wrichards

When trying to created a filter for a for a report and selecting the "Date" field the choice of operators includes "Contains '?' " and "Does Not Contain '?' ". When you select either one you are not given a choice to enter a value. The value is set to ? or I suppose no ?. The same thing happens in the Project Explorer if your select an "Any Event" and a Subfield of "Date". If you try to filter on any other field which allows an operator of Contains or Does Not Contain there is no question mark and you are allowed to enter the value for which you are searching. In short any time you select "Date" in the Field or Subfield the Contains is followed by a question mark and you cannot enter any value. I cannot see any purpose to have a "contains" option and no ability to enter a value so I assume it is a bug. Bill Richards

It just seems strange that most other fields have an operator of "Contains" or "Does Not Contain" and allow you to enter a value. It is only the Date field that has the limitation of "Contains ?" or "Does Not Contain ?". I would think the Date field should have the same operators as other fields. As I mentioned on the TMG mailing list I am looking for all dates that contain "Say" because when I imported my data to TMG years ago all modifiers were changed to "Say" and I was tring to correct those. I did print a list some time ago and thought I was able to do it with an earlier version of TMG. I seem to have lost the list and was tring to recreate it. I was able to do so using TMGU so my problem is solved. There were 54 modifier with "Say", rather than the 1250 I got using "All Modifiers". I appreciate your comments and maybe the developers will read this list and grant our "wish"

That still doesn't explain why the operator "contains" only allows a value of ?. You should be able to select a value for any of the date modifiers such as before, after, say, between, etc. and not be limited to select all modifiers. If you are allowed to enter values, you still have the option to enter ?. If this is not a bug than it is something that should be corrected.

TMG 8.06 seemed to be working to select the BMBD events which you wanted to be included rather than automatically including all BMBD when you selected "blanks for missing data". What was changed however is that previously if "blanks for missing data" was selected the journal report would include blank lines for birth, marriage, death and burial if there were no tags for those events. Now it only provides blanks for tags which exist but are incomplete. For instance if I have a birth date but no location the tag will list the birth date followed by blanks for the location. If I do not have a birth tag at all I no longer get the blank line that says: He was born on __________ at ____________. Is this change intentional or is it a bug. This same situation exists in TMG 8.07 and 8.08. Bill Richards

I have had a chance to play around with the "blanks for missing data" feature in TMG 8.06 and it seems to be working to exclude data which it did not before. What has changed however is that previously if "blanks for missing data" was selected the journal report would include blank lines for birth, marriage, death and burial if there were no tags for those events. Now it only provides blanks for tags which exist but are incomplete. For instance if I have a birth date but no location the tag will list the birth date followed by blanks for the location. If I do not have a birth tag at all I no longer get the blank line that says: He was born on __________ at ____________. Is this change intentional or is it a bug. Bill Richards

Jim, Thank you for looking into this. Just one more request. In your example the blanks are printed in the order of Born, Married, Buried, Died. This is getting closer to the correct order than I have seen but can the blanks be ordered as BMDB. It would be great if this could be done not only when all items blank but keep that order even when some tags have data. Bill

I first posted this problem on 2 Apr 2012 but have never recieved a response so I thought I would try again to see if this can be fixed in ver 8.05. When printing a Journal Report and going to miscellaneous and selecting "Blanks for Missing Data" either the options under "Tags: Abbreviated Events for children" is not working properly or the Help description needs to be changed to reflect the way it works. The Help description says: 2. You can choose which of the four BMDB events are to be included in the abbreviated narrative, or even have none print, leaving just the names. It is not true that you can have none print, leaving just the names in the "Abbreviated Events for Children", when "Blanks for Missing Data" is used. You always get a line with blanks for birth and marriage events even when they are not selected. The death and burial events do not print as the help menu suggests and in fact will not print even when you select them.. There is no way you can get "none" to print. What is even more annoying is that the blank lines print when in fact the data is not blank. I selected "Blanks for missing data" not blanks for birth and marriage tags for which data exists. An example is shown from the Sample data base in which I have selected none. _______________________________________ Children of Frank Alexander and Mary Catherine Keebler were as follows: "Abbreviated Events for Children" 3 ii. Lula Elizabeth Alexander born __ ___ ____ at _______________, _______________, _______________, _______________, _______________, _______________ _______________. Married ____________________, son of ____________________ and ____________________, on __ ___ ____ at _______________, _______________, _______________, _______________, _______________, _______________ _______________. Narrative 3. Lula Elizabeth2 Alexander (Frank1).3,3,3,2 Buried __ ___ ____ at _______________, _______________, _______________, _______________, _______________, _______________ _______________. Her married name was Baldwin. She was born on 13 Mar 1865 at Elizabethton, Carter County, Tennessee (at the time of her birth, Yankee troops occupied Elizabethton. When mother and child were able to travel, father Frank Alexander took his family to Marion, Virginia).3,8 Lula Elizabeth Alexander married Robert Moore Baldwin on 22 Jul 1885 at Union, Smyth County, Virginia. Frank Alexander performed the ceremony. Lula Elizabeth Alexander and Robert Moore Baldwin had six children. Lula Elizabeth Alexander died on 18 Oct 1954 at Richmond, Virginia, at age 89. The ":Blanks for missing Data" works correctly in the person report but not in the "Abbreviated Events for Children". If you do select the birth and marriage to print under "Abbreviated Events for Children" you do get the correct information I might also mention that it would be nice when "Blanks for Missing Data" appear in a persons narrative where I expect them, if the blanks could be in the order of Birth, Marriage, Death and Burial. When all I have is a birth date the order is usually Buried, Married, Died. It takes a lot of work to have to delete all the erroneous blank entries and rearrange the missing data when preparing a report to send to a relative in the hopes of getting some of the blanks filled. Bill Richards

Thank You Jim. The only other response I have had was someone agreeing with the problem on the message board.

My default place style is "U.S. Short Place" When you go to the "Add Person" screen and enter the information about a new person if you select a place that is not the default style TMG gives you a message "This place XXXXX already exists, with a style of "Non U.S. Short Place". Change the place style to "U.S. Short Place"?" "Click "No" to keep the place style already associated with this place. You are then given an option to click Yes, No or Cancel. It does not matter if you select "Yes": or "No". TMG 7 or TMG 8 changes the place style to the default place style. When you add a tag you are given the same choices but TMG follows your selection and does not change the place style when you select "No". Can this error in the program when using the "Add Person" screen be corrected as it is creating a lot of errors in my data and I suspect many other have this problem and just haven't realized it.. Bill Richards

Thank You Jim

When printing a Journal Report and going to miscellaneous and selecting "Blanks for Missing Data" either the options under "Tags: Abbreviated Events for children" is not working properly or the Help description needs to be changed to reflect the way it works. The Help description says: 2. You can choose which of the four BMDB events are to be included in the abbreviated narrative, or even have none print, leaving just the names. It is not true that you can have none print, leaving just the names, when "Blanks for Missing Data" is used. You always get a line with blanks for birth and marriage events when they are not selected. The death and burial events do not print as the help menu suggests. There is no way you can get "none" to print. What is even more annoying is that the blank lines print when in fact the data is not blank. I selected "Blanks for missing data" not blanks for birth and marriage tags for which data exists. The simple solution is to get the birth and marriage tags to not print as the help file says and operate the way the death and burial tags do. I might also mention that it would be nice when "Blanks for Missing Data" appear in a persons narrative where I expect them, if the blanks could be in the order of Birth, Marriage, Death and Burial. When all I have is a birth date the order is usually Buried, Married, Died. It takes a lot of work to have to delete all the erroneous blank entries and rearrange the missing data when preparing a report to send to a relative in the hopes of getting some of the blanks filled. Bill Richards

I do not often run Journal Reports so I do not know how long I have had this problem. I am using TMG 7.04 running on Windows 7, 32 bit home edition. When I tried to run a descendant Jounal report for my grandfather the progress screen came up with the message "Calculating text for 105 people". The progress bar never moved and 0% was displayed. After about 20 minutes I decided nothing was going to happen. When I clicked on the screen I got the message "The Master Genealogist is not responding". I closed the program and tried again. I found out that for some people the Journal Report does work. It does not seem to work for my parents or my paternal grandparents if they are included in the report. The Descendant Indented Narrative Report does not work either for the same persons and the progress screen is only partially displayed. I was able to display the descendant Journal Report for all my parents siblings but not the ancestor Jounal Report. I have spent many hours today trying to see if I could isolate the problem to some specific individuals but could not seem to do so. Since I could not get the Jounal Report to work for my father either ancestor or descendant but could get the decendant Journal report to work for his siblings, I deleted him from the data and reran the siblings ancestor Journal Report. TMG again froze. It would appear to be a data problem because of the nature of the errors but I cannot find anything that seems wrong. I did Reindex, Optimize, and run VFI until there were no errors reported. Does anybody have an ideas what is happening or are there any error reporting logs I can access. Would reloading the program help. Even if I don't run Jounal Report often I do want that capability. The Individual Narrative reports were fine so everything works in Second Site. Thanks for any assistance Bill Richards

Bill, I had same kind of problems earlier. In my case I had some corrupted data in event detail field. Peter (Finland) PS. Used to live in Pacific Palisades at mid 80's. Hopefully it is still as beautifull as it used to be. Lucky you! Sorry, but it was "Citation detail field". Peter Peter, Thanks for your response. I will check my "Citation Details". I know I have some long ones because when I first started I would put the text of an article in the CD. I now just attach it as an exhibit. I moved to the Palisades in 1979 so we must have overlapped a bit. I love looking at the ocean and mountains while working at the computer. Also watching the deer to make sure they don't eat the roses. Bill

I did some more testing on my Journal Reports and found the following today. I had the box "blanks for missing data" checked. I unchecked that box to simplify the report. The reports now seem to work for everybody. I was able to run an ancestry Journal Report on myself for 16 generations and 5244 persons which took about 10-15 minutes to run. I went back and tried it again with the "blanks for missing data" checked for 1 generation. The program displayed "Calculating text for 12 people" and was 12% complete thirty minutes later. When I unchecked the box the display was almost immediate. Why does selecting "blanks for missing data" cause the program to freeze for some people. What could be different about the data that would cause that problem. Bill Richards

Here are some excerpts from the TMG-L Archives which describe the problem. >Michael wrote: > >It appears to happen every time. In the MPL list, I highlight an entry that >needs work and click EVENT. This pulls up the list of Events associated >with that Place. I highlight an Event and click EDIT. That opens the >specific Event Tag. I edit the Event Tag and Close out of it and the Event >list. This puts me back in the MPL list. Back in the MPL list, I get no >response to any attempts to navigate the MPL list. TMG will only let me >close out of the MPL screen. > >FYI, I am using TMG7 with Windows Vista Ultimate. I did not have this >problem in version 6.12 I responded: >Michael, > >I know I have had this problem before perhaps an early version of 6.x. The work around is to click on the EDIT button and then cancel the edit. You can then select >another place without exiting the MPL. Another thing I notice is that after clicking on EVENTS and saving an event tag and returning to the MPL list I get the Vista rotating >circle indicating the program is running. I have to move the circle off the bottom of the screen and back to get the arrow which allows me to proceed. > >Bill Richards A search of the older achives turned up the following for TMG 6.08 >From: "Joanne Skelton" <jskelton@oip.net> >Subject: Master Place List and Events >Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 08:54:03 -0700 > >From the Master Place List: When I want to check where I have used a >certain place, I highlight the place and then click on Events and another >window opens which shows where that place was used. After I close that >events window, I am unable to click on another place to highlight it. I >have to click on some other button, like Edit, close that window, before I >can highlight another place. > >Is that what is supposed to happen? > >Joanne Skelton Hopefully this bug can be put to bed in the next update of TMG. Bill Richards

I was running "Optimize" which was about 50% complete when my computer shut down. When I restarted and attempted to open TMG it started in repair mode and initially was doing a reindex and then gave the message "An error happened when opening data tables" and TMG closed. I reopened TMG and selected the sample project. I then closed the sample project and attempted to open my project. Then I got a message that the project was in use elsewhere. My last backup was done on July 4th so I was wondering if there is anyway to recover my latest files or if I have to restore and redo the last weeks work. Any help is definitely appreciated. Bill Richards

I would like to see TMG add an option when printing Family Group Sheets similar to what Second Site has when selecting an output style. Second Site gives an option to print "raw data" or "use sentence". TMG only prints raw data on the FGS and this is often confusing if you are trying to send the sheets to others who do not realize the information is part of a sentence. I don't know how difficult it would be to add an option to print the complete sentence but it certainly would make the FGS more readable. Bill Richards

My detail field for place of birth is "Langlade County Memorial Hospital". The county field contains "Langlade County" This provided correct output in all the narrative reports that I ran. On the VCF charts however it came out as "Langlade Langlade County Memorial Hospital". After trying many different approaches I finally discovered that it is the word "County" that causes the problem. If it is left out or abbreviated the output on the chart is what is contained in the detail field. If "county" is included in the detail field it seems to act as a variable as well as data and inserts the county name twice. I tried this for several places names and when I inserted "xxx County" in the detail field the xxx was repeated. Leaving the detail field as "Langlade County Memorial Hospital" and deleting the contents of the county field so it was blank the VCF chart prints "Langlade Memorial Hospital". I ran VFI and Optimize several times which did not correct the problem. It is not sporadic and repeats every time. Bill Richards

I am using TMG 6.05. Today when I attached some exhibits to Places the program kept freezing. I found that whenever I open the exhibit log either from the MPL directly or from the Edit Place List I can work within the exhibit log but when I close it the program is frozen. I tried centering the current window in case there was a hidden window but that did not work and actually the window which I am returned to, either the MPL or Edit Place List is highlighted as the current window. The changes I made seem to have been saved. I also tried just opening the Exhibit Log and closing it without making any changes and without any exhibits. The results were the same, the program freezes. Has anybody else experienced this problem. I have added place exhibits before without a problem. The exhibit log for events, citations or sources all seem to work fine. Bill Richards

Thanks Jim. That was a very quick response. Works fine now. Bill Richards

I was wondering if anyone is experiencing a slow response using focus groups similar to what happened with the flags group in v6.02. I am running v6.03 and today I selected my father for the focus group and then selected ancestors for 25 generations. The focus group quickly came back with a list of 1200 names. I then selected all 1200 names and asked for descendants for 20 generations. This report which contained 6706 names took almost 45 minutes to produce. I then selected all 6706 names and asked for ancestors for one generation. The response was very quick but no one was added. I then tried two generations and realized that even though I clicked on the "select all" button and all the names were highlighted the box at the top that says selected names still showed only one. I had to click on the "select all" button again to get the selected names to change to 6706. I gave up on trying to get the results because it took too long. I know I have an old machine. I am running Window XP Pro SP2 on a 650Mhz processor with 384Mb of memory but I have not had a delay like this before. Is this what I should expect from my machine or is it a bug like changing flags. Bill Richards

Jim, I have been very busy today and tomorrow so I haven't had a chance to try your suggestion. It certainly looks like a much better option than what I was doing. I printed your reply and will try it soon. I have many people who would be interested in only the parts of my data which apply to them. It looks like your suggestion would not only do that but allow an easy way to update after making changes and additions to the data. I really appreciate your comments. Thank You. Bill Richards

What I am trying to do is determine all ancestors and related people on my fathers branch of the family and set a flag to use in SS. I asked for my fathers ancestors to obtain all grandparents. I then asked for descendants of the 1200 grandparents found so I would get all aunts, uncles and cousins on that side of the family. I also asked for spouses. Then I wanted to get parents of any unrelated spouses who had been included. Rather than try to figure out who the spouses were I just asked for ancestors of all 6706 persons for one generation. Along the line of what GenerationGoneBy suggested I used the focus group to add one generation but instead of selecting the entire list I limited it to about 300 names. In that case the time to search was reasonable. I realized however that by selecting the first 300 and adding a generation I probably added people whose names came after 300. When I added another generation to names 301 to 600 etc. I could be getting more ancestors than I really wanted. That may not be too bad however because I usually don't have anyone in my data past the parents of unrelated spouses. Now that I am aware that some of these processes will take time I probably will just plan to do them at a time when I can just let the computer run. Thats what night time is about. Thanks to Jim and GenerationGoneBy for your input. Bill Richards

When using the "Report Definition Screen" to create an Ancestor or Descendant Chart the box labeled "Use the current focus person" is checked and cannot be unchecked. When trying to create a Fan Chart or Hourglass Chart the box is unchecked and cannot be checked. All other reports seem to be okay. I am using 6.03. Bill Richards