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kahill1918

TMG Won't Accept GEDCOMs

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I downloaded and installed TMG 7 and was dismayed to see that it won't accept my gedcoms of which I litertally have hundreds. Upon checking, it seems to be because TMG does not support UNI 8 or whatever that is. I would need to save it by using Notepad and even then there may be loss in UNI 8 characters. This I cannot risk.

 

Isn't there a better way other than requesting money back? I feel that potential customers should be warned of this before they make the purchase. I also made other purchases relating to this program. :o

 

I use WIN 7.

 

Thanks.

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Have you looked at this forum message. While it mentions XP, the same method should apply to Win7. All you should need to do is open the file with notepad, use the save as function and you should be good to go.

 

 

http://www.whollygenes.com/forums201/index...?showtopic=1025

 

 

Hope that this helps

 

 

 

 

 

 

I downloaded and installed TMG 7 and was dismayed to see that it won't accept my gedcoms of which I litertally have hundreds. Upon checking, it seems to be because TMG does not support UNI 8 or whatever that is. I would need to save it by using Notepad and even then there may be loss in UNI 8 characters. This I cannot risk.

 

Isn't there a better way other than requesting money back? I feel that potential customers should be warned of this before they make the purchase. I also made other purchases relating to this program. :o

 

I use WIN 7.

 

Thanks.

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Upon checking, it seems to be because TMG does not support UNI 8 or whatever that is. I would need to save it by using Notepad and even then there may be loss in UNI 8 characters. This I cannot risk.

 

Isn't there a better way other than requesting money back? I feel that potential customers should be warned of this before they make the purchase. I also made other purchases relating to this program. :o

 

Yes, unfortunately TMG does not support UNICODE or as it would appear within your GEDCOM file the UFT-8 character set.

 

Changing the UFT-8 character set to ANSI, which TMG supports, will indeed result in a loss of any characters which are part of UFT-8 but not of ANSI.

 

This fact stands as is regardless whether you import a GEDCOM into TMG or any other database/file format for which TMG provides direct import functionally - say without going via a GEDCOM, i.e. files from Family Tree Maker, Legacy .....

 

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

 

However, which real / pure UNICODE characters do you have in your database resp. the GEDCOM you want to import into TMG? Please provide some examples in order to give us a better idea.

 

In case these characters may perhaps also be part of ANSI, then you won't lose anything.

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Thank you, Dorothy. I finally got the prompt to enter the password for "Getting The Most out of The Master Genealogist."

 

I was also able to use Notepad to save a file as a gedcom and then open it inside TMG. However I am still not too happy because I have about three hundred gedcoms, so it is going to a be a long and tedious task to have to save every one of them in Notepad. Also the gedcom that I was using to test this had a long list of "warnings," even though there is only one couple with only one child in that gedcom.

 

So I can imagine how many warnings I will be getting with much larger files. Yikes.

 

 

So I don't think I will be staying with TMG after all.

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As Vera states, unless you know you have non-English data, it is uncommon to actually have characters in your file which can only be represented by UNICODE characters. Unfortunately, by default many genealogy programs automatically claim in the output file that the data is "UFT-8" when the program does the GEDCOM export, even when there is no data in the file which actually requires it. That is why the "workaround" mentioned by Dave often works. You will know best whether your data requires UNICODE, but unless one intentionally makes a point to introduce such characters, it is uncommon for most English language users to actually need that character set.

 

It is unfortunate that this is a current limitation with TMG, but it is inherent in the underlying Microsoft database software which was used to create TMG.

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... it is going to a be a long and tedious task to have to save every one of them in Notepad
How did you acquire these GEDCOM files? Many sources allow you to specify, when they create the file, what character set to use. Would it be easier to re-acquire them?

 

... the gedcom that I was using to test this had a long list of "warnings,"
Let us fellow users know what warnings you get. There are a number of settings when you import into TMG. It is possible we could suggest better option settings which would eliminate most of these warnings.

 

While you may be having some difficulties getting your data into TMG, I hope you will give it a chance. I think you will find TMG's features, once the data is in the program, to be superior to most any other genealogy program. As most on this Forum, I have no connection to Wholly Genes other than being a very satisfied user.

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