I have viewing some YouTube videos regarding the use of Groups to mark say all of the descendants of a particular couple to allow easier filtering and viewing. I have never used groups in RM8 but from reading the Wiki article here: https://files.rootsmagic.com/guides/MagicGuide_Groups.pdf it would appear that Groups can be used in RM8 to mark Ancestors and Descendants of a particular person.
My question is does anyone know if the groups and relevant markings in RM8 transfer to Ancestry, either via Treeshare or a new upload, so as to maintain the association?
As a further issue when I started to explore groups in RM 8, after the initial post of the above question, as the result of a Google search I came across this page: https://files.rootsmagic.com/guides/MagicGuide_Groups.pdf which shows how in I assume a previous version of RM (as it is dated June 2016) a way of adding specific groups of people to a groups (one page 3 of this article) so ancestors, descendants of a highlighted person. I can see no way of doing this in RM 8 and the Wiki for RM 8 is very light on how to use groups. So another question can this be done in RM 8 and if so how?
Groups do not transfer to Ancestry.
I have alot of Groups ie: Born in Missouri, Burial in Oregon, Died in New Jersey, etc - with each state listed for the person.
This also allows for reports to be printed just for specific Groups. Handy for finding where people were living in 1950.
Create a Group of people you need to keep researching. How about those Irish or French ancestors? The possiblities are endless.
In RM8, click on the Groups tab in the left side bar. It’s in the bottom half of the left sidebar. There are four tabs there, and the Groups tab is the rightmost of the four.
After you are in the Groups tab, click the Edit icon (the Pencil icon) and click New to make a new group.
thejerrybryan thank you I found it, I was looking at the extreme left where Home, File, People, Places etc etc is.
The interface seems quite clunky, the fact that you have to create a group and then cannot immediately go into the group and add people. You have to create and then go back to the list and hit the pencil to edit.
What is the purpose of the tick box next to the groups names? Even with it ticked when I select edit by clicking on the pencil it still presents me with a list of the groups to select one to edit. And then after I exit the Groups popup (the one that has New, Edit, Delete and Rename buttons) by pressing OK then both tick boxes are selected when I return to the original groups screen that you describe. Not sure if Groups is one of many items that seem to be a work in progress in RM8.
MadDog as you say Groups do not upload to Ancestry, which based on my past interaction with RootsMagic they will say is Ancestry’s fault.
Don’t even use the + sign to create a group. Just click the edit (pencil) and click the New box.
I think the user interface would be much improved just by getting rid of the + and pencil icons altogether. Instead, replace them with a box that says Manage Groups or else with an icon that means the same thing. And in practice, the pencil icon doesn’t actually mean Edit in this case. It really means Manage Groups.
And in all truth, the Groups function doesn’t really belong on the left sidebar at all. This is a carryover from RM7 that shouldn’t have been carried over. The Quick Groups function there doesn’t work correctly anyway and is already handled correctly from within the Edit Person screen. The Manage Groups function should be on dropdown from the Tools icon on the People page. The only Groups function that should be in the left sidebar at all should be the Groups filter function on the Index tab.
The tick boxes next to the Group names are the RM8 version of what RM7 called Quick Groups.
There are two totally separate ways to manage which people are in which groups. The first way of doing it when you click the Edit (pencil) icon on the Groups tab. This allows you to bulk add or bulk delete people from a group. For example, you can add all descendants of John Doe to a group or you can add everybody born between 1890 and 1900 to a group. It works with one group at a time and works with multiple people at a time. It’s a very powerful facility. This is the one that I think should be moved out of the left sidebar and onto the Tools icon in the People screen.
The second way is Quick Groups. Well, that’s what RM7 called it and RM8 doesn’t seem to call it that, but it’s the same thing. With the Quick Groups way, you can add one person to one or more groups by checking the groups and you can delete one person from one or more groups by unchecking the groups. It works with one person at a time and with multiple people at a time. Inn its own way and for its own purposes, it’s also a very powerful facility. The Quick Group facility is automatically just there any time you click on the Group tab in the left side bar, and it’s also just there in the Edit Person screen. It doesn’t work correctly in the left side bar and I think it should be removed from there anyway because it causes great confusion. It works just fine in the Edit Person screen.
Terry,
Ancestry does have groups, please see: AncestrySupport not played with them that much but there are a number of youtube videos that explain and demonstrate their use.
You ask " Is it RootsMagic’s fault that Ancestry does not accept RM Groups in its API" well I am not knowledgeable enough to know the answer. However in another post that I was involved in regarding uploading to Ancestry (here: Uploading to Ancestry from RM 8 - Avoiding huge numbers of images - #21 by TomH) I copied a response from RM Support which stated that " *We don’t have a lot of control over the Ancestry API since Ancestry is the one that builds and maintains it.*" However much more knowledgeable people on that post thought that RM did have control over what can be passed to Ancestry.
So I am unsure what the reality is, but for sure having tested this, groups are not passed to Ancestry.
The reality for me at least is that when I have made significant changes to the tree that exists in RM I upload a complete new tree to Ancestry. This is because of the limitations in TreeShare and the change list which are acknowledged in the above post by RM support ( they state *So it’s hard to say sometime what triggers people being added to it.) So the lack of transference of groups may be an issue.
Ancestry doesn’t have groups and therefore RM’s groups obviously can’t be uploaded to Ancestry. Nevertheless, I wish RM’s groups could be used more productively with Ancestry. In particular, if I upload my RM database to Ancestry, it’s all or nothing. For example, I can’t make a group of non-living people in RM and upload only those people. As a result, if I want to upload my RM database to Ancestry so I can get Ancestry’s Webhints, I feel like I have to keep my Ancestry tree private. If I could upload only non-living people, I would probably feel comfortable making my Ancestry tree public. Similarly, I have proven and unproven people in my RM database. I only want to upload and make public the proven people. Again, groups could handle this if only TreeShare would upload only a group instead of uploading everybody.
Well, I immediately stand corrected on Ancestry not having groups. It’s good to know that it does, and I will investigate. But as has already been mentioned, Ancestry having groups is not sufficient. It also matters whether or not the Ancestry API supports the groups, and I gather that it does not.