Genealogy Chat

> I know that all my hard work will be safe & secure. You should take a good, hard look at what you signed up for with GR! GR gives no guarantee that your data is 'safe & secure' and its an extraordinary expectation to think that you could achive that for $19.95 per annum! GR can be be useful as *one of several* places on the web to concurrently store GEDCOM copies of your genealogical data, thus spreading the risk of a single site becoming unavailable, but in common with most genealogy sites the reality is that GR as a commercial enterprise could disappear at any moment! If you want 'safe and secure' storage of your genealogical data, then you will need to take care of it yourself. FTM 2005 (and other similar genealogical software), is the way to do that as it supports saving data in forms where it can written to CD-R disk, loaded up to several web sites as GEDCOMs, or just backed up as data on a general backup system for your PC. As others have already said, FTM 2005 is easy to use and very flexible. Cheers, Bill Sydney, Australia

Hi Sarah. It's very frustrating when something happens that you don't understand, it's just a matter of know how. I've had many customers phone me for advice saying that they've lost all their data when trying to form gedcoms etc. FTM stores your data in a separate file within it's own program folder, if you uninstall the program it does not remove the data file so when you re-install the program it will pick up and open the last file you used. When you import the gedcom into FTM as per the instructions already given just give it a different name than the other file you have, or you can just add a number to it to make it different, when you save the file it will by default be in, My Computer, C Drive, Program Files, FTM 2005, that's where your family file will be. When you open FTM and you don't want to open the last file you used, navigate FTM to the above file paths and double click the icon that you have given the new file name to. Job done. FTM will always open the last file you viewed so if you want to open a different file you must go to File, Open and then navigate to the FTM folder to select which file you want to ope. Good luck. Carol www.genealogyprinters(.)com

Hi Sarah I'm sorry to hear you are having problems, I use FTM2005 and think its a fantastic program although I do it the other way round to you, keep my main tree on there and export it to Genes every now and then. Anyway, i have just tried exporting my tree from Genes to FTM to see if it worked and it did. On Genesreconnnected I went into 'Import/Export' tree and chose export. When the 'save as' box came up, i chose to save it on my desktop. The file exported. Then I opened FTM2005 and from the file menu, chose 'Open'. When the box appeared, I changed the file type at the bottom tpo GEDCOM and then chose the file I had just exported from Genes. It opened up Ok, as a second file alongside the one I already have on FTM - I didn't need to reinstall or delete any info. Everyone is connected as they should be and all the info seems to have come across ok. I don't know why you are having trouble but it definately isn't right that you have to keep uninstalling/reinstalling the program and you shouldn't have to delete any data first, either. Sam x

Sorry you are having all these probs Sarah, I cant say Ive had any at all and Im am totally useless at techi stuff. I put all my info on FT2005 then back it up with a rewritable cd and also update my family homepage on the FT2005 internet option. That way I have it safe in three separate places. You seem to do it the other way round, put it on GR and then transfer it over. I do hope someone can help you - its probably something really simple. Good luck

Hi, I am absolutely wringing my hands ... I really REALLY can't get to grips with Family Tree Maker. I've had it since April and it's continually causing me headaches. It sucks! Although you can do great things with it - like compiling genealogy reports out of your data with just a few clicks - I find it totally user unfriendly when it comes to my Genes Reunited Gedcom. GR - though a bit slow, clunky and with not very many options for printing out your info - is a wonderful thing to use for safe-keeping of data and I wouldn't be without it. I enter all new info onto my GR tree first and foremost, as it's such a 'welcoming' set-up and I know that all my hard work will be safe & secure. After I've done a lot of additions to my GR tree, the idea is to use GR's 'Export Gedcom' option to update all the info on my FTM tree. Well, that was the theory, anyway!! I've found that the only way to achieve this is to uninstall the FTM programme (thereby obliterating all data contained within) so that I can start with a clean slate and import my GR data wholesale. Perhaps I'm a bit thick and that's not the way to do it - but what is??!! Anyway, that's how I've been doing it since April - bit of a bind, but it worked. TODAY I tried to do it after spending two whole days on going through notes and doing new data entry (just found heaps of info from someone else researching one of my lines) ... and the darned FTM programme won't go blank! I've tried uninstalling it and reinstalling it about 10 times, but each time there is all the old info (or at least some of it), which means when I try to import the Gedcom from GR about 70 error messages come up and when I try to click on an individual they remain just that: an individual!! Not much fun having a family tree that's totally fragmented into single entities!! When I try to use FTM none of the people in it are connected to anyone else - and I'm sure it's because I can't wipe the old info. I tried rebooting too (usually a cure-all for glitches), but even that doesn't work. The FTM site is utterly useless because they don't answer queries and I wasted heaps of time going through the FAQs and messageboards. PLEASE can someone advise me? I'll love you forever!! In hope, Sarah (This WOULD have to happen on the day I'm due to visit an elderly technophobe uncle who I'd been planning to impress with what FTM could do as regards reports and family tree printouts. Curses!)