable, I choose to call it an “exact or estimated” age variable. There is currently no variable to always output just years regardless of the completeness of the dates. Hope this helps to understand these age variables,

Your wish has been granted. Now in Version 7 TMG can do this. The trick in the List of Events report is using the new Output Column options for names that have the term "(Selected)". As you probably know, for any TMG event tag you can "select" which of the many name variations you have defined for that person that is the name to be used for this event. The "(Selected)" options refer to that name, not the Primary name of that person. So if you created a Name-Marr name variation and "selected" that name variation to be used for her burial tag, I think this will give what you want. Hope this gives you ideas, and a reason to upgrade to Version 7,

You are most welcome Mike, glad to help.

Hi Neil, As I am adopted and have a number of adoptions in my ancestors I have thought about this a lot. This whole topic can get quite complex depending upon what all you want to record and how you want it to output. You might like to review the multiple adoption tags and their sentences that I have posted in the Sentences Forum. This may be more complex than you want to consider at this time, but you might extract some ideas that will work for your situation. Hope this gives you ideas,