I’ve been working on and posted the above procedures over the last week or so and am pleasantly surprised with the outcomes. If you’re interested, best to start reading at the bottom of the list and work up.
Why import from 8 to 7? I can think of a few reasons:
I committed my database to RM8 and am happy with it but still cannot publish a book from it; I need a workaround.
I haven’t committed my database to RM8 because of some missing or unsatisfactory feature, e.g., Book, but I would if there was a workaround.
I committed my database to RM8 but I’m so frustrated with it, I want to return to 7 and wait until it works better before re-upgrading.
(added a day later) RM8 precludes having the same database open twice and even if a copy is simultaneously open, only one modal window can be active; a RM7 import can be used to view data while RM8 is doing anything.
These procedures can cause no harm to the source RM8 database. They completely overwrite all but one table in the target RM7 database.
These procedures simply underscore the problems with RM8 for most users. Most of us don’t know anything about SQL coding underlying rootsmagic AND should never need to. The RM forums are the only genealogy ones where some people delve into coding for problems with RM. All other genealogy programs do not have users trying to code around such issues.
There are other family tree softwares that have coding discussions, e.g., open-source software and those that have support for plugins. And there are lots of users of those programs who know nothing or very little about the underlying code.
I have also been waiting patiently for the Book feature of RM7 to be added to RM8 but have been advised that this isn’t being considered at this stage, and it was suggested that I use RM7 for this purpose. I appreciate the efforts you have made to find a solution to transfer your RM8 database into RM7 with minimal losses, however I find this process rather daunting (not understanding SQL coding) but have another solution which works for me.
This is only suitable for those using Ancestry and TreeShare, but why not download your Ancestry Tree into RM7 via TreeShare? This assumes you have updated Ancestry (with TreeShare) from your current RM8 database.
Rooty,
Family Historian 7 has a very active group of users that write code to extend the capabilities of the program. The code is available as plugins right off of the FH web site, all for free.
A lot of user discontent with RM 8 would evaporate if they had the same capability.
That should be adequate for the special case that the Ancestry Tree is the ‘master’ database and there is nothing more or different on the TreeShared RM8 database that would be wanted in the RM7 database TreeShared from the common Ancestry Tree. Forget Addresses, Geocodes, Place Details, Notes and Media for Places, custom Source Templates, non-Ancestry sources, Media captions and descriptions, Tasks, FamilySearch matches, shared facts/events and roles, and a bunch more.