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BruceB

Prune or Trim family tree

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Hi:

I have been using TMG for a few years on an occasional basis. Probably like a number of people.

A problem I now have is that there are now a number of families from my wife's side and my side all lumped into the same file.

It is beginning to get a bit unwieldly and I would like to do some house cleaning to be able to do some separation between the families.

I have just found new relatives and would like to email them a back up or an exchange file, but do not want to include my wife's side of the family beyond her my son and maybe her parents.

Can some one please explain to me how to do this or at least point me in the correct direction?

Thank you:

Bruce B

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Hi:

I have been using TMG for a few years on an occasional basis. Probably like a number of people.

A problem I now have is that there are now a number of families from my wife's side and my side all lumped into the same file.

It is beginning to get a bit unwieldly and I would like to do some house cleaning to be able to do some separation between the families.

I have just found new relatives and would like to email them a back up or an exchange file, but do not want to include my wife's side of the family beyond her my son and maybe her parents.

Can some one please explain to me how to do this or at least point me in the correct direction?

Thank you:

Bruce B

Recommendations: Don't split your database. Don't delete any people, unless they are wrong and you don't know how to fix them. Keep all of your working genealogy in a single TMG project-dataset. You can find many reasons for these discussed in prior messages on this forum. You can't know what your future genealogy interests will be or who may later prove to be a relative of whom.

 

To send subsets of your data to friends and relatives:

Use Focus Groups to make a list of people for special subsets of your data for special people. For example, you can make a focus group subset of just the descendants and ancestors of a particular great grandfather.

 

You then use that focus group to export just the people that you want to send to another.

 

Import that subset into a separate TMG dataset to check that you have exactly what you want.

 

See Terry Reigel's web site tutorials for how to export subset data in the format that you want. You will also find a tutorial on Focus Groups.

 

Best wishes,

Mike Talbot

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Welcome to the forum, Bruce.

 

I'd totally agree with Mike's suggestion that you not split your data - doing so causes a number of issues, including the difficulty in keeping custom tag types, source types, styles, etc. coordinated between them, the need to enter the people they have common twice, and the inablilty to create ancestory and descendant reports, or websites with Second Site, that include people from both Projects.

 

In what way are you finding it unwieldy to keep them together? We can probably offer suggestions for dealing with the issues that concern you.

 

Mike told you how to export a subset using the Focus Group. You also said you might want to send a backup. Assuming that your new-found cousins are using TMG, that would be a better way to go than exporting to GEDCOM, which can loose a considerable amount of information. To do that, start with a Focus Group as Mike suggested, then use the FG to control who is included in a List of People report, and use the secondary output of that report to create a new Project containing just the people you want to share. Make the backup from that project.

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<snip>.

I have just found new relatives and would like to email them a back up or an exchange file, but do not want to include my wife's side of the family beyond her my son and maybe her parents.

Can some one please explain to me how to do this or at least point me in the correct direction?

Thank you:

Bruce B

To make this focus group:

Click >Focus Group icon

If focus group list is not empty, click >Remove All.

Click >Add Individual >add your son

Check Ancestors Box, 2 generations (gets your wife and her parents)

Click >Add Others

Hilite (select) yourself, only

Set the number of desired generations (used to limit the number of generations of ancestors)

Click >Add Others

Your Focus Group for the above is complete.

 

Use it to export your subset of people as per previous message.

 

Good luck,

Mike Talbot

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