John Cardinal

John, There is no variable that returns the married name, but you can choose which name is used. In the upper-right corner of the Tag Entry screen there is a pulldown menu that defaults to "primary name". You can change that to one of the other name variations. As far as I know, there's no way to configure TMG such that a particular name tag is the default for a specific tag type.

Daryl, If the sentence and Place style are defined correctly, you shouldn't see a comma followed by a period at the end of the sentence. Are you using a custom place style? Can you give us an example sentence where the problem occurs?

P and PO don't have any meaning in this context because you didn't use those variables. Regarding the pronoun substitution, you got full names even though you used just the given names in the examples, right? When the full name of the subject of the narrative is the first output in a sentence (there are other conditions, too, but let's keep it simple), the name is eligible to be replaced with a subjective pronoun (he, she, they, etc.). That explains your example of "He and Mary ...". Under similar conditions except that the subject is not the first output of the sentence, the name is not eligible to be replaced with a subjective pronoun. Thus "Frank and Mary" rather than "Frank and she ...".

I don't have proof, but my prior experience indicates that Optimize completely recreates the index files but Reindex resets the index entries in the index files. In a few cases, that distinction has been important, as structural errors in the index files that were not part of a specific index entry were not repaired by using Reindex, but were repaired by using Optimize.

Jim has influence over the Help file contents so he can probably update it. If I recall correctly, in previous versions of TMG, flag labels were used as the actual field names where the flag values were stored in the database table. The names were thus restricted to the characters that are valid for VFP fields. That's been changed, but it may be the source of the limitation. In any case, the program issues an error message and so I think it's quite likely that there is (or was) a technical reason for a limitation on the characters in the name. Calling it negligent or bad code is inappropriate.

Maybe list the valid characters rather than the invalid ones?

You're welcome. Remember that you have to do another "Replace" to remove the trailing [:CIT]. Set the options like this: Field: Event Memo Find what: [:CIT] Replace with: Contents must match Find What exactly: False Use Pattern Matching: False Match Case: False Find Whole Word Only: False The "Replace with" value is empty above, but you might want to key a single space.

Kathy, Set the options like this to change "[CIT:]" to " Source: ": Field: Event Memo Find what: [CIT:] Replace with: Source: Contents must match Find What exactly: False Use Pattern Matching: False Match Case: False Find Whole Word Only: False "False" means "unchecked". Note that there is one space before and one space after "Source:" in the "Replace with" value.

Kathy, You can use TMG Utility to change "[CIT:]...[:CIT]" to something else. The Find and Replace feature should do the trick. One way to do it would be to change "[CIT:]" to "Source:" and then follow that by changing "[:CIT]" to an empty string. John

John, I don't know if you can create a list in TMG. Perhaps someone else will answer. TMG Utility has a feature where you can export information about exhibits, including the caption and description and other information. It won't filter the list, so you'll see all of your exhibits, but perhaps that's good enough for your purposes.

Richard, I don't think what you want is possible in TMG v7.04. You could use Second Site for this, however. Name sources are attached to the subject's name, and relationship sources are attached to the parent's name in the "parent section". The Narrative Format does not have a parent section, but all the others do. Many people say that SS is a very good tool for the sort of review that you described.

Peter, "Direct citation link to source would be perfect. Maybe one day....." What do you mean? Adding a [CIT:] / [:CIT] code will add a citation to a source.

Peter, You might try an inline citation ([CIT:] ... [:CIT]) in the Caption field of the exhibit. As I recall, some users discovered that worked in both TMG and SS. John

Terry, The field is called "Event Memo" in the "Field to change" pull-down menu. There is a known issue with the Output Folder field in the Export Images function. The problem only affects some users, and there's no known workaround at this time. Sorry.

Terry, TMG Utility (link below) is a companion program for TMG that includes a Find and Replace feature that you can use to alter memo text. You should be careful when using it, and in particular, you should use the "Log Only" feature when using the Find and Replace option to fine-tune the change before you commit to the changes. Find and Replace supports a wildcard feature called "pattern matching". You'll want to use it so you can ensure you don't remove "a" or "an" when it should remain. if you decide to use TMG Utility, and you need help with the pattern, let me know.

Kenny, Sorry, but there's no easy way to add custom content to the relationship section that SS adds to the person page entry.

Kenny, I am not sure I follow you. Are you saying that TMG and/or SS is showing a relationship that isn't correct? If so, then you may have an indexing issue or a stray tag somewhere. It seems like you are NOT saying there is an error. Instead, you are saying that there are two paths to the ancestor, in one he is a 3rd G and in another he is a 5th G, but you'd prefer that TMG and SS ignore the 3rd G relationship and show the 5th G. In SS, you can't do that: SS shows the closest relationship.

Bill, Does the error message actually say "The Master Genealogist|Pics" or does it say "The Master Genealogist\Pics"? Note the backslash "\" in one case and the vertical bar "|" in the other.

Keith, I know it won't help you, but the program that created the GEDCOM is at fault. I did not verify the rules before typing this message, but I am very confident that the GEDCOM rules say the part-by-part records should provide the full name, and not just isolated parts. Is there any way to adjust the program that created the GEDCOM to make it conform? While the simple example you gave could be parsed by a program that went beyond the GEDCOM specs, importing other examples of the hybrid format (as you called it) would have to deal with ambiguous cases and it's not a good idea.

Mike, I edited the post as you requested. Please check that it meets your approval. In the future, you can edit them yourself, I think... there should be an edit button below posts that you have added.

Janice, You could use the Change Name Parts feature in TMG Utility to change names. You'd have to run the feature many times, once per surname that you wanted to change unless you use wildcards to catch some variations in a single change. If you decide to proceed, I'd suggest that you start by making a subset database. Select a subset that is sufficient to demonstrate the TMG features, but omits a lot of people so you don't have to obfuscate their name and details. Leave living people out just to be safe. You might want to delete some tag types, possibly some sources and citations, etc. If you remove the potentially sensitive data, perhaps you don't have to change the names? If done correctly, making a sample project from your own data is going to be a lot of work.

The correct solution is for TMG to support a French collating sequence. A workaround might be to try another collating sequence and see if it's better. The "General" sequence uses ASCII-Extended, but German doesn't, and German may group accented vowels where you want even if the characters are not truly part of the official German collating sequence because some areas in Germany have a significant French influence.

That format will lead to data loss in TMG v7.04 and previous. TMG converts that format to it's proprietary format which is basically degrees-minutes-seconds, with no fractional seconds, and that format is not as precise as the decimal degrees format you are entering. See an example on the Second Site "Maps" page. My recommendation is to use a tilde in place of a comma to separate the latitude from the longitude. TMG will not recognize that format, and it will eave it as-is, and thus no precision will be lost. Second Site will recognize the tilde-separated format when it builds maps. When it is released, TMG v8 will recognize the tilde-separated format.

As Michael explained, you can change a single tag type to another tag type within the same group via the edit window. TMG Utility will change multiple tags from one type to another. It's typically used to change all "X" tags to "Y" tags. The tag types can be in different groups. You can assign a filter so that only tags from certain people are changed. See the help page for Change Event Type.

The mousewheel works when the control that has the focus supports the mousewheel and has something to scroll. When you open the Master Event List or the Expanded Picklist, the "Search" textbox is the default control (i.e., has the focus), and the mousewheel doesn't have anything to scroll. In order for the mousewheel to scroll the list, the default control would have to be the list, but I think it makes more sense in those dialogs for the Search textbox to be the default. In the Expanded Picklist, pressing the tab key moves the focus to the list, and so you can scroll the list with the mousewheel after you press tab. In the Master Event List, pressing the tab key when the mouse in in the Search textbox moves the focus to the [Principal 1] button and then to the [Principal 2] button before you get to the list. Perhaps those buttons could be moved (physically in the window and/or in the tab order) so that scrolling the list would require less tabbing.