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Old Cheshire

Extracting data from large set

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A relative in Holland has supplied a Gedcom format file which contains all of my English relatives, but also all of her Dutch relatives. As a newcomer to TMG I am finding it hard to separate out just the English side of the family. The Help files are confusing me....

 

Practical effective advice would be VERY welcome as a gathering of the English family takes place in 5 weeks time to share and verify genealogy data.

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I am assuming that the English relatives you want to keep and the Dutch relatives are connected by one or more marriages and/or parent/child relationships. If so, I suggest you start by removing those connections in order to reduce the possibility of making a mistake in the steps that follow.

 

To do that, identify the first person you do not want to include - the one who is linked to a person you want to keep - and place that person in the details view. Find the Tags that link that person to any persons you want to keep, and delete those Tags. They may be parent Relationship tags at the top of the screen, Marriage and/or Divorce tags, or child Relationship tags in the main Tag Box. In any case, click on those tags and delete them, pressing the Delete key or clicking the [ - ] button on the toolbar.

 

Then see if there are any other people you want to remove who are directly connected to people you want to keep, and do the same. The idea is to remove all connections between those you are keeping and those you are discarding.

 

Once you have done that, you are ready to collect all the people you want to discard into a Focus Group. Open the Focus Group, and remove anyone who may already be in it. Then:

 

1. Add one of the people you want to discard by right-clicking on his or her name in any screen, and choosing "Add this person to the focus group."

 

2. In the Focus Group, in the "Add Others" box on the right, check Ancestors, Descendants, and Spouses. Set the number of generations for both Ancestors and Descendants to a number higher than the total number of generations in the data.

 

3. Click the Select All button, then the Add Others button.

 

4. Note the number of names in the Focus Group at the top right. Repeat step 3 above. Continue to do that until the number of names no longer changes. Unless there are lots of cousins and intermarriages in this group, this will only be a few times.

 

Now, look carefully at the people in the Focus Group to be sure none of the people you want to keep are included. If they are, you have missed a connection between someone you want to keep and someone you want to discard. Find that connection and delete it, empty the Focus Group, and repeat the numbered steps above.

 

Once you have all the people you want to discard in the Focus Group, you delete them with the following steps:

 

1. Open Data Set manager, on the File menu. Click the Add button to add a second Data Set, and give it a name like "Junk." Close Data Set Manager.

 

2. On the Edit menu, click Move Person(s). Select the third option, "Move the people in the current Focus Group. " Below that, in the drop-down list, select your new "Junk" Data Set. Click OK to move everyone in the Focus Group to the new Data Set.

 

You now have all your "keepers" in the first Data Set, and all those you don't want in the second. If you are sure you no longer want them, you can now open Data Set Manager again and delete the "Junk" Data Set, and they will be gone.

 

Please come back if you have any questions or problems with this process.

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You're welcome. :)

 

The hard part is making sure you identify and remove the right people. Finding and removing the connections between those you are keeping and the others first makes the task easier.

 

Terry

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I have a large dataset and I would like to extract my wife's ancestors and ancestor's siblings. The resulting data should be limited to a given number of generations and should constitute a separate project.

 

I am familiar with Terry's Related-by Flags, but I'm stuck with the number of generations and the output to a new project.

 

Can you help me finding the best way to do it? Thank you.

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If all you really want is your wife's ancestors and their siblings, this is simple to do with the Focus Group:

 

1. Open the Focus Group, and empty it if it already contains anyone. Add your wife to the Focus Group.

 

2. In the Add Others box on the right, select ancestors, and set the number of generations to a value larger than the number of generations of her ancestors in your data. Make sure none of the other options in the Add Others box are selected, and that your wife's name is select in the main box of the Focus Group screen. Click the Add Others button. This will add all her ancestors to the Focus Group.

 

3. Your specification didn't include your wife, only her ancestors, so remove her name from the Focus Group.

 

4. Un-check the Ancestors box, and check the Descendants box. Set the number of generations to one. Click the Select All button to select everyone in the Focus Group. Your specification didn't include your wife's siblings, so hold the Ctrl key while clicking the names of her two parents to un-select them. Click the Add Other button - this will add all the siblings of her ancestors to the focus group. (Actually you are adding the children of the ancestors, but the children of one generation are the siblings of the next.)

 

Now use the Focus Group as the "Subjects" of the List of People report, and set the Secondary Output to create a new Project.

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Thank You Terry!

 

I had already tried to use the focus group to do it, but always forgot to select all the names in it in order to get the ancestors siblings... :angry:

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