Two Weeks in - Progress is slow. A bit of a review

RootsMagic
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This isn’t a tip. Nor is it a question. But I had to pick a tag!

Today is a full 2 weeks since I started manually transferring my tree of about 800 people over to RM10. I chose to go this route vs a gedcom import a) to learn the program really well, and b) cleaning up a gedcom mess is overwhelming.

Today I finally figured out how to attach all the repositories I’d already entered. And yesterday, I finally got syncing to Ancestry worked out. I quite like the manual sync, I can see exactly what’s going on. However… source titles end up as gobbedly gook on Ancestry. The citation and notes appear mostly okay, but I don’t understand why the titles look fine in RM and are destroyed on Ancestry. My tree is private, so I probably won’t worry about it.

I am quite pleased with the ease and ability to lump my sources. And I am very happy with citation web tags. Love the health tab, but not seeing much point yet in the DNA tab. There’s not enough detail to do much with it, or if there is, I haven’t discovered it yet.

The integration of maps into Places is sad. The developers should take a peek at how Synium’s MFT has integrated maps, and media. It’s a beautiful thing. But they are functional at least, I’ll get over it.

For those that switched from other software and chose manual entry, I’d be interested in your approach. I actually entered my direct lines with birth and death dates as far back as I’ve researched, then chose to work backwards, starting with census records, and adding lateral lines as needed, and now I’ve moved onto newspaper clippings, as I have probably 500 or more of those to enter. I seem to get in a groove if I choose one source type at a time. Yet I’ve only added 83 master sources, and 265 citations, despite spending copious hours the past two weeks!

I have spent a fair bit of time reading through this forum, learning from you all, and greatly appreciate the info that has been shared. I’m hoping to avoid having to redo much, but new software takes time to learn.

I love the groups, and have chosen to limit color coding to 3 colors, since you can only have one active per person, paternal, maternal, and DNA matches. Everything else is grouped.

All in all, quite pleased, and appreciative of this forum.

Progress
Progress1920×880 93.3 KB

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The “Ancestry Record” Source template is the only template where you can create a citation name that displays as intended after a treeshare up to ancestry. With all other source templates (including edited copies of the “Ancestry Record” Template), treeshare creates the citation name displayed on ancestry as a semi-colon delimited concatenation of citation detail field values.

The one big qualifier is if the event was originally treeshared down from ancestry. Then, subsequent treeshare events of the original fact or copied facts will appear in the ‘Ancestry Sources’ part of the ancestry display and none of the RM db specific text (for example, Research Notes) will appear on ancestry.

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It’s too bad, but I guess it is what it is. I never ever, EVER want to sync down from Ancestry. That way leads to disaster. :slight_smile:

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Understood. I should have added that Fact Notes get handled differently when sent across the API. Regardless of whether the citation originated from ancestry via treeshare or was created in RM, Fact Notes appear like a separate citation after a treeshare upload. They are linked to the event, have a citation name of ‘fact type’ + “Note” (e.g. Birth Note), and display in the ‘Other Sources’ section of the webpage. Ancestry strips out pretty much all formatting characters so the note just contains plain text with no formatting.

I actually do treeshare down from ancestry because I prefer the way that the ‘Ancestry Sources’ portion of the webpage displays source details. But I agree with your comment of risking disaster. My workflow is to edit every citation and media file after a treeshare event. There’s no time saver in this approach, I just end up with the anID value so the citation keeps the same look and feel as if ancestry were my primary tool. And I use the Fact Note for any comments or details that I want to add.

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I used FTM for several years because it transferred data back and forth with Ancestry so well… or so I thought. Then I started finding citations randomly assigned to completely unrelated people. And moved on.

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FTM 2024 is a mac standard program and I have seen no sync citation problems. However I only sync Up to ancestry never down. Valid hints and records found on Ancestry are manually downloaded and entered. I love the ancestry Print..Zoomed Original..with sources to PDF option which gives me the original record (ie census), text extract and a source citation page as one media file from which I can manually enter source..citation..URL.

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That’s only way. Sync up, never down.

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When V8 came out, I figured I’d learn it by a do over of my database (not the entire thing).
Did the same approach that you took, direct line 3 ancestors only BMD.
Did parent’s census with new Source for each one. Added census Media with standardized name.
Dad had no siblings, Mom had 2 so I added them since they were in the Census.
Moved up the tree to grandparents and did the same.
I only added 1 or 2 pictures of the person to display on their Edit screen.
Still have my main database plus a mini-database with close relationships.

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I’m a bit of a weirdo as I’ve never cared about pictures. I just want the stories :slight_smile:

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Photos can sometimes tell a hidden story even about people you sort of knew. One photo I googled told me that someone spent summers on Ellesmere Island in the far north working on early satellite and distant early warning systems.

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I saw a lot of weird things in FTM – well … most of them I learned after testing and migrating to RM. I really did not know how messed up things were but it seem like most of the issues came from Ancestry.

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Yeah. I’m pretty confident that the folks that swear they’ve never had issues just haven’t found them yet.

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“A picture is worth a thousand words” :slight_smile:

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For me RM10 is not what I need or want and is a downer as compared to the plain, easy to see, screens and intiutiveness of RM7 in which I have over 309,000 individuals (in over 30 years) going back to early New England. It is a very stable program generating aImost no error messages. I have chosen not to use the new features available in RM10 except for the FamilySearch automatch feature primarily because I need to be able to contribute to large shared databases which adhere to seemingly outdated gedcom standards. From the discussions on this forum, most likely many of the newer conventions would not transfer well. I too have not added pictures to RM although I have put some on my DNA related file on my much smaller database at Ancestry. I have been hoping for the developers to go back to an interface more like RM7 for versions in the future, but my guess is that this will never happen. In the meantime I continue to use RM7 for data entry and RM10 daily for my FamilySearch work. As a senior citizen I choose to do data entry in RM7 rather then to learn the new conventions of RM10 which would make me less productive.. I am sure that others on the list share this approach.

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Perhaps the mess came when RM miss handled the gedcom. When I imported to RM and exported a gedcom back to FTM it was an obvious disaster that bore little resemblance to the imported gedcom from FTM.

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I have found that to be the case with each software and gedcoms. It’s just too inconsistent to be reliable, and requires a huge effort to clean up. Probably an impossible feat with a large database.

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I also found a lot of weired things in FTM after I switched over to Rm several versions ago.

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Re tinsquared’s comment; That is what I decided years back when I was just starting out with genealogy. I accidentally started with Family Origins, finding the DOS predecessor to RM in a sale bin. I use to export to WorldConnect and soon learned what conventions were needed for a successful gedcom export and import. I have been with RM every version since except 4 and now have settled on RM7 with use of RM10 f or my FamilySearch comparisons. I attach some media to my smaller DNA database on Ancestry, but for RM7, just continue with data. I have learned to enter data fairly quickly by keeping my goals for sharing online consistent by going back to early New England ancestors wherever possible. I also lump my sources. Finders of my work can make their sources more specific should the choose. I work mostly on generational links which are needed for tracing lines to join genealogical societies. I am always interested to hear how others approach their research.

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