Same data on iMac and Windows

I will have rootsmagic 10 on an iMac computer. I wish to keep my data on it but also put a copy of my data onto my daughters windows computer so that she can us it. Any advise please.

.rmtree files can be read by both systems. Just give her a copy of your data base and any media you have. She can copy the media to her pc in a folder structure of her choice, open RM, set her folder structure under settings, copy over your data base, open in RM and re-link the media using the “Fix Broken Link” tool.

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she might need her own license to use full RM version unless she has her own (unless she is in same household).

Kevin

I’m a Windows user who does not have a Mac with which to test. But there have been reports of a minor data problem when the same RM database is stored both on a Mac and on Windows. Namely, if you copy an RM database from a Mac to Windows or from Windows to a Mac, you may have to run RM’s database tools on the machine to which the database was copied before you do anything else with it on that machine.

There is no data that’s lost or corrupted when you copy an RM database in either direction between a Mac and Windows. Rather, it appears if there may be a difference in what’s called a collating sequence between the Mac version of RM and the Windows version of RM. A collating sequence is simply how a list of items are sorted, - like a list of people’s names or a list of places or a list of sources, that sort of thing. You and your daughter may not encounter this problem at all. The way to know if you have it is to run Tools > File > Test Integrity. If you do have the problem, the way to fix it is to run Tools > FIle > Rebuild Indexes.

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And an obvious caution…

You have two people who are ‘using’ the data you had better work out which is master and which is slave databases or some other method of managing the data. If you each make a change in ‘my’ database then you start to diverge and data can get lost.

\s\Rick

Thankyou. I will get my daughter her own licence. I just wondered how easy it is to transfer my data on imac to her windows computer?

You can obviously use tools such as USB thumb drives to copy files between Windows computers and Mac computers. You can also use cloud sync services such as Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, iDrive, etc. If you use any of the syncing services, be sure that your RM database is not in a folder which is being synced while you are using RM. Or if your RM database actually is in such a folder, be sure to pause any syncing activity while you are using RM.

If she is just going to use it and not add to it, that’s fine.

However, if she is going to be updating or you are, you will need to figure out how to keep track of the work, since they are not identical. Maybe each pick a Color to use.

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In addition to Jerry’s comments, you should be aware that the user community noticed that there seems to be a slight difference to the internal indexing method on mac and windows versions. This isn’t an issue, just run the tools (File, Tools - Test Integrity, Reindex, Clean Phantom Records, and Compact) whenever you use a db that was last updated on a different OS.