Ancestry.Com and TMG

[Dave Sharred 0]

Hi

 

I am still a Novice Genealogist really; I "inherited" my Father's vast research into our family name; and have only tinkered round the edges in the last 10 years. To quantify what I have; He had around 45 Project files; each covering 100 + names. I have converted all of these to V7 some while ago.

 

First Question. Whenever I look at the info he had, it is very bewildering. Is it better to merge it all into 1 TMG "project" (I don't think Project was a concept back in V4!!) or to keep the files separate? There are no obvious links to most of these 45 Projects; and probably never will be.

 

 

Next: I have looked at a subscription to a Genealogy website; and am impressed with what Ancestry.Com (and Ancestry.co.uk) throws up as additional hints. I am now in the process of exporting my files as GEDCOM and importing them to Ancestry.co.uk. Again, it looks like I have a lot of additional data that I can add. I am then thinking that I may take a year's subscription to see what else I can find.

 

So, what is the best way of managing the data between TMG and Ancestry.co.uk ?? I am worried that if I import the GEDCOM from Ancestry, I might lose some detail, so should I take any new data from Ancestry, and manually add it to TMG; and then periodically purge the Ancestry GEDCOM files??

 

Any advice would be gratefully received

 

Thanks in advance

 

Dave Sharred

g3nkc@yahoo.co.uk

[Terry Reigel 0]

Dave,

 

In my view, there is little reason to keep 4500 names in separate Projects, or even in separate Data Sets within a single Project. It's a pain to switch between them, and should you get to the point of modifying Tag Types or Sources, or creating custom ones, maintaining them between all those Projects is a pain. I would recommend merging them into a single Project.

 

There are several useful subscription sites, but in my opinion, Ancestry stands first in breadth of content and overall usefulness. Especially if you have just started using Ancestry's resources, the hint feature on their trees can be very useful. However, you have it on the nub of a significant problem. If you import existing data Ancestry doesn't recognize any of your sources (it imports them, but makes a mess of them) and doesn't recognize you have already attached tags or sources from Ancestry. Thus you may have particular census entered, but Ancestry won't recognize that, and will provide you a hint for that census.

 

Further, it's very easy to attach sources you find on Ancestry to your Ancestry tree. But getting them out of Ancestry and into TMG doesn't work well at all. I'd not suggest re-importing your data from Ancestry - I think you will end up with both tags and sources in a mess. In my view it's better to find the sources on Ancestry, by use of the Hints if that helps you, and then manually enter the data as you prefer to see it in TMG.

[Dave Sharred 0]

Hi Terry

 

Many thanks for your input; you confirmed what I thought about Ancestry. I see a lot of the hints also are corroborated from other users, which is another plus point for using such a site I guess.

 

I don't know much about these things, but maybe GEDCOM is too primitive in what you can export, which may be behind the problem? I think that I will follow your advice though; and maintain the master as the off line copy.

 

I will have to investigate merging the branches I have. The scary part is that I am sure most will not link, so it may become unmanageable in trying to work on so much data ! On the positive though, I may find a dew surprises too!

 

Thanks again

 

Dave Sharred

[Terry Reigel 0]

I don't know much about these things, but maybe GEDCOM is too primitive in what you can export, which may be behind the problem?

That's essentially it - GEDCOM can't capture the more advanced features used by TMG and other high-end genealogy programs. In this case, you will lose the source templates, so your sources will look little like they do in TMG, all Witnesses, so if you have entered census tags for example with family members entered as Witnesses, those entered as Witnesses will not have that data transferred, and many other things. In addition, Ancestry's treatment of some GEDCOM date, in order to force-fit it into the format of their trees, causes some strange results. In particular I notice that memos in marriage tags get treated as sources, but I suspect there are other examples as well. I've not tried importing a GEDCOM from an Ancestry tree, but I expect it to create further oddities. So in sum, the corruption of sending your data by GEDCOM added to that caused by retrieving it by GEDCOM are certain to make a big mess of it.

 

I will have to investigate merging the branches I have. The scary part is that I am sure most will not link, so it may become unmanageable in trying to work on so much data ! On the positive though, I may find a dew surprises too!

I don't see the fact that the branches don't connect as an issue. You can just find the name you want in the Picklist or Project Explorer. If you think there is a need to keep track of which Project the various people came from, you could add a Flag to each one before you do the merge to mark the people in that Project. But with 45 Projects, that's a lot of flags to create.

 

If you do decide to merge them, you need to do so carefully and systemically. There is a lot of room for error with that many Projects. Be sure to have backups of each one before you start so you can recover if you make a serious error. Be sure you understand how the merge process works - there is an article that explains it on my website. You will need to first merge the Projects into one Project, then I would recommend you Merge the resulting Data Sets into a single one.

 

You could keep them in separate Data Sets with a single Project, but I'd not recommend that. It does create easier access than having them as separate Projects, but does not help in maintaining any customizations you may be making - you will still need to do them for each of the 45 Data Sets.

[Dave Sharred 0]

Thanks again Terry; I found your website, so will read up on merging before I try it.

 

I already have the files backed up, too.

 

Thanks for taking the time to offer sound advice

 

Best regards

 

Dave

[Terry Reigel 0]

You're welcome, Dave.

[LornaHenderson 0]

Dave,

Terry has given you sound advice.

I too would/do keep a master TMG database/project with all lines in it in the one dataset.

It isn't a problem finding people, even in very large datasets.

 

I uploaded a seed tree to ancestry (well several for assorted purposes - dna studies, one name study, my own basic ancestors) as a one-off, and then have saved any successful searches to the appropriate tree, entering the data manually into my master TMG db. That way I get the best of both worlds, all those lovely hints, and matches, but full control over my data elsewhere.

The hints are wonderful, but for other tree hints, do remember to track down to the base data quoted, many refer to other trees with no basis in obvious fact at the bottom of the chain.

 

Periodically I download each database from ancestry and update a separate "Ancestry copy" TMG database, where each of the ancestry trees are separate datasets within that one project, just to make sure I have a copy of what is on ancestry in some form or other, in case I forgot to enter something into TMG in my excitement at finding someone/something before moving onto the next record in the chain. These are purely for reference and backup purposes and go no further unless I manually input to TMG from them. 'tis a pity that the attached images don't download, only the links.and yes the process is not without its idiosyncracies, but for my purposes, that's fine.

 

Flags are limited to 36 values, ie 0-9, A-Z, but you could possibly use a combination of two flags to group/identify each of your source datasets.

Flags would be useful for colour coding the source families if that is what you wanted.

I use this extensively as I can tell at a glance which of the gazillion John SMITHs is the one related to me or from area x.

 

Good luck

[altenbernd 0]

I wouldn't worry about the unlinked names. I have many of those in my database. I find people with my surname in a vicinity I know my family was at, I can be fairly certain they are somehow related. I don't want to lose track of them even though I don't yet know how they relate so I enter them as unlinked people. If/When I find a link it is easy to connect them. Even if you never link them they don't cause problems.

 

Sheila Altenbernd

 

I will have to investigate merging the branches I have. The scary part is that I am sure most will not link, so it may become unmanageable in trying to work on so much data ! On the positive though, I may find a dew surprises too!

 

 

Dave Sharred