Hello. I have been using RM 7 (7.7.0.0) on a desktop computer for years and have never had a problem running multi-generational narrative reports, including very long ones with lots of sources and notes. However, lately, when trying to create relatively small reports, they stall out, and I get an “out of memory” message after about about five minutes.
Initially, I thought the problem was too many Firefox tabs open, so I reduced those, closed down all programs, and restarted my computer. (I also checked database integrity, rebuilt indexes, and compacted the database; although, I knew the latter two were not problematic.)
When the computer came back up, I only opened RM and tried to run a 2-generation descendant report for a particular ancestor, which would be a relatively small report. As RM tried to generate the report, I watched the CPU usage using Task Manager, and saw that memory usage by RM kept climbing. It was nearly 400 MB when I closed Task Manager and waited for the “Out of Memory” message that came up. Next, I tried creating 1-generation narrative report on someone with many sources and notes. It did not work. Then I tried generating that kind of report for a single person with almost no notes. The program successfully and quickly created that 1-page report.
Does anyone know what the problem could be that (after years of trouble-free generation of narrative reports) suddenly RM 7 can only generate extremely small ones? I am wondering about a memory leak, but I don’t know why that would suddenly be happening.
Magic! Pure magic! Thank you so much! Your suggestion immediately fixed the problem. The reports are coming up quickly and easily now after returning the settings to Endnotes. I am grateful for your time and attention to my issue!
I decided to try this. I’m using RM10 on a Mac. RM locks up for me as well, running a narrative report with Footnotes vs Endnotes. Has this been reported as needing fixed?
I opened Activity Monitor, and while I’m not showing any abnormal memory usage, the program is “not responding”, and I had to force quit.
It has been a problem for all RootsMagic versions from #4 on. I’ve no experience with earlier ones. It has been exacerbated by the increasing ease with which sources can be found and citations made which results in a flood of footnotes that overflows the pagination algorithm, leaving no land for the story to live on.
I don’t know. Maybe the report writer is reliant on some 3rd party module over which the developers have no control. Or it’s an intractable problem with their own code. And maybe the two RM developers don’t see it as a priority because not all users suffer from it, there’s no damage to the data when it happens, and there’s a workaround - Endnotes.
Normally you can use footnotes. It’s only an issue when the footnotes become larger than can fit on the page. It especially happens when general sources are heavily loaded or research notes are included with lots of text.
