Saturday, December 28, 2013

FTM2014 and AMT - Who saw and did what ?

Just love it when I find questions on Facebook that need to be addressed here. It's a question I never thought to ask or blog about. BUT, it's a good one.
Sometimes I just check on clients names to refresh their surnames when I am looking at databases. I had no idea he can see each time I log into his page. Just wondering if he can see the actually families I am on and how long I am on the actual family page.
Here is what I see, when I share an Ancestry Member Tree (AMT) when someone views the AMT that I invited some one to.


I had invited DearMYRTLE and Genea-Blogger Randy Seaver to this AMT. DearMYTLE's last visit was 21 Nov 2013, and Randy 20 Dec 2013. Randy is an Editor and Myrt is a Guest.

As we have talked about, Myrt and I, those two permissions are different as to what they can and can't see and do. Randy, for example, can see Living People, while Myrt can not. There are other differences and the third category is a Contributor with yet another set of capabilities.

The second part of the question was:
Do you know how long they were on?
Simple answer, no.

But to tie this back to a Video that DearMYRTLE and I did, when Sharing with Randy:


During the Sync Process we are given a SyncLog that shows us what is going to be updated in both the AMT and in FTM2014. Here is an example of changes that Randy and I made to the same Tree and File. I did the changes in FTM2014 while Randy made changes on the AMT.


So, I can see what the changes are BEFORE the Sync is actually started. It was this report that lead to the YouTube Video above.
_______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Friday, December 27, 2013

FTM2014 - Resolving Place Name Video - a User Comment

As part of this blog, I have links to various training and other resources about Family Tree Maker. I was looking at some of those training videos to see if there is any information that hasn't been covered in those videos that I might include here.

I was watching this one, by The Barefoot Genealogist, Crista Cowan, on Family Tree Maker 2012 - Places and want to make a comment or two about a term that she used. The term was Description as it relates to the Place Name field. This item plays a role when exporting information between genealogy database management programs, like Family Tree Maker, to another genealogy program. We use the term GEDCOM. The format is a basic plain text file to share our research.

Facts and Events that take place for an individual is usually defined by a Date, a Place, and a Description field. In FTM2014 and other genealogy programs we can define these facts picking and choosing which of these items we want to include for that fact or event. Since I am talking specifically about FTM2014, I will use the term FACT.

Many of our Facts contain all three fields. For example, a Marriage Fact is a Shared Fact between two people. Normally we would record the Date that the Marriage took place, and Where it took place, meaning location. But where do you put the name of the Church. Burials, the name of the Cemetery, the name of a school, etc. Until recently, the Description field was where we put that information. As long as we were consistent we could pull reports grouped by the Place Name, and adding the Description field, we could group or sort to include the Description field.

Here is an example of how I used to enter this information.


It has the Date, the location and the name of the Church as it should.

If I were to export this file to a GEDCOM, here is how it would look:

1 MARR Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
2 DATE 15 JUL 1939
2 PLAC West Chester, Chester, Pennsylvania, USA
Notice that the Description field is at the GEDCOM "Tag" level. (I won't go into the details of a GEDCOM file, nor Tags). The import of this file into another program should be these three pieces of information as seen in FTM2014, but many times it does not. In this example, the "Description" field may be out of place for the "other" program.

The Video showed how FTM2012 works in this type of situation. The issue is resolving Place Names. You will notice the ICON to the right of Pennsylvania with the Question Mark, which indicates that the Place Name needs to be resolved.

When I look at the Marriage Fact, in this case I have two, one with the Church name, and the first entry without the Church name, it is clear where the marriage took place.


Now, I want to resolve the place name. I click on that ICON and a new window opens up.


When I click on Search, all FTM2014 wants to do is to Add USA. The Video goes into great detail about all of this. So far, so good.

I then click Replace and FTM2014 changes West Chester, Chester, Pennsylvania to West Chester, Chester, Pennsylvania, USA


As I mentioned, with each Fact, we have choices to make, as to what is displayed or used for that fact. We change or control that by selecting the Fact and in the Options Pull down menu, we select Properties.


There are the three fields, Date / Place / Description. That is the Marriage Fact Properties that I have selected for this Fact.

.
I have talked about the importance, to me, of the Mapping Feature. Using the resolved format, this marriage gets lost with the other 180 Facts that took place in West Chester. I want to see how many events took place at this church, or a Cemetery, or school, or address. FTM2014 is "happy" but I am not.


So far, I am in total agreement with what the Video shows. So, now how to get the events that took place at that Church?

The video would suggest that the Name of the Church be moved from the Description field to the Place Field.. The video used other examples, but we will end up doing the same thing for the same reasons. When I add the name of the Church, the Place Name is again Unresolved.



As before, the search would try to get rid of the name of the church, because it isn't a place, but FTM2012 and FTM2014 gave us a way to handle this situation for addresses, church names, cemetery names, and historical names.

Here is the issue, and it is only in the use of a word. The term used in the video, is that she moved that information to the Description field. The screen shows PLACE DETAIL, not place description.


As the video shows, using that up arrow to the Left of the name of the Church "moves" the name of the church to the Place DETAIL. I can't call it a field, because we can't see it as a field, but within FTM2012 and FTM2014 it is additional information for the name of the Place which now includes the Church Name.


I click on Replace and the next screen appears. It's an "are you sure" screen. We have choices, Change all instances or Change only this instance. I rarely would use the Change All option.


Returning to the Marriage Fact, the name of the Church is in the Place field and the Description field is Blank. But the Place Detail has the name of the Church in it.


Now, what happened to the Map? In the Places workspace, right column, I now see that I have a number of Events / Facts that took place at that Church. 6 people have Facts that took place at this Church.

The church is selected in the Left Panel, the pin shows it's approximate location and the Right Panel shows who had an event at that church


.

A closer look at the Right Panel:

The same steps are used for Cemeteries:


This cemetery has 39 people in my database who are buried there. With the map feature you can zoom in and really see what the cemetery looks like. I have pinpointed the location of some of the 39 people and where they are buried. If I were to share this with another researcher, we might save some walking around trying to find where someone is buried.

As was pointed out in the Video, I can back up to the City, West Chester, and see that I have 197 Facts that are linked to West Chester, including the Church, the Cemeteries, and addresses in my database.


Back to the point about Description, Place Detail, and GEDCOM.

1 MARR
2 DATE 15 JUL 1939
2 PLAC Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, West Chester, Chester, Pennsylvania, USA
My point is that I think the video should have used Place Detail and not Place Description. The Description would have been to the right of MARR.

_______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Look at the on the whole record ....

I am volunteer at a local Adult Care Community, where I "teach" them family research. I use FTM2014 and now the whole class (5 to 8) use Family Tree Maker, or at least those with a computer. Each active member of the class has given me a Family Group Sheet, or some information that they have about their family and I will work with that, do some basic research, then do some live research in class.

We have been through census records and talked about what information do they want to collect (for Family Tree Maker) and have given them a couple of interesting clues you can pick up when looking at that image.

This week it was a non-computer person's turn. His information got my attention because of where his family was located and that I saw two females in the chart with surnames as middle names, AND that I know those surnames. Right surnames, right location.

I found a Public Record Index that listed 5 locations where this person had lived. I showed the importance of the Map feature, as I did a Person view in the Map to show him where he as lived based on that record (an Index now less). His eyes lit up as what I found was right, and they all loved that the record nailed his locations.

There was a Hint on our "home" person for a 1940 Census Record. Right time, right place, so we looked at the image and talked about what to capture and who all was in the household. BUT the names we all different in the household. So we had a discrepancy. The name was listed as:

Surname, Initial, "middlename" as expected. So I nudged the home person, I thought your first name was Ralph. Here it says that your middle name is Ralph. The class looked and notice the 'known' first names were listed as the "middle" name.

I had the image blown up so they could see it, and I asked, is this a Census Taker problem or an Informant problem. What is unique about the 1940 census I asked? The informant was the Head of Household came out of the class. Who was that? "My father", was the reply.

Another class member asked me to scroll up the image a bit and his observation was "everyone" is Initial First, then the first name.


So, we have a conflict, right? Record what you see, right? Why not put this observation in the Name Fact Notes for this entry and use the Preferred Fact to be the "conclusion" or hypothesis for now and the Name Fact Note would reflect how the conflict was resolved.
Name Fact Note: In the 1940 Census, the entire page reflected Surname, Initial, name spelled out, where for this family, that name was the First Name. The census page was consistant in how the names were recorded
Happy dance of a different kind. Proud of the class!!
_______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Blog Post on Hold - update

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that I was not going to do further blogging about using a GEDCOM file to transfer this one file from FTM2014 to Legacy Family Tree 8 nor Roots Magic 6.

Blog Posts on Hold

But after the Ranting about how bad FTM2014 is, on Facebook, I am going to amend that. There are reasons, as I mentioned, because the transfer is via GEDCOM. However, there is some very good news in what FTM2014 does when exporting a GEDCOM file.

I have successfully transferred files from FTM2014 to both Legacy Family Tree 7.5, and Roots Magic 6. Each included links to the Media files on my hard drive. I have also been successful in sending a GEDCOM to a user of Roots Magic, and had the Media Folder of the FTM2014 file, in Dropbox, with the GEDCOM file. Everything, including the Media files were opened in Roots Magic 6 (as expected).

Trying to help a FTM2014 User, who is leaving FTM2014 for another program, I did an extra test this evening, just to make sure I remembered correctly from previous tests, specifically to Legacy Family Tree version 8, which has been recently released). I had done Version 7.5 earlier, so I wanted to just double check.

When the file was imported, there was a warning message that I was missing 56 Media files. WOW !!! that's a bummer. But wait ...... There is an Error Log from Legacy that I looked at, while Legacy was trying to find those 56 files. I was doing something else but Legacy still hadn't found those files after about 1/2 hour. What's up with that. They are ALL in one folder, can't be that hard.

So, I looked at that log or error message file again, a little closer, and I realize that they ALL were images from Find-A-Grave. In FTM2014, it had marked ALL of the Find-A-Grave images as PRIVATE. They aren't my pictures, so I do NOT want them to be online.

I thought that when I made that earlier blog post, that I had checked that I had the media files in Legacy, and I remembered correctly, so this error message concerned me. Not only did the links to those images make it, BUT in the GEDCOM there was some indication that those images should NOT be included in that GEDCOM. So, FTM2014 did what it should have, including marking those Private Media files is such a way that Legacy shouldn't and didn't find them.

Lesson Learned, The export worked as it should.

_______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Monday, December 16, 2013

What happens to my AMT when I allow my Subscription to Ancestry.com expire ?

Today, in a Google Hangout On Air, on Monday's with Myrt, we talked a little about what happens when you allow your subscription to Ancestry.com expire. Randy Seaver explained on his GeneaMusings blog:

"What good is it to access a newspaper image on Ancestry.com, and not be able to see it after my subscription runs out?"

I thought that I would look at this issue of allowing a subscription to expire a different way. What happens by my Ancestry Member Tree (AMT) when I allow my subscription to expire?

Below are strictly my observations:

AMTs are free after you create a "free" or "Registered Guest" account on Ancestry.com. You can search, see free results, free record groups and you can create an Ancestry Member Tree. If you already of a Genealogy Database Management program, you can generate a GEDCOM file and upload that GEDCOM to that AMT.

So far, all is well, all is free and you are on your way. Now, you want to look at some of those records where you need a subscription to view them and you purchase a subscription. You do lots of research and those records are in your AMT. You even find other Public AMTs and gather information from them and put the information into your AMT.

During this process, is where Randy's blog post comes in handy. Please read it.

For what ever reason, you discontinue your research for a while and you allow your subscription to expire. What you loose in your AMT, is access to the images to those records in your Ancestry Member Tree. (I have not tested and verified that, as I am not about to let my subscription expire). Your AMT is still online and available, just no access to the records.

I logged off of Ancestry.com to see what would happen if I tried to access another Public Ancestry Member Tree.

I see this:



I have lost access to the other AMTs as well. I still have my AMT, but can't see others.

I thought, "that's not right", so I looked at the Knowledge Base website:

I looked up "What is a "Registered Guest" account?" to see what it said.

Use the Ancestry Member Trees feature in any of the following ways.
  • Build a personal member tree, whether from scratch or by uploading a GEDCOM file
  • Share your Family Tree with family or friends
  • View another user's Family Tree if you received an invitation from that tree's owner
  • Respond to someone who contacted you, requesting permission to view your Family Tree
  • View any record linked to a Family Tree to which you have been invited, provided the person owning that tree has some kind of paid account on Ancestry
  • View any photos attached to a Family Tree that you have been invited to view
You will notice that there is no reference to other Public Member Trees.

I thought about that for a bit, after my initial "that's not right" reaction. Having visited the Ancestry "server farm", it dawned on me that Ancestry spends a lot of resources to allow us to have FREE AMTs. We can have and manage our family tree in that online format. So the limitation makes some sense to me about what we could and could not access from that AMT. The subscription based records and images, no problem, but the Publish AMTs .... not so sure.

That has been a long standing complaint about the quality of AMTs, then it dawned on me that maybe this limitation made some sense. If I had access to every public AMT I could create a large, undocumented tree. Maybe Ancestry is trying to encourage us to maintain our subscription or use a lesser subscription for various duration and times to build up our documentation for our online tree.

We still can maintain our AMT, invite people to our tree, take advantage of Ancestry DNA for our own tree.

The same would happen if you use FTM2012 or FTM2014. You can still sync to your AMT, just not have access to the Records and not have access to other AMTs. 

It is my understanding that the Library Edition of Ancestry has the same restrictions. That is, access to a subscription from your local library. You can see the Records from there, just not Ancestry Member Trees.

While you have your active subscription on Ancestry.com AND FTM2012 or FTM2014 you will have those images that you want in FTM2012 of FTM2014. You will notice that those images from Ancestry.com in FTM2012 of FTM2014 will NOT be uploaded to your AMT. 

When you let your subscription lapse on Ancestry, you will loose access to those records in your AMT BUT they will still be on your PC or Mac in FTM2012, FTM2013, FTMM-2 or FTMM-3 (the new Mac Versions) Media folder for that file.

These are my observations on this topic.


_______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Thursday, December 12, 2013

AncestryDNA and Ancestry Member Trees

On Thursday's at 1:05PM, I try to catch Crista Cowan's Live Stream Bearfoot Genealogist live broadcast online. Today was one of those days, BUT she went through what she was talking about so fast that I couldn't keep up. Too Fast, in this case isn't a bad thing, some folks may not be all that interested. The Good News is that it is recorded.

I went back, listened, paused, got my DNA Results page open, restarted, and when through my results on one screen, while watching Crista on another screen. Followed what she was doing, page by page.

Here is a link to this Live Stream: http://livestre.am/4I5Ht

I looked at the first, closest "hit", following the HINT (shaky leaf). I opened this screen.

I made a note, as Crista suggested after I looked at my Ancestry Member Tree. I knew the names in the tree, on this page, and I knew who Thomas was. He is the older brother to my Charles, both sons of Capt. John Worthington.



I have emailed G.H. through Ancestry's email application and await a response.

My DNA challenge isn't for Thomas, nor his father, but I have hopes that this other researcher has information on Thomas' grandparents. There WILL be questions about that information, but at least I have my first "new" DNA match using AncestryDNA with the use of my Ancestry Member Tree.
_______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Monday, December 9, 2013

GeneaMusings Challenge - Ruby A (R A) Collins Mother

In Finding John's Other Grandmother, R.A. (--?--) Collins in Online Resources my friend Randy Seaver had an open, or not quite confirmed, finding for the mother of Ruby A (Snearly) Collins.

Toward the end of his blog post he posted this:

There is no image for this record - it's only an indexed database.  But it provides a lot of very helpful information, including:

*  Name: Ruby A. Collins (Ruby A. Snearly)
*  Birth Date of 20 May 1899
*  Birth Place:  Ill.
*  Death Date:  13 Nov 1922
*  Death Place: Bement City, Jasper Co., Ill
*  Death Age:  25
*  Burial Date: 15 Nov. 1922
*  Burial Place:  Hunt City, Jasper Co., Ill.
*  Occupation:  housekeeper
*  Race:  White
*  Marital Status: M
*  Gender: Female
*  Father Name:  John Snearly
*  Father Birth Place: Jasper Co., Ill.
*  Mother Name:  Ruella C. Downey
*  Mother Birth Place:  Ill.
*  Spouse Name:  Collins
*  FHL Film Number: 1557035

I looked up the FHL Film number and it referred me to the FamilySearch record collection for Death certificates for the state of Illinois, 1916-1945, excluding Chicago with the exception of stillbirths; index, 1916-1938; internet index, 1916-1950 That referred me to the Illinois State Death Index website, which has less information than the Ancestry indexed database.  There was a link to the "Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths, 1916-`1947" database on FamilySearch, and the indexed entry there for Ruby A. Collins has the same information as the Ancestry.com indexed database, and also provides an item number and a certificate number.

What I don't know is if the actual Illinois death certificate will have more information than is in this index.  for instance, will it have the spouse's given name?  Obviously, I could write for an Illinois death certificate for Ruby A. (Snearly) Collins, but my conclusion is that this is "good enough" for this survey phase of my family tree climbing fun.

Subsequently, I have found John Snearly's parental family, and am stuck on the parents of Adelia (it's Adelia in the 1900 to 1940 census records and the Illinois Death Certificate Index and her Find A Grave memorial, not "Ruella") C. Downey.  


The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/11/finding-johns-other-grandmother-ra.html

Copyright (c), Randall J. Seaver

I was reviewing my Conflicts, in my To Do List, and found this entry:

Is Adelia C _____ and Ruella C Downey the same person. If I don't know a name, I use the 5 underscores. It helps remind me of work to do, but in this case, based on Randy's blog post, I thought I would see if I could 'prove' Randy right (or wrong).

Here are my research notes for Adelia C or Adelia married to John Snearly or Snearley:
24 Nov 2013 1910 Census, Illinois - John B Snearley
28 Nov 20131900 Census, Illinois - John I  Snearly
05 Dec 20131920 Census, Illinois - John  O Snearly1930 Census, Illinois - John SnearlyCrowdSourcing Opportunity of 14 Nov 2013
06 Dec 2013FindAGrave - Adelia C Snearly
Was it Jno I, John, John O, John B; Snearly, Snearley. I think John O Snearly.

Was it Adelia C _____, Adelia _____, or Ruella C Downey

The only record I had on his Ruella C Downey, was that Illinois Death INDEX. Since I record what I find, I recorded on 24 Nov 2013 "Illinois, Death and Stillbirths Index, 1916-1947 - Rudy A Collins. That's when I made that entry on the To Do List.

I should be able to find some record on "Ruella", nothing. I then looked at Ruby A Collin's siblings as they had some unique names. Nothing on Ancestry at all. Then I remembered where I found Ruella and went to Family Search.org and found:
09 Dec 2013Illinois Marrriage - John O Snearly

"llinois Marriages, 1815-1935", Family Search (www.familysearch.org), Indexing Project (Batch) Number: M53383-7; System Origin: Illinois-ODM; GS Film number: 1312612; accessed 09 Dec 2013. Person Details for John O. Snearly;.

John O Snearly married Adelia Downey on 14 Aug 1888 in Jasper, Illinois. Right time frame and right place. Yes, this is another INDEX and we can't write a proof statement based in an Index, but we know where to send John, if he is interested.

I merged my two people in FTM2014 and have uploaded my file to the AMT for Randy to share, if he chooses.

So, the Ancestry and Family Search Illinois, Death and Stillbirths Index, 1916-1947 have the mother of Ruby wrong, but the Marriage Index is correct. Ruella or Adelia Downey? I think Adelia is the correct name.

_______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Blog Posts On Hold

To follow the lead of my friend Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings I had planned to export a GEDCOM file from FTM2014 and import them into Legacy Family Tree 8 and Roots Magic 6 (with the new patch). I have decided not to do so. I did the testing to both, but I ran into the age old GEDCOM issue.

The good news is that the data made it and both were able to locate my media files. However, the clean up in either program is not what I want to tackle right now. The Citation information made it over to both.

The issue(s) have to do with notes. Again, this isn't a new issue. For example, I have Person Notes and Research Notes. Two separate items for me. The Person Notes is for the Stories about that person. Oh, they made it, but the Research Notes were in the same part of the record, even though there are research notes for the person.

None of the Place Names were error free. Both Legacy and Roots Magic, for example, want to use United States, while FTM2014 uses USA. With 144 places, in the file I used. It is too much clean up.

I couldn't get the Mapping feature to work at all in Roots Magic 6. I must be missing something there, I even worked on the Roots Magic 6 Edit Place to use the Roots Magic 6 "standard". What was really interesting is that I was taken to the correct place on the BING Map just couldn't use the Mapping feature with the program, either by place or person.

I am choosing not to post my results because of the underlying technology (GEDCOM) for sharing our research. I guess if I hadn't spent so much time, carefully using Research Notes, Source Notes, and Fact Notes I might test further. If you don't use those features within FTM2014, the transfer is probably much better.

_______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

GeneaMusings Challenge Summary

A little over a month ago, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2013 to be exact, my genealogy friend Randy Seaver made this blog post. CrowdSourcing Opportunity: When and Where did John Louis Powell Die?

Always up for a challenge, I thought I would take this project on. I have posted as a result of that challenge a number of time. But, I want to draw this challenge, for me, to a close. I do want to share a couple of things that I learned along the way.

  • Have a Genealogical Question to Answer
  • Stay focused
  • Record what you find (where and when)
  • Don't create a "brick wall"
  • Have a search strategy
  • Review what you have
  • Have a research log
  • Create To Do lists AS YOU GO
  • Establish guidelines when sharing an Ancestry Member Tree
Each of the above could and may become blog posts in the future. This blog post is a summary of the findings. Future Blog posts will probably high light a couple of people in this tree that Randy has blogged about on Geneamusings


Here is what the Plan Workspace, File Statistics show at this point.


With Randy's blog post, I now have 328 people in this file going back 7 generations with 85 Surnames.

All 75 Sources are using the FTM2014 Template Feature. I have added 211 Media items; all of them are linked to Citations. Speaking of Citations, the 187 citations are linked to 3,514 Facts.

Looking at the summary on the Ancestry Member Tree (AMT):


The number of people match, but there appears to be differences in the way Photos and Records are counted.

Of importance here is the number of Hints that can be followed. 202 of the 328 people in the file have Hints, in the AMT.

There is where the plan comes into play. At least it did for me.

My focus was on the "home" person. Randy's friend John. I attempted to stay focused on his direct line. I identified 8 of his 4th great-grandparents, 14 of his 3rd great-grandparents, 10 of his 2nd great-grandparents, all 8 of his great-grandparents. I was able to collect a fair amount of information on 15 of these ancestors.

My strategy was to use three sources to collect and verify as much as possible the information collected. 1) Census Records, 2) Find-A-Grave memorials 3) Ancestry Hints. The census records helped establish family groups; the Find-A-Grave records helped with locations and dates that lead back to census records, and the Hints were part of that mix. BUT I had to stick with the Direct Ancestors or I would never get done. Every couple of days, I would print the Direct Ancestor Chart to keep me focused.

The Ancestry.com website helped with the Census Records. I looked at 43 census records (citations), (back to 1870), and picked up 1,647 links to facts. Ancestry overall provided 78 citations with links to 1,850 facts.

On the Find-A-Grave website, I found 80 memorials (citations) linking to 1,407 facts. One contributor provided over 500 links to facts. In the process I identified 2 or 3 living relatives or suspected relatives for John.

I think the most important lesson for me was that FTM2014 has the features to help do a good research plan. There are features in FTM2014 that were  not there when I started. This specific file I would and have shared with Randy. I want to close this project down so that I can take what I learned, about how to manage a file, to put to use in my own family file.

The second most important lesson that I learned was a way that can be used to Collaborate with another genealogist using the Ancestry Member Tree.

DearMYTLE hosted a Hangout On Air with Randy and I to discuss this topic.

Ancestry Member Trees: Practical collaboration tips


I want to thank DearMYRTLE, and Randy, for having the conversation. From that conversation, I created a Note Person in my family file, in FTM2014, that would be uploaded to the AMT. That person has some Notes about the tree and how I have set the tree up. In FTM2014 I see that in the Plan Workspace, but someone looking at the AMT can't see that. I also added my ToDo list to the person. I have 309 Tasks or To Do Items to be worked on.



I mentioned that I have been keeping Research Notes as I went along. This is something else that an AMT viewer can't see. These tree reports were generated from within FTM2014, saved as an RTF file and was in the Notes for the Notes Person. These three reports show up as Recent Stories on the Tree Overview and the Notes Person profile.

What also can't be seen in the AMT are the 211 media items, of which most are from Find-A-Grave. I don't have permission to post them and FTM2014 allows me to mark them as Private. That is a GREAT feature. Those media files are important to me, as the researcher, so I can see them from within FTM2014. The good news there is that the Citation for the information, from that memorial page, should appear as a link in the AMT, that will go to the Find-A-Grave memorial page where the image resides. I just checked and it  does. There is a Citation and in that citation is a Web Address.

Thank you Randy for the Challenge. I learned lots.
_______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Friday, December 6, 2013

FTM2014 - Web Clipping from Find-A-Grave - Trick

I find the Enable Web Clipping feature very helpful when working with a memorial on the Find-A-Grave website. However, the formatting of Location (Place Name) Information causes a problem when the merge is complete and the Place Name is not in the right format.

For Example:

Mound Cemetery Hunt City Jasper County Illinois, USA

There are no commas in that string of characters. The comma is used by Family Tree Maker to separate the Cemetery Name, from the City, from the County, and from the State. In the above example there is only one comma.

Also, Family Tree Maker does not use the term "County" in the place name. What Family Tree Maker is looking for is:

Mound Cemetery, Hunt City, Jasper, Illinois, USA

I have found it much easier to resolve this problem BEFORE the Web Merge is complete.

I have selected the Cemetery Name and location and the Web Clipping feature "asked" where do I want to put this hilighted information. Burial Fact, Place field.


It does that exactly the way it is on the Find-A-Grave website.


But, it will be wrong after the merge.

In the lower right corner of the Web Merge screen is a Pencil (Edit) ICON. Clicking that will open up a window where that information can be edited.


A simple adding of the appropriate commas (between the Cemetery Name, the City, the County name, and the State, AND removing the Word County will result in the proper format following the Web Merge.



_______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Saturday, November 30, 2013

FTM2014 - Clean Up Research Notes

I posted earlier: FTM2014 - Why are Research Notes Private ?

Now to clean up "the mess". Not really a mess but thought I would share HOW I made sure that all of my research notes are marked as private. In reality, this review also made sure that I have Research Notes for everyone. (That is the intent of the file I am using for this blog post)

When I start this review, I would create the report, return to the People Workspace, select the "next" person from the Index on the Left, then select the Person View to make my changes. 

Then I remembered that I could access that same information from the Report itself.

Publish Workspace, Person Reports, Notes Report, as described in the last blog post (link at the top of the page) and selected All Individuals, No Check Mark in Show Private Notes and had Research Notes selected. 


18 Pages of people where their Research Notes were NOT marked private.

Selecting the Name (double clicking) will open the Person Edit screen.


From that window I selected Notes, then the Research Notes ICON, and clicked on the Private Notes ICON.


This allowed me to see everyone's research notes and that they had one, and make them private at the same time. Clicking OK at the bottom of that window, returned me back to the Report AND that person was removed from the list.


That's what I wanted. An Empty Report for Unprivatized Research Notes. I saved this report in the Saved Reports list as part of a series of reports to be run from time to time.

_______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

FTM2014 - Why are Research Notes Private ?

No one may have ever asked that question but while working on my current project, I have kept all of my research logged in the Research Notes. That, in and of itself, has been very helpful.

First, here is the Person Notes for Mary:


As I have shown earlier, I have been citing my note entries below the text of the Note item.

I also have been using the Fact Notes feature. You can see IF there are notes for a specific FACT with a number in the third column of numbers on the right end of the Fact in question. Clicking on the Note Tab on the right, you can see the notes for that fact.




Back to the Notes Tab for the person is the Research Notes ICON. I have been recording where I searched, or where I found the Facts for that person. It's not detailed, for the positive searches, as there would be Citations from that search. Negative search results would also be recorded here. (where, when, search criteria, etc). Some times I will add a ToDo / Task if I want to return to that source at a later time.

I had been changing the default setting of "private" (the Lock ICON to the right of the Research Notes ICON) to not private.


The Research Notes is the 2nd ICON under the Person Notes. The 3rd ICON is, by default, marked as Private where the ICON is orange.

I was wondering why that was. 

What I normally do, when I make a change, is to check the output of any change I might make. In this case I didn't do that until now.

I went to the Publish Workspace, Person Tab, and Notes.


I may have mentioned earlier that it is helpful to read the report description on the right.

I selected only the Person Notes to be displayed in this report. In this case I ran the report for everyone.


Now to see the Fact Notes:


I selected Fact Notes on the Right. In this case, the Person Notes was still active. That can be turned on or off.

What about the Research Notes?

Here is where that feature becomes important. At first, when I selected Research Notes, none appeared. Selecting Private Notes, the Research Notes appeared.


I do have Private Fact Notes as well.

But, what about the Person, Individual Report?

From the Publish Workspace Person Report and selecting the Individual Report, and selecting the Items to Include ICON will bring up the default settings or the settings you have saved for that report. In this case only the Person Notes.


The report looks like this.


From the Items to Include ICON we make our choices. I select Fact, Research, and Private Notes. I added the Sources.



Each type of note is marked.


And the Sources are at the bottom of the report.

Bottom Line for me, is that I have complete control over what notes are seen in a report on the Output side. I can see the Private Fact Notes, and Private Research Notes on the input. Now I understand why the Default setting for Research Notes are Private. When running reports I have not wanted all of those Private Notes. I just want to see the Person Notes.

_______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Sunday, November 24, 2013

FTM2014 - Copy/Paste Fact - New in FTM2014

I finally had an opportunity to try out a new feature in FTM2014 that I hadn't tried before. Copy and Paste a Fact.

In my recent post: Recap and What to do with Comments I mentioned that Randy Seaver had posted a comment that I had my data wrong. He was absolutely right (of course). So I went searching for the error of my ways with very little luck. He provided me with the Name of the person that I should have as Berl's wife in 1920. I found her family in the right area at the right time, but couldn't find Ruth A. Then I remembered that census record as having something strange in it. When I found what might have been Ruth's family, all of the names were initials and NOT full names. For example Berl was listed as B E. I went back to my Citation for B E Collins in that 1920 Census Record and found R A. So, I had the Data all of the time, just entered that data to the wrong person.

I had R A Collins listed under Mamie L, Berl's wife from the 1920 Census.



Looking at the Citation, I saw the list of Facts linked to Mamie and knew that I had a number of them. Now how to get that data over to R A Collins. That's when I remembered the Copy / Paste Fact feature.

I created a New spouse for Berl with R A Collins as the name, with NO Citations. I just made that relationship. The Census will do the rest.

I went down the list of Facts, on the Person Tab of the People Workspace, for Mamie and found a 1920 Census that was linked to a Fact. I RIGHT Clicked on that Fact and Selected Copy.



This will copy that Fact with the linked Citation to the Family Tree Maker clipboard. I then changed spouses from the Mini-Navigation bar at the top of the screen and selected R A Collins.

(You may see other entries in the next screen, as I had started to hand enter information when I remembered the Copy/Paste feature.)

Select anywhere on the screen, Right Click and selected Paste.



This will bring up a new window asking where do you want to Paste that information.

The window shows what you have copied, and allows you to Select what person you want to Paste that fact to.



Randy had already pointed out that the first 2 children I had shown earlier were linked to the wrong mother. The above screen shows the Husband / Father and those two children.

Also note that there will be One Citation, One Media File AND One Note. I record the household from the census record for each person in that household, so that information is brought along with the Citation, as it should be.

The paste is complete.


I didn't do a Cut and Paste but a Copy and Paste, because I wanted to verify that it works as it should. So I went back and Deleted that Fact from Mamie.


I did this for all of the Facts for R A Collins including adding a Citation to R A Collins, who I created earlier and I added a new name fact of R A _____ with the 1920 Census. Now I can go back to searching for her birth Surname, which Randy already provided, but I want to find that on my own.

The update is complete.


I made the following entry in my Research Notes:

24 Nov 2013
Reviewed the 1920 Census, Illinois - Berl Collins and determined that I had made a data entry error, recording R A Collins as Mamie Collins. Removed 1920 Census Record and facts from Mamie Colllins and pasted them to a new person, R A Collins
The same research note is in Mamie's record as well.


Lesson Learned: Review what you already have from time to time
_______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Print Friendly