Family Tree Maker import into TMG

[John K 0]

I am very close to taking the plunge and attempting to transfer 15 years of work from Family Tree Maker to The Master Genealogist - and I would love to hear any helpful words of wisdom that anyone might have. I dread the thought of discovering a year from now that I spent months cleaning up problems that could have been avoided at the import stage by a simple click of the mouse.

 

I have a couple of specific questions:

 

Unfortunately, many of the tags that I have in FTW begin with a place name, and then add a lengthy comment. For example, most of my burial tags have the cemetery name and address, followed by the inscription on the tombstone. This would work in TMG if the address went into the address fields and the inscription went into the memo box. However, I have not been able to get the computer to do this automatically. If I choose the "comment" option, everything goes into the memo box. If I choose the location option, the computer forces everything into the location fields. It would seem that the third option of "location: comment" should do the trick, but I have never seen it act any differently from the "location" option - everything is forced into the location field. Am I missing something? Short of cleaning up many thousands of tags one by one, is there any way to get the information entered correctly?

 

After I have imported several test files, I have been unable to access the Marriage Notes and Tags from FTW. The information has been transferred to TMG, as it prints out in reports. I even see the first few words of the Tags (such as those for engagement) and Marriage Notes in the details box. However, while I can access (and edit) all of the other tags shown in this box by double clicking and being transferred to the Tag Entry box, when I double click on the Marriage Tags I am simply transferred from the details box for the husband to that for the wife (or vice versa). How can I access these?

 

Finally, am I correct that TMG does not have a global find/replace function? If so, that seems like a significant omission, and I am thinking that I should take a few weeks and go through my data one last time while I can still use this feature in FTW to correct misspellings and typos. (I do see that TMG has a find function that works within individual memos, but this is obviously much less helpful). Are there alternative ways to make global changes in TMG?

 

Thank you for your help.

[retsof 0]

a brief reply...

 

Check out John Cardinal's free "TMG Utility" for many global functions.

 

There's no need to force a transfer through GEDCOM, which can cause many other problems. The "genbridge" function in TMG will import directly from a FTW dataset. You may lose less. Others may have more experience with suggested parameter settings since I have not done that myself.

[Terry Reigel 0]

Unfortunately, many of the tags that I have in FTW begin with a place name, and then add a lengthy comment. For example, most of my burial tags have the cemetery name and address, followed by the inscription on the tombstone. This would work in TMG if the address went into the address fields and the inscription went into the memo box. However, I have not been able to get the computer to do this automatically. If I choose the "comment" option, everything goes into the memo box. If I choose the location option, the computer forces everything into the location fields. It would seem that the third option of "location: comment" should do the trick, but I have never seen it act any differently from the "location" option - everything is forced into the location field.

What delimiter do you have between the place and comment in FTM?

After I have imported several test files, I have been unable to access the Marriage Notes and Tags from FTW. The information has been transferred to TMG, as it prints out in reports. I even see the first few words of the Tags (such as those for engagement) and Marriage Notes in the details box. However, while I can access (and edit) all of the other tags shown in this box by double clicking and being transferred to the Tag Entry box, when I double click on the Marriage Tags I am simply transferred from the details box for the husband to that for the wife (or vice versa). How can I access these?

Are you double clicking on the Tag in the Name/Place column? That should transfer you to the other Principal if there is one. You need to double click on the tag type label in the Type column.

 

Sounds like you already have the process pretty well figured out, but you may find my http://tmg.reigelridge.com/Importing.htm provides some useful tips.

[John K 0]

1. What delimiter do you have between the place and comment in FTM?

 

2. Are you double clicking on the Tag in the Name/Place column? That should transfer you to the other Principal if there is one. You need to double click on the tag type label in the Type column.

 

Sounds like you already have the process pretty well figured out, but you may find my http://tmg.reigelridge.com/Importing.htm provides some useful tips.

 

 

Thank you.

 

1. Your surmise was exactly correct - I had not realized that TMG needed to see a semicolon before it would separate a tag between location and comment. (Looking back over my data, I see I had dashes, slashes, parentheses and numerous other punctuation marks - but no semicolons.) With this new insight, I was able, in about an hour, to clean up several thousand burial tags in my Family Tree Maker data, and thereby save myself dozens of hours of clean-up work in TMG. Thank you.

 

2. You are also correct that I was double clicking on the Name column, instead of the Type column. Thank you again.

 

 

I have now read your Importing article, and am working through my Family Tree Maker databases to make sure all siblings have at least one parent. (Are you aware of any easy way to search for parentless siblings in FTW?)

 

The comment in your article about "More About" Notes was very insightful. Because Family Tree Maker does not allow sources to be attached to Notes, I presently include them in the text of the Note, and was initially looking forward to being able to record them in TMG in the same manner that I do cites for other Tags. However, as I contemplate the switch-over to TMG I find that I like the flexibility of being able to tie source citations to specific sentences of long Notes. Some of my Notes run for 5 or more typed pages, and it is not all that helpful to have a single citation at the end of the Note saying that some unspecified item in the previous pages came from a particular book. With TMG is there any way of tying citations to particular sentences of a Note, other than continuing my current approach of placing the cites in parentheses after the relevant provision?

 

 

Let me ask two other questions.

 

A. What else should de doing to my FTW databases before I switch to TMG?

 

B. When I make the switch, do I want 1 or 5 data sets (or projects)? I currently have 5 FTW databases - one for each set of my son's great-grandparents, and a fifth database for the descendants of all of these great-grandparents (i.e., the parents of my wife and I and all of their descendants). The advantage of having 5 databases is that it keeps each of them to a more manageable size (a combined database would include 25,000 people). The disadvantage is that I am finding more and more 17th Century crossovers between the two databases on my wife's side of the family. Is there a good reason to either keep the databases separate or to combine them in TMG? If there is a good reason to keep them separate, should they be treated as separate projects, or separate data sets within a single project?

 

Thank you.

[Terry Reigel 0]

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I have now read your Importing article, and am working through my Family Tree Maker databases to make sure all siblings have at least one parent. (Are you aware of any easy way to search for parentless siblings in FTW?)

Sorry, it's been so long since I used FTM that if there is a way I don't know about it.

Some of my Notes run for 5 or more typed pages, and it is not all that helpful to have a single citation at the end of the Note saying that some unspecified item in the previous pages came from a particular book. With TMG is there any way of tying citations to particular sentences of a Note, other than continuing my current approach of placing the cites in parentheses after the relevant provision?

There are at least two ways. One is to break the long note into several tags, using sort dates to sequence them one after another. Cite each section appropriately.

 

The other is to use "embedded" citations - there is a feature that lets to embed citation codes in the text - it's on the right-click menu in the Memo field. I tend to avoid them because a few of the citation management features don't keep track of them all that well.

A. What else should de doing to my FTW databases before I switch to TMG?

I don't think of anything else, but maybe someone who has done that switch more recently may have an idea.

B. When I make the switch, do I want 1 or 5 data sets (or projects)? I currently have 5 FTW databases - one for each set of my son's great-grandparents, and a fifth database for the descendants of all of these great-grandparents (i.e., the parents of my wife and I and all of their descendants). The advantage of having 5 databases is that it keeps each of them to a more manageable size (a combined database would include 25,000 people).

I'm a strong proponent of using a single data set in a single project. That way any custom source types and tag types you may develop are easily available for everyone, and you can link anyone to anyone else, and make reports and websites with Second Site that include all the lines.

 

You can use Accents to keep track of the separate lines if you like - you can then recognize them at a glance by their color coding. See my article on Accents for suggestions. Since you already have the lines separated, it would be easy to create accents for each of them before you merge them together.

 

The one thing I would test before you commit to a single data set is the system speed - 25,000 is a fairly large project. A current computer with lots of RAM should handle it with no problem, but if your system is a bit old or underpowered you may not be happy with the responsiveness.

 

If you keep them separate, having them in separate projects should create the best system performance. But it makes switching between them take longer. If you create separate data sets in a single project you can disable some of them to cause those people to disappear from view. Neither of these approaches is better than the other at dealing with the issues I mentioned above.

[retsof 0]

I'm a strong proponent of using a single data set in a single project. That way any custom source types and tag types you may develop are easily available for everyone, and you can link anyone to anyone else, and make reports and websites with Second Site that include all the lines.

I made a mistake and merged too many datasets into the main database at the beginning. That leaves me with a bunch of duplicates to combine...which takes a while.

 

It's much better to start a new project for each one and do your cleanup. One project at a time can then be merged with the main one. Don't forget to do a backup, optimize, validation, another optimize, and then another backup after each major merge. I have occasionally had the first optimize fail, and then it's "restore time".

 

You can use Accents to keep track of the separate lines if you like - you can then recognize them at a glance by their color coding. See my article on Accents for suggestions. Since you already have the lines separated, it would be easy to create accents for each of them before you merge them together.

Don't try to make one do-all accent to cover all possibilities. The slow response time will be a killer. Customize them for specific purposes, since the "all" is set for only two different accents. More accent levels can give confusing results for "all" unless you take care to post them in the best order.

 

The one thing I would test before you commit to a single data set is the system speed - 25,000 is a fairly large project. A current computer with lots of RAM should handle it with no problem, but if your system is a bit old or underpowered you may not be happy with the responsiveness.

It is? I have over 600,000 with many duplicates, and the next project to merge has over 150,000, with more duplicates. The combination will make, guess what, more duplicates. Experience gave more more control over gedcom imports from rootsweb. Earlier downloads created too much overlap. Many there only let you have 3-6 generations and don't let you have the whole gedcom at all.

 

If you keep them separate, having them in separate projects should create the best system performance. But it makes switching between them take longer. If you create separate data sets in a single project you can disable some of them to cause those people to disappear from view. Neither of these approaches is better than the other at dealing with the issues I mentioned above.

Eventually, I want as much as possible combined so that auto relationship will work. When working with large datasets, as much fancy stuff as possible should be turned off to improve response time unless you need it at some point in time: sibling window, child window, accents (especially many levels), extended picklist, timeline tags, auto relationship, etc. Even on a fairly fast AMD 2.4GHz computer (equivalent to a 3.0+ Intel) with 3Gb of memory I notice every change, with the largest dataset. One advisor here asked me how it was possible to measure response time since he was dealing with less than 15,000 persons. I said that it was easy with a wristwatch. The expanded picklist takes at least 45 seconds to return a name on the large database. I don't use it much. Focus groups are a lot faster. I have a 3.2GHz AMD X2 chip waiting in the wings as soon as I buy some more hardware.

 

One or two level accents work very well with a focus group, which is designed for ancestors of "n" or descendants of "n" to save using an accent level for ancestors or descendants themselves. I make extensive use of no father, no mother and no children types of accents to point me to the tops or bottoms of the chains quickly. I then turn off the accent to get better response when merging or flagging members in that area I have located.

Edited December 23, 2007 by retsof

[Terry Reigel 0]

Don't try to make one do-all accent to cover all possibilities. The slow response time will be a killer.

So far as I can tell, Accents, even multi-level ones, have almost no impact on response time... provided you do them with flags. Accents based on the "filter" conditions, such as "is an ancestor of..." will kill you if you have any substantial size project. That's because the system has to recompute all those filters every time you move to a new person.

 

But if you do those computations once and set a flag to record them the response is nearly instananious. See my article on Accents for some suggestions on how to do that.

[retsof 0]

That is so true. Flags are best for something more or less permanent.

 

I am operating more in a temporary cleanup mode...using the accents as a pointer to only a FEW records as a percentage of the whole using different test criteria each task, so I am willing to use a filter to get me there. If I want to mark some records that I have found, to resume the cleanup task the next morning, I put something unique as a temporary marker in the reference field like "more ancestors" so I can search that way as a reference sort in the simple picklist. I don't have to turn on the accent again. Fast...and no filters or flags or accents at all.

 

I could set a cleanup flag if I wanted to do something to the whole dataset and mark where I have been.

 

I am currently comparing some data to a rootsweb database, so the internet "link visited" color over there serves to show me what I have touched in the last 30 days. That is sufficient for this particular purpose.

 

Rootsweb also has a daily download limit, something like 25 downloads. That really hurts when the submitter will not let you have the whole gedcom and only allows you to download 3-6 generations at a time. All of those partial chains must then be merged and stitched together to restore the relationships. The current "privacy concerns" about living relatives also make it a bit difficult to find new contacts. Once they are gone, it is too late.

Edited December 24, 2007 by retsof