Helmut Leininger

Hi, In my opinion you should still wait, at least some months until further developments have been made. At least, the product must be able to directly import from TMG else you would loose too much information. What I have seen until now (from very short tests): Family Historian has direct import, but it is very buggy (sources linked to wrong persons etc.). Besides that, it uses a GEDCOM file for its "database" and I doubt that it will be ableto support most of the TMG features . Legacy has not direct import yet, but is planning to do so. It seems to have some features of TMG, but I have not done an investigation. RootsMagic has direct import (since two weeks), but still lacks on many features of TMG and "Ease of Use" or clarity of the desktop layout. Anyway, before making a decision, you should play with their demo (or trial) versions to see what is best for your data and your working method.

Hi Harry, I fully second your opinion (besides SecondSite which I do not use). At least Legacy Family Tree is available in several languages (also in Dutch and German). Cleaning up after the import is one thing (ususally done only once). But missing features is something else.

Thanks. I will keep an eye on the further development of both RootsMagic and Legacy Family Tree. It will bee interesting to see what will turn out the more suitable (for me).

Hi, RootsMagic has announced an updated version with direct import from TMG (http://rootsmagic.com/tmg/) and a guide for moving the data (http://files.rootsmagic.com/TMGDoc.pdf). I would like to know the experiences of other users (if any).

Did you delete internal exhibits or transfer them to external? This would free the space during optimization only.

I always do add a birth record, eventually with the same date as the baptism if only one date is in the record. This may or may not be a correct birth date - you don't know. Doing it this way, I bypass any compatibility problems.

Just guessing: assume currently the prompt is set to Yes. You want to shtdown TMG and you get the prompt/reminder to save. On this prompt at bottom you are asked if this should be repeated the next time. Be sure this is checked (with a hook). Otherwise the prompt is reset to no.

Tom, Does this mean that the "*eventtype" is a an extension specific to RootsMagic? In this case it would not work for imports to other programs.

Marianne, you may choose which name to show. Right-click into the window and the select "Use name selected in the element" (or smilar - I am using the German version).

Bob said in his letter: I hope this means that GenBridge will be updated ("... in the interest of preserving users' data..."), otherwise htis would not make much sense.

Martin, I did not make many researches. Up to now, I don't know yet what to do. There are (at least in theory) two ways of migrating the data: a) direct import from the TMG database and by GEDCOM files. a) direct import: I have seen only two programs (maybe there are more) that try to import directly from TMG. However, the data migration is limited by the receiving program's features. In addition to that, TMG has changed the role handling in V9 and this is not (yet) reflected by GenBridge (written by Whollygenes and used by others for direct reading of the TMG database), so at this point of time, even if the target program supports the role/witness feature, there will be a loss of data. - Family Tree Builder from myHeritage, but it has limited features for an experienced TMG user - Family Tree Maker: there is no trial version available, so I have no personal experience. Comments report about problems. And Family Tree Maker wants to sell you a membership for ancestry.com data migration via GEDCOM files As the GEDCOM specification covers only a part of TMG's features, data loss cannot be avoided. Most of the programs seem to support Unicode/UTF-8 which I am missing in TMG (having many Czech names in may data). This is an advantage. Besides the migration of the data an important point is the mightiness (supported features) of the rival product. For my quick and dirty personal test, I have downloaded and installed trial versions of Legacy Family Tree and RootsMagic. Both support adapting sentences for events, creating new events/tags, sharing events (witnesses/roles) which I am using. But they also lack features I am used to like flags and accenting. And there is no F3 (repeat) key, no drag & drop for exhibits, no automatic generation of marriage names, ... Then, I don't like the layout of Legacy (TMG had a very clear layout and I could see all interesting information at the same time) and RootsMagic is available only in English (I am using German). Maybe we should wait for another year or so until TMG has released a new version of GenBridge and the rivals have adopted to the changed situation.

Hi, at last, I got it installed. - extract tmg9setup.inf and disk1.cab from tmg9setup.exe (still in Windows) - using POL in Linux let the script install the prequisites (.dll etc.) and let it abort afterwards - using POL install TMG from tmg9setup.inf

Hi, I tried to install TMG 9.03 using the hamamelis' script (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/hamamelis/linux/POL/TMG9V4DLLAllDefault.pol), but I did not succeed. As I have never used wine or POL before, I cannot say why. Ubuntu 14.04 wine 1.6.2 Pol 4.2.4

John, I am using TMG since version 6.xx up to today's version 9.03. I have had several problems, but never lost files and no problems with optimize. My sessions are usually several hours, the projects are in a user-defined folder. My main project has about 55.000 people, 150.000 events, 30.000 sources, 42.000 (external) exhibits. No functional problems.

I had similar in Windows 8.1, but I do not remember the name of the DLL. Downloading the trial version and doing an install / repair solved the problem.