My RM file is working fine in RM7 including Rich Text formatting. When I imported to RM9, the notes overlap and created access errors. I checked and found faint middle dot at the end of sentence (RTF) causes the overlap. Apparently RM9 doesn’t read RTF. Is there any way I can find which person has RTF in the note so I can fix without looking at each person’s data in my huge file? I’ve contacted RM and they said my file is “corrupted”. I’m using Apple Mac with Ventura.
I’m surprised by your assertion that RM7 supports RTF in Notes. I don’t think it does nor has RM Inc ever said so. It does support the very basic bold, italics and underline controls which, iirc, are encided by HTML tags.
If RM Search and Replace does not work to get rid of the ghostly dot, then the options to try are
SQLite queries directly on the database OR
Full GEDCOM export, search and replace in a text editor, import to new database.
It may be that by RTF you simply mean the very limited formatting that RM supports of bold, italics, and underline. RM does not support full blown Rich Text Formatting that includes fonts and tables and numbered and unnumbered lists and pretty much everything else supported by most any word processor.
If that’s what you mean by RTF, then you can find it in RM7 by searching for things like <b> and <i> and <u>. You won’t see the actual HTML strings in the RM notes. Rather, you will see the effects of the HTML strings. It sounds like you maybe have unbalanced HTML tags such as a <b> without a </b> to go along with it. It’s hard to diagnose for sure without having a copy of your database to look at.
If the problem is indeed unbalanced HTML tags, it’s hard to see how they could have gotten there. Normally, you don’t type the tags into notes yourself. Rather, you highlight text and then click on the b or I or u icon to achieve the effect you want. Then RM note editor inserts the needed HTML tags for you. But there is nothing to prevent you from entering the HTML tags yourself, and possibly they could have entered into your RM7 notes via some sort of copy and paste operation of text from outside of RM7. I can’t think of any other way the HTML tags could have become malformed.
Speaking of GEDCOM, you might try creating a GEDCOM from RM7 and importing it into RM9. It’s usually much better just to do a direct import from RM7 into RM9, but this may be a situation that calls for GEDCOM. And doing so may help to diagnose the problem.
I don’t think this situation actually represents a corrupted database in the normal sense of the word. I doubt that there is any sort of malformed database structure. I just think there is some sort of malformed HTML tags in some of your notes. If so, then that’s a data problem and not a database problem.
If you can find the malformed HTML tags as I described, you could copy and paste such notes into a text editor which will removing the formatting and then copy and paste them back into RM. Then you could reapply the formatting by highlighting and clicking the formatting icons. It could be a lot of work. I would be very curious to know how such formatting arose in the first place. Have you ever typed such tags into RM by hand, or did your formatting arise by highlighting text and clicking the b or i or u icons, or did your formatting arise by copying text from outside of RM7 and pasting it into RM7?
It just occurred to me that there is an easier way to remove the formatting of a note in RM7 than copying and pasting into and out of a text editor. Just highlight the whole note, make the whole note bold, and make the whole note unbold. You may have to do the same thing with italics and underline, but I doubt it. You would still need to re-apply the formatting.
I just now tried to recreate your problem by creating a note in RM7 that had unbalanced HTML tags, namely I had a <b> tag without a corresponding </b> tag. I imported that RM7 database into RM9, and it did not crash RM9. So I can’t really recreate your problem.
As I said initially, it’s hard to diagnose this problem without having access to you RM7 database. But despite not being able to recreate your problem so far, I still think the problem has something to do with those HTM tags in your RM7 notes. Did the RM HelpDesk have you submit your RM7 database so they could look at it?
I can’t recall all the details but the support agent did give me your RM7 “laPioneer” file. On my notes it says I received a “SQLite Error 11 - database disk image is malformed” error. The corrupt became so bad I could no longer open it. That is why I told the agent the file is corrupted. Not sure I would trust that RM7 file. Opening it in RM9 is probably why it has overwritten notes. It’s best to look for a clean RM7 backup and start from there.
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