Michael Hannah

I would also add a new person of unknown sex as the grandchild's parent with some appropriate name. Alternatively you could arbitrarily pick what you believe to be the best candidate parent but add an explanatory memo. I have added a set of custom relationship tags with the suffix "-Can" to indicate more clearly to myself in detail view that a relationship is only a candidate for the "correct/true" relationship and to remind me to make use of the memo. Since relationship tags have no sentences, a variety of custom tag types have been proposed for the “Other” group to produce sentences to narrate various relationship complications. You may simply want to create a custom tag, possibly named "UnknownParent", with the grandchild as the Principal and the various possible parents as Witnesses each with their own sentence and memo recording your reasoning of why or why not this could be the parent. In my opinion the primary factors to consider are: 1) be sure to record what you know and conclude, and 2) record it in whatever way will cause the reports that you use to say what you want the way that you want. It really is up to you. Hope this gives you ideas,

Hi Mike, First, I would like to encourage you to forget your preconceptions about "Principals" and "Witnesses" and Roles. I urge you to start thinking of them as simply different TMG ways to link people to events, each with slightly different advantages and disadvantages. Principal does not have to mean participant, and Witness does not have to mean non-participant. I have a number of custom tags where all the "participants" are linked using the TMG mechanism of Witness with roles that identify the manner in which they actively participated in the event. With appropriate sentences and report options no one will be able to tell which TMG method you used to link the people to the event. Only you will ever know. Second, your proposal (as I understand you) will not work. For P1 and P2 either both must be left as Principals or both must have roles. TMG will not permit P1 to be a Principal and P2 to be a role. It is either both have roles or neither. To leave P1 as a Principal, the other person must be linked as a Witness for them to have a role. It may work best for you, but I would not hard code the names. There may be only three today, but tomorrow? For your purposes I would define my custom tag type to use two roles. I would then move the two roles up in the list of roles above the terms Witness and Principal to be first and second so a new tag of this type will default to these roles for the Principals. That should be enough of a memory jog to use these roles when you add a new tag of this type. Hope this gives you ideas,

There are probably many different ways to accomplish what you seem to want, and there might be simpler ways to do this, but the following works for me. This involves merging projects and datasets, and I would highly recommend reviewing Terry's Tips on merging. In the project that contains your primary dataset, use the Dataset Manager to add a new blank dataset based on your primary dataset. Be sure to choose the options to copy all attributes of your primary dataset. Now use TMG to copy the entire project into a new project. In that new project delete all datasets except the new empty one, and renumber that empty dataset to ‘1’. In your primary project you can now delete this empty dataset. This project with the empty dataset will have all your custom tags available for use ready to enter data. If you are going to import data from somewhere else, just import it into this new project. If you already have created a project with data, merge that project into the new project with the empty dataset, then merge the dataset with data into the empty dataset. The direction of merging is very important. Since you have custom tags, you should understand what happens to them when you merge datasets. (See Terry's Tips mentioned above.) If the receiving dataset has a tag type of the same name, the customization to that tag type in the sending dataset is lost. Where the same tag types exist in both datasets but their definitions are different, such tags will have to be individually resolved. (This might be a motivation to only customize new tag types with new names and not touch standard tag types. For example, don't customize the Census tag type, create a new MyCensus tag type. If you need to merge from a dataset that has customized standard tag types, you could use the TMG Master Tag Type List to first copy all potentially conflicting tag types used in the sending dataset to new unique tag type names and then use something like the TMG Utility to change all tags of the conflicting tag types to these new unique types prior to the merge.) TMG will copy any custom tag types from the sending dataset when there is no tag type of the same name in the receiving dataset. Separate local customization of individual tags will be retained. Hope this gives you ideas on how to deal with custom tags,

Virginia, How very strange. As I said earlier, I have not (yet) found a way to produce the box by simply using the Enter key on the keyboard while entering data in the Citation Detail field. I wonder if it may be some Windows setting? I will have to experiment.

A single TMG project consists of a large number of interdependent separate files. If you attempted to rename only a few of the files in Windows outside of TMG you can cause TMG to become terribly confused. If you wish to rename a project always do it inside of TMG so it will rename all of the necessary files that are a part of that project. If you know what two files they are, I would be tempted to rename them back to what they were and try from there.

Hi Gene, Sorry to hear you are having such problems. I am a long time user of TMG and have nothing to do with the program, but wish to assure you that such problems are rare. I have been a computer programmer for many years and know that few significant software programs are bug free. Why else would software packages build in the feature of periodic upates. However, in my experience TMG is much better than most for many reasons. First, the number of bugs have been extremely small because there are a large group of users that volunteer to test new versions before they are released. Second, the WhollyGenes developers are extremely responsive to problems when they can be identified and reproduced and are prompt in producing updates to fix problems. And they are absolutely fixated on making sure that the software never ever damages your data. Based on what Jim and Virginia are saying I suspect that your bug only occurs in Beginner mode. Since I would guess that over 90 percent of users quickly switch to advanced mode for the added features, this may be why more users are not seeing this problem. If you are serious about detailed collection and documentation of your genealogy, I think you will find TMG has the most features and is the most flexible and configurable of similar products on the market. The TMG user forum is constantly filled with questions from users that are glad they switched to TMG from other packages because they want its added capabilities. Please do not be discouraged by this one rare bug. And consider the prompt support that has been available to help. The users of TMG are great and extremely helpful. Just one user's opinion,

Hi Terry, The point of having both the custom BurialAsDeath in the Death group (with a possibly excluded sentence) and the standard Burial tag in the Burial group is for those few reports or charts that only output the Primary tag from each group. If you only have the custom tag you will get a death but no burial. I'm with you and only use the custom tag, but some users who prefer these reports/charts may find the lack of a burial entry when they do have burial data an issue. To overcome that for these reports/charts you need a tag in both groups.

Hi Patrick, I do exactly what Terry suggests, and recommend it, but would point out some minor disadvantages this causes. I choose to have a custom "BurialAsDeath" tag in the Death group to imply the death of the single principal if a Death tag does not exist. In my case I choose not to ever use the standard Burial tag, I only use my custom tag for all burial data. One disadvantage to only using my "BurialAsDeath" tag in the Death group is that the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-U) cannot be used to add this custom BurialAsDeath tag type, the shortcut will still try to add the original Burial tag type in the Burial group even if it is inactivated. Another disadvantage, which exists whenever you do not have a tag in the Burial group, is that some reports and charts (e.g. the box chart) only print the primary event from a select set of tag groups, so you would not have a tag in the separate Burial group, and only get one tag from the Death group. This is one reason why I only use my custom tag. That way I always get a Death entry but never get a Burial entry for anyone in these reports, rather than sometimes have only the death when I really have burial data but sometimes get both. Less confusing for me. The primary advantage to me for this custom tag is that you do get a death date in the absence of a death tag, which seems to be what you want. Maybe the best approach is to use a custom Death tag (possibly with an excluded sentence) in addition to the Burial tag for only those people without death data, and replace it with a "real" Death tag if you discover death data. That is probably what Terry was implying. Hope this helps rather than make things more confusing,

Hi Patrick, What Paul says is exactly correct to simply change the primary name. However, if you had some source citation for the original name, you may wish to retain that in your data. In that case I would add the new name as a Name-Var tag with its citation, and then click on the '*' (asterisk) button to make that name Primary, leaving the original name as a Name-Var. I would then adjust the old name tag's sentence to either read appropriately or not print.

How very strange, Paul, I cannot find a way to replicate the behavior you are seeing. Maybe it has to do with the font you are using? What font do you have set in Preferences > Program Options under Lists and Project Explorer? Do you have Windows set to use some unusual font? I can't think of anything else to explore.

You might also consider Johm Cardinal's TMG Utility program to aid in this effort. You could use either the "Make Source Page" feature or the "Export Data - Sources" feature. Both can create an HTML file to review all your sources from your dataset for cleanup. Not sure what these will do with exhibits as I have not used these features myself, but might be worth testing. Hope this gives you ideas,

Since you are considering adding custom Place Name tags to sort relative to the "real" event tags, you will be using special Sort Dates for multiple tags all associated with the same event date. You might want to save this list as a memory aid for how TMG date modifiers cause dates to sort. For example, all of the following Sort Dates would put a set of tags associated with an event on 21 July between any similarly constructed set of 20 July and 22 July Sort Date tags. I have adopted this scheme because I like to have the "actual" date (e.g. 21 July 2006) remain as part of the specially constructed Sort Date. before 21 Jul 2006 before 21 Jul 2006? say 21 Jul 2006 say 21 Jul 2006? circa 21 Jul 2006 circa 21 Jul 2006? 21 Jul 2006 21 Jul 2006? after 21 Jul 2006 after 21 Jul 2006? 21 Jul 2006-22 Jul 2006 21 Jul 2006-22 Jul 2006? 21 Jul 2006-23 Jul 2006 --- etc. 21 Jul 2006 or 22 Jul 2006 21 Jul 2006 or 22 Jul 2006? 21 Jul 2006 or 23 Jul 2006 --- etc. 21 Jul 2006 to 22 Jul 2006 21 Jul 2006 to 22 Jul 2006? 21 Jul 2006 to 23 Jul 2006 --- etc. Notice that with the "etc." forms, you can have an unlimited number of events on a given date sorting in the order that you desire. Hope this helps with your Sort Dates,

I agree, Robin, and would be a big aid in research to be reminded which place names are really the same location. No matter how great we think TMG already is (and I do) we can always come up with ideas to make it even better.

Hi John, Sounds like you have come up with yet another way, and one that will work for you. I think I may have been the one who suggested the Place non-persons. They work for me because I don't have that many, only for a few really confusing places that changed their names (and what county or state the were in) a lot. Probably too burdensome for all places. However, for a few of these Place non-persons I have defined Name-Var tags for them, and use the Name variables for this "Witness" instead of the Location variables. It keeps all the names for this one place in one spot in the database, and I can put a date range on the Name-Var tag. The down side comes with the place name winding up in a Name index rather than a Place index, forcing work-arounds. I think I like your solution for multiple names better and may incorporate it into my process. Your separate place tag idea could also optionally print the Location information at the end of the "normal" tag sentence thanks to the new V7 sentence concatenation variables which did not exist when I was designing my system. Being separate custom tags you can select whether or not they print. Sounds really promising. I will have to think about it some more. I can't think of anything else you can do. That is why I use the non-person approach. Any new information or changes I make automatically link to all usages. But it also requires a manual process prone to inconsistencies. You may want to create the non-persons just as the spot to record the information about the various names for the place over time and in all the languages, but not actually link them to "real" people tags. It might help with your consistency. A List of Places report also might be helpful to periodically check your consistency. Thanks for sharing your ideas, great food for thought,

I agree that dealing with multiple datasets involves speciial issues and difficulties. Perhaps I might suggest some ideas that may help? Would it help to instead delete the merged dataset at this point? See below about creating a project from one dataset. Then backup that project. I gather the ability to cite a single source to all people in a dataset before the merge is insufficient for your needs. I have also used the Import options to preset each person's Ref number, but agree this is often not enough. Since I was a programmer I can still write a simple Perl script to preprocess the Gedcom to insert identifying records, but that isn't available to everyone. Inquiring minds would like to know how you did this? My approach might be to run a List of People report with output of REFERENCE and ID number, and post process with Search/Replace to format a file as needed by the TMG Utility to add tags. Have you looked at the List of Persons report Secondary Output option to create a separate project from the people in one dataset? I would think that project would be only one dataset and help in this merging? Adds a step but would seem to work? Hope this gives you ideas. You certainly have an ambitious task in front of you!

Yes, John, I think you may be right. For my purposes, I am recording history, so always use the place name as recorded in the sources I am citing. If I choose to link the multiple names for the same location I use other tools, but retain multiple places in the Master Place List. I searched the Forums and you might want to look at these earlier discussions: if a place name is changed and changes in place names. Hope this gives you ideas,

You are most welcome. Happy to help.

As I said, you will find lots of different ways to do this, each to suit one's own needs. Teresa"s approach works great for the output, but my elderly brain would come back later and wonder if I just forgot the Marriage tag. Thus I like to record something for myself (and possibly others) of what I know about the relationship, even if just a Note tag that I exclude from printing, especially if I actually know that they were not married. But that is just what works for me.

This issue often arises and the suggestions vary considerably depending on the sensitivity and nature of the relationship and on your purpose for gathering and reporting family data. Are you reporting "legally recognized famlies", "family history" or "genetics"? What makes this situation difficult to record is that the answer is usually "yes"! I suggest you review this earlier post on the TMG 6 Forum for suggestions made previously on this topic. If you still have questions, please ask. Hope this gives you ideas,

You are most welcome. Glad I could help.

Extremely valid comment from Terry! My way would be a variation on the above. When linking her to the Census tag I would include a note in her Witness memo about my uncertainty of the relationship. However, I have also defined a set of custom Relationship tags for "Candidate" relationships and would link her as a candidate mother using that tag to my best "guess" of her child, citing the Census as a source. While custom Relationship tags have no sentences, they do have memos, which I use for these cases to record why I made this guess. And the tag name reminds me on both Parent and Child screens that this is only a guess. There is nothing wrong with making "guesses", you have to in genealogy. Just fully document what you are doing so that both you and anyone viewing your output will know that you guessed. Hope this gives you ideas,

That's true. The LOR only prints Repository data. For me the memo simply prints, no option. Didn't it for you?[edited by Michael] Golly, don't know what I was looking at but it does not print the memo. My assumption for this "work-around" was to print two reports: your current List of Tasks, plus this filtered LOR. The Task report shows the Repository ID number to which it is linked for cross-reference to the memo in the LOR report. This also avoids duplicating the Repository memo for every task to which it is linked. This may be either good or bad depending on the quantity of different Repositories you have relative to the number of tasks. At least that was my idea?

Hi Kenny, I am not the best at filters but maybe a List of Events report with a filter like: Tag Type Abbreviation begins with Cens AND Any Witness Role Equals WIFE AND Memo Does not contain BLARG END If that doesn't do it, then maybe setting a temporary flag with Secondary Output based on the the first two conditions will limit you to only those people first, then filter for the other condition along with the flag setting? Hope this gives you ideas,

Hi Teresa, I haven't seen any other comments so thought I would. I understand your desire for this enhancement, especially due to the way you choose to use films as TMG Repositories. I agree it would be nice as an optional output field. However, I think those of us that typically use locations (like Libraries) as TMG Repositories don't notice this since we probably have so few repositories. I know it is not the same, but since the List of Repositories report does print the Repository memo, maybe that report filtered for "Number of Incomplete Tasks greater than zero" would be useful? My pet peeves about reports focus on the small amount of data that you can input into TMG but has no report that will output that data. We each have different priorities on our wishlists for enhancements.

Hi Paul, I haven't seen a reply to your question. For me, I never see the 'boxes' unless I have done a cut-and-paste from a word processor and have copied non-printable characters. Line-feeds or other formatting codes are often added to carriage returns in word processors. Do you see a box when you are in the CD and actually press a CR key? I suspect these non-printables were always there and it is good that TMG is letting you know. You usually want to delete them. When pasting into these fields I always try to remember to Right click and choose Paste Unformatted Text. Hope this gives you ideas,