Alison

Thanks for the suggestions, unfortunately I cannot switch people at all without the open dialog box appearing. I've run optimize several times today alone, and VFI hasn't reported any errors for at least the last 10 times it's been run. Edit: I just opened the sample project and then opened my own project and the problem seems to have disappeared. Hope this helps anyone else experiencing this problem.

I just started having this problem recently as well (after version 7 working normally for quite some time). I have found if you run VFI the problem goes away until you close your project even though VFI reports no errors. Now if I could only make it disappear permanently....

I haven't tried this myself but it looks like TMG Utilities find and replace feature might work. The catch her is that it will find every even with just say 1981 as a sort date and depending on how TMG records date with years only it may be very difficult to find. In my opinion it looks easier to adjust them by hand, at least that's what I tell myself as I've been going back and adding the day into many UK census tags myself.

I asked about this a while back since it seemed like a logical way to handle exhibits, especially since it doesn't need to change how users attach exhibits. I would love it to be based of where you opened the project from but I would even settle for it being based off of the default path set in the preferences. I don't think this would change anything for the average user but it would allow a "quick fix" for people with changing drive letters.

Just to add my support for this idea. I have me project files on me desktop but can access them on my laptop though the network. This way I'm only ever modifying one location and I don't have to worry about where I worked last. As an extra security measure I keep my backups on both computers so even if one of them croaks I have a back-up on the other.

I knew there had to be an easier way.

I did something similar by creating a new role like your parent and then using TMG Utility to change the roles from Mother to Parent and then from Father to parent. Alison

I've made several of these but only with substantial editing in Visual Chartform (VCF), the rough steps are outlined below, if you need more clarification let me know. 1) create multiple descendent box charts, one for each family at the end of the line. I usually create one for each male end of line but there are a few cases where I know mothers and not fathers. 2) In VCF create a new blank chart and make the diagram size much larger than you need. I tend to go for at least 100x100 but on large families have started even bigger. 3) Now the real fun starts. Use the charts created in step one to copy and past into your new chart. I usually copy the fist one completely and then only copy "new" additions from the others. This will involve a good deal of puzzling to make it match especially if you want to avoid duplicate people. 4) Once you have everyone in the cart you'll need to move it to the upper left of the diagram, remove the excess space, align all the boxes, etc. As you can probably tell even after making about 10 of these it still takes me several hours for a basic chart and several days for a larger more detailed chart. However, I've found them very useful to show relatives more interesting family connections, and recent generations. If anyone knows of a shorter method I would love to hear. Alison

I have no idea what the prefered method is but personally I make neither of them primary until I have more information. This serves as a reminder that there is work to be done on this line but still shows the sources other researches have worked with. Of coarse I tend to error on the side of caution and rarely add anyone to the tree that I can't cite a source I've personally seen or an interview I've conducted so I may take the overly cautios route when it comes to others work. Alison

Tiffs are also good for official records (ie. non photos), are about the same size as PDF's, attach as an image, display in most web browsers, and don't loose information lake jpegs. For photo's jpegs are still my choice for attaching but I usually keep a bitmap in a separate file in case I need an original scan again sometime. Alison

I think I have a tendency to over record census data in the citations but I tend to use the city field for everything that doesn't fit uniquely into an other field. For example I might have "Jefferson Twp., Stone Creek Post Office, North of Phillipsburg" or "Streator, ward 4, Precinct A" as cities. It does make my citations longer but it also makes locating "non-towns" or old street addresses easier.

For what it's worth I've been lumping evrything I can for this reason but exhibits can be very frustrating to work with this way. My new method, if only I can get evrything moved over, is to lump census records and attach exhibits to the citation detail but make certificate, wills, deeds, etc. seperate entries and attaching the scan to the source entry. It may make a longer bibliography but it will also make it esier to quickly see which original records I have and where I've had to substitute or need to do more research. Just my two cents.

I did something similar to post my data on Rootsweb and plan to use it once I get Second site as well. The nice thing is you can include whatever information you want in the memo. In a few cases I also put things like, "two sons and a daughter who married into the Smith family" I'm sure I'll tweak my sentence some more myself, but so far I'm pleased with the method. Alison

This is really helpful for tracking changing place names. The warning is often enough for me to catch my mistakes. I don't think it will help here but TMG Utility does have some features relating to places.

It is an option for output in the silver edition for list of reports, though I haven't tried it yet to double check it works, but you will at least see it.

On somewhat of a tangent I think this would be a very nice feature to have in TMG, so I though I would at my "me too". Personally, I think the bigger problem with unique citations is that they will not work with spilt cd's. I'm sure this is much more difficult to program, and can be done by the user after the fact in a word processor, but it would be nice if I didn't have to. (What can I say I'm a lumper )

The easiest way I know of is to make charts and reports for them. You can save these as files (rtf, word, pdf, etc.) that they can open on their computer without any genealogy program. I've done this for a few of my relatives already and it works great.

I know that you can either completely exclude the living from export, or include just their names and no details but is there a way to include no details and replace the first name with "Living" or something similer? I know some web sites claim to do this automatically but there are short comings with these, and I already have my living flags set properly in TMG. (I'm maily looking to post on world connect if it helps)

That's exactly what I was thinking! I think I've been reading your site so much I'm starting to think like you PS. I know it's off topic, but thank you for making and maintaining your wonderful help site, it has really helped me to understand much of how TMG works.

Truth is I agree with you but since two of my brick walls are the second deceased generation, as embarrassing as it is to admit that, it might prove useful to other researchers to see the number of children, and the surname they married. As I post this I realize I could accomplish the same thing with a note tag.... showing the number of children and what families are connected there which I don't include in reports but do include in the export...... hmmm...

I love your extracts, are creating those as a tale in word or some other method? It seems really effective for the census records especially since something tells me ancestry doesn't want us posting their images. Also, I'm just starting to attach exhibits and I'm trying to figure out wether to attach them to the event or the citation. I've been looking at output to try and decide so can you tell me, are those in fact attached to the citations?

If people want to use these features I have no problem with it, but personally I thought TMG would act like any other image program where changes are lost unless you save them. It bothers me that the program would be modifying my external images in anyway without asking. If the controls stay should you ar leat be prompted to save the changes? If you say no, or make no changes shouldn't the program leave the original untouched? To me at least this seems like the most logical assumption and at least at first glance I don't see how any current users would loose anything but those commenting on this thread would also get what they want, an image viewer and no more.

The real difference is in the way that the images are compressed, and what information the computer decides to discard in the process. I don't remember all the details but in a rough outline, jpgs are smaller because you loose more information. When your talking about a picture this is usually information that the eye will happily assume is there anyway. The real difference is noticable when looking at handwriting or line drawings. The information the png compression discards is designed to not loose that single tiny little dot that might mark the difference between an i and a poorly written e. Similarly, TIFF files also work fairly well for B&W text, so you might try those as well, and to reduce your file size on any of these scans you can always set the scanner software to B&W if it is just text that you are scanning, that usually drops the size quite a bit. In general, file sizes are a little bit tricky, I have a copy of photoshop and find if I scan into photoshop and then save the scan the size is smaller then if I just scan directly though windows, not to mention the image control you get with an image program. This may not be a viable option for the number of scans you plan to make, but I would suggest trying any imagining software you have already to see if that drops the size of the file.

I agree, with your point but feel I should clarify that using a mapped network drive does only use one copy of the project when you are on the same network. Ie, my system has the project on my desktop only but I can edit it on my laptop, and TMG automatically locks the record that in open on one, should I accidentally have the same project open on both. That part is in the users guide, and why I have chosen to use this system. However, after some more testing and playing with offline files, it will not allow you to travel with the laptop since dbf files cannot be made available offline, a fact widows failed to note the first time. It does however, still work for your exhibits, and a backup restore of the project before and after travel would work just fine.

I haven't fully tested it for travel yet as most of my entry is still playing catch-up and clean-up but if you have a network at home you can also use drive mapping, and offline files. The offline files should allow you to travel with the laptop and will sync automatically next time it finds your desktop. If you use both at home with external exhibits this has the advantage of being able to add them from both computers but storing them only one one.