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aalston

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  1. I've been going back to some research I did quite a while ago, before 8.00 appeared. On opening with 8.08, TMG does a conversion to the new format, and everything works properly, EXCEPT that the "Add Person" box has incorrect labels for the place name boxes. This is not really a problem if you are a regular user, because you fill in the boxes in the same places as usual, ignoring the labels (which are associated with names rather than places). Occasionally you need to tidy up the Master Style list for places, too. I've come up with the following work-around: 1. Create a new project. 2. Cancel the wizard which adds the first person. You are left with an empty project. 3. Use "Add Person" to create a test person. The place name fields ought to be labelled correctly in TMG8 style. 4. Use Dataset Manager to rename the dataset so that you can recognise it later. 5. Use File, Merge Projects to merge your real data to this working one. 6. Use Dataset Manager to merge the newly imported data to your nearly empty dataset. 7. Use Dataset Manager to delete the imported dataset (usually number 2), leaving the one with the name from step 4. 8. Start to add an unrelated person to ensure things are still showing properly. At this point you have a copy of your project with things sorted out. Check that it looks decent. 9. Delete the test person from step 3. 10. You can then use File, Copy Project to overwrite to original one, so that the name is correct again, should you desire.
  2. I've just updated from 8.04 to 8.06. Everything appeared to go normally, and I've updated my projects to the new format. When generating a report to be displayed in the screen preview, TMG processes the filters properly. Then, as it is passing the data to the display utility, a "Program Error" box "Record is out of range" is displayed. "Cancel", "Ignore" and "Help" buttons complete the box. Cancel works as expected. Help does nothing. Ignore produces the expected report immediately. Other report formats, such as Word, PDF and Chartform do not produce the error. The error box did not appear before the update. The environment is fully-patched Win7 Pro 32-bit. Any ideas?
  3. External exhibits on the web?

    Because nobody has replied to this, I assume it is not possible to get TMG to use web addresses. How do I get WG to consider this as an enhancement?
  4. I would like to have some external exhibits residing elsewhere - on a web site. TMG allows me to enter a web address, in the form "http://www............jpg", and all looks good at the time. However examination of the properties shows that TMG has used the current web browser to download a copy of the file, and then set up pointers to that copy at it sits in the web browser's cache. Once the cache is cleared, or even if the project is viewed by another user, the Exhibit is broken. Is there any way of getting TMG to use a more robust version of the Exhibit location?
  5. For event tags, it is simple to mark a selected tag as the primary one of its type. It is also possible to have none of the events marked as primary. For example, there might be conflicting sources describing the date of birth for a person, and it is unclear which is "right". Having several birth events allows this to be shown easily. Only the primary birth event is shown in most reports. A similar problem is where the parentage is as yet uncertain. Imagine two people with the same name born in the same place at about the same time. We have records for both of them, but we don't know which of them is ours. We can record two sets of parents. TMG is quite happy about that. Unfortunately it seems that when we have multiple fathers or mothers, one has to be marked as the primary. We have a 50-50 chance of our guess being wrong, and others may take our guess as truth - they will ignore any surety values. Is there a way of allowing there to be NO primary relationship? Ideally reports such as Ancestor Chart would show none of the options we record if there is no primary relationship.
  6. I have managed to clear this by: 1. Full uninstallation of TMG8 (repair made no difference) 2. Enabling the "administrator" account (with my admin-equivalent account the installer hung). 3. Log on as Administrator 4. Install TMG8 for all users. 5. Start TMG and fill in the licence details. 6. Open Sample account and generate a report 7. Log off 8. Log on as usual user and run TMG as normal.
  7. I have just started getting the above error on all reports which use the "built-in" viewer. The message box appears after the processing, just at the point where the viewer window should open. Clicking "Ignore" gives me what looks like the correct data. Saving the same report to a file produces the expected results without comment, so it appears to be the report viewer tool which is the problem area. The reports have been in use for many months now, some in use many times a day (including this morning!). I've been through all combinations of "Validate file integrity" and "Optimise", "CHKDSK" and restarting without improvement. No patches have been applied this week. Any idea where this is coming from?
  8. To the Cloud

    TMG already allows multiple users to update the same project, whether from the same or different computers. The main problem is finding somewhere which allows multiple users access to the same data folders. This is fine on local area networks, with a server involved, but "cloud" infrastructure available to the public rarely allows for this. Business-oriented cloud solutions are more likely to provide such facilities.
  9. Timing problem on "Add Person" box

    Does nobody else have this problem?
  10. TMG8 and Win8 first experiences

    The machine I was describing was a laptop about 4 years old. Dual-core 1.7GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 160GB 5400rpm drive. Win8 appears to demand a much higher spec, but just misbehaves with the sort of box which many users have. That same laptop completely failed to install Win8 64bit. Both 32- & 64-bit versions of Win7 installed happily. It is now out in the field with a company Win7 build without reported problems. I've since had a go on boxes with quad-core CPU and 4GB RAM and 7200rpm drives. The same Win8 installation DVDs worked OK, and TMG installed as walterwood44 describes as his experience. I still won't be using Win8. The enforced abrupt and unexpected changes from "proper Windows" to the blocky "Metro" screen make this a no-no. I should not have to purchase a third party add-on to make an operating system usable. And, please remember that Microsoft's stated intention is to kill off the "legacy" Windows. Metro is the only environment to be supported in the future. Metro is an environment where there is no longer any concept of a "window" - every single display item, whether it be a video, a File Open dialog box, or just an announcement that "An Error Occurred", is full-screen. You will not be able to see a web page and a spreadsheet at the same time unless you have two monitors. There won't be a Windows 9. The next version will be labelled Microsoft Metro, as there will no longer be any Windows to name it after.
  11. I've been experiencing this for some time now. I first had it with TMG6 under XP. I put it down to the piles of other software on there which could easily have interfered, but I'm now on fully-patched Win7 Pro 32bit and TMG 8.04 UK, and it's still happening. Symptom: 1. Click on "Add person". 2. Select a releationship. It doesn't matter which one. 3. The data entry box appears. 4. WITHIN THE FIRST TWO SECONDS, enter data, say in the Given Name box (It happens on any field, but that's where I usually start). 5. Characters entered are converted into spaces. "Christopher" might show as " istopher". 6. If I don't correct the name, it will be saved AS DISPLAYED, with the leading spaces stripped out. Pasting data into a field does not improve things. It is the timing which is a problem. Waiting a couple of seconds allows the proper behaviour to occur. I have not noticed this behaviour in other boxes, but Add Person gets used often. The problem is not improved by caching; adding another person a few seconds later shows the same problem. My main database has several thousand people described, but the behaviour appears on smaller projects with less than a hundred.
  12. I have had a go with the recent "Consumer Preview" of Windows 8. It is supposedly based on Win7 under the skin, but instead of the "Start Menu", there is a screen full of large rectangular buttons, supposedly to look like an MS smartphone. Note that I said "instead of". That little button in the corner that gave you access to all those apps and utilities, carefully arranged into a hierarchy, is gone. All the apps now have to fight for space with the big rectangular blocks for the Music Player, the Video Player, the Facebook Application, the Twitter Application, the XBOX Live Application... Real applications lose. They are shoved off the right hand edge. The approach probably makes sense to phone users, who can scroll through hundreds of apps, bragging about the sheer number they have bought, but some of us prefer some organisation in our environment. And I thought that things were bad when I saw users with a traditional Windows desktop stuffed full of icons. The OS installed easily enough. But would it work with a real-world application? What had I handy? TMG 8.01. My usual laptop runs XP, but I've also run on Win7 without hassles. I'm sorry, Wholly Genes, Windows 8 isn't your fault. I know you are doing your best. It's just that sometimes one of your major suppliers stabs you in the back. TMG had the benefit for this test that the underlying database software is from MS, so it stood a good chance of being supported by them. So, I ran the install. A few seconds later, when the installer got busy copying files around, Win8 leapt in with a message saying that the installer had "stopped responding" and "will be shut down". I avoided the "OK" button and hit the cross in the top right, hoping to avoid the termination. It was terminated. Note especially that you don't get the chance to wait a bit longer. Windows Has Decided! Windows Is Always Right! I ran the install again, and it got further (many files were already in position), and I had a couple of error messages about the PDF printer. I can live without that for a test, so I hit ignore. I am left with an installed TMG8, so I run it. It starts up and starts building indexes for the sample databases, just as normal. Before it finishes, "TMG has stopped responding and will be shut down". Two loadings later and I have a chance to restore my SQZ, which has about 12000 people and a host of exhibits. I take the easy course and let TMG restore the exhibits to the default exhibit path, thinking I'd sort them out later. Many of the exhibits are referenced by multiple people (pictures of churches etc) so I took "don't overwrite" option when given a chance. Bad move. "...will be shut down" appeared three times before I reran the restore using "overwrite all". On XP or 7, using "don't overwrite" would restore the exhibits in about 40 seconds. "Overwrite" takes about 25 minutes. This version of Windows appears to have Attention Deficit Disorder. If an application fails to display a new message on screen every 20 seconds or so, Windows 8 assumes that it is faulty and kills it off. To see whether my logic was true, I moved on to "Validate File Integrity", so I could fix the paths for the exhibits. The process starts, then reaches 3%, which is where it is checking the exhibits. TMG at this point is performing many thousands of system calls as it checks the locations of those exhibits. Windows 8 assumes that it is doing nothing at all useful "and will be shut down". It took EIGHT runs through Validate before TMG got a chance to fill in the paths for my exhibits. Needless to say that I will NOT be trusting my databases to any PC running Windows 8 until I have conducted much testing on a proper release. Probably not even then. Windows 7 is a much more sensible option.
  13. Creating a brand new project, from the "Create" button from loading TMG 8.01, I got an announcement that "This project was created in an earlier version of The Master Genealogist. The current version includes hundreds of new default roles and sentences ....." Only cosmetic, so no rush to get it fixed.
  14. US Standard Place style

    Complicated, this multiple language support concept, isn't it? I am led to believe that it was George Bernard Shaw who first said that Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language. Who would have thought that it would still be causing hassles so many years later! I can put up with it until the bug fix appears.... .....as long as I don't have to start re-inputting loads of addresses! Incidentally, why is it that the US Postal Service delivers the mail, while in Britain the Royal Mail delivers the post?
  15. I have upgraded to TMG 8 UK Edition (from version 6), and have just noticed that the labels for US placename fields are incorrect. They are exactly the same as for UK placenames. So I headed off to the Master Style List, and found that the definitions of US Standard Place (and US Standard Name) are locked. How can I correct the field descriptions?
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