My comments/thoughts, assuming I understand comments in #90 and #62 [and hopefully not making them confusing] are as follows:

Duff’s second sentence [“Of course if you’re adding multiple media items at one time which pertain to different categories, you’ll leave them uncategorized when adding and then categorize them individually later.”]

Assuming you have all your media stored on Windows, a methodology to overcome the problem shown in the Duff’s second sentence is to use the search, copy and paste capability of MS Windows.

For example, here is what I have done. [I am presently using FTM 2006 v16 and all my media are stored on Windows awaiting further fixes/enhancements of FTM 2010]

1-Create a Folder on your computer called, say, Death Records (i.e., One Category of FTM 2010 Media will be called “Death Records”)

2-Search the folder/folders on your computer where you have stored all your Media,using the search capability of Windows, e.g., All or part of the file name, A word or phrase in the file, so-called “Look In” area of all your files and other criteria available in Windows Search [see Windows Search mechanism for details]

3-Copy all the files you found in 2 in one “fell swoop” (using the multi-file saving capability of Windows) into your Folder Called “Death Records”

4- Go through the images in the “Death Record” Folder and delete those few that aren’t Death Records. Note: You may have to do steps 2 and 3 couple of times to get all the death records into the new folder [the number of times you will have to do steps 2 and 3 depends on how good a job you originally did in naming you images]

After you have created the folder called Death Records with all your images in it then use FTM 2010 to do what Duff says in his first sentence — repeated here [The new capabilities for handling media as a group include adding multiple items at once and categorizing them at the same time.]

In my case, I have used this process to create all the Categories/MS Folders I intend on using for FTM 2010. I have stored all these category folders in one Folder called “Media”

I have also created all the Media Categories in FTM 2010 to match exactly the folder names that are included as sub-folders of my “Media” Folder.

When I am ready to upgrade from FTM 2006 to use FTM 2010 (or later version) my intention is to keep the Media Folder outside of FTM 2010 (i.e., not to COPY the Media to FTM 2010 so as not to slow it down or make it to bulky) and LINK the Media to FTM 2010

Thr relationship side of FTM 2010 is greatly enhanced from 2009 and it finds every possible relationship everytime

John D

Hopefully adding for existing images will come soon as I’m not quite ready to “click” 20,000+ times to leverage the category feature. I would be more than willing to review reqs and test any improvements going forward (I got dropped from the last beta as my email changed). -Jon

The new capabilities for handling media as a group include adding multiple items at once and categorizing them at the same time. Of course if you’re adding multiple media items at one time which pertain to different categories, you’ll leave them uncategorized when adding and then categorize them individually later. We recognize the need to assign categories to multiple existing items at once, which is something we’re considering for the future.

If John Smith is an offspring of Tom Smith and is listed below Tom Smith with other brothers and sisters, I would like to see, besides the basic data of birth, death, etc. “married to Mary Kelly, daughter of Fred Kelly and Lucy Rush”. I know this information appears later in the report if John Smith and Mary Kelly have offspring, but it would be very helpful if it also appeared for those couples that are childless. I have seen this done in similar Register Reports from other software, and have found it very useful. Is there, perhaps, something I should be doing that would produce this effect that I am not aware of? I am using FTM 2010, and previously had FTM 2009.

In Dec 2007 I discovered my FTM 13/2006 file was corrupted…as were 18 months of backups of this file. The file could not be compressed; it always terminated at about the 75% complete mark with the message that the file was corrupted and to use my backup. Yeah, right! It also could not be exported to anything. We set it aside while trying to figure out what to do.

On a lark, I used FTM 2010 to open this file…and it did…and it got all 6344 records and 16 photographs. I immediately exported the 2010 file to a GEDCOM file and imported back into FTM 13/2006. Besides not getting the pictures (not a big deal for me), it also truncated the information in the address field and medical field and some fact fields. While the information was in the GEDCOM file, FTM would only import the portion that was visible within the display window. For example, the medical field can contain 200+ characters displayed over 2.5 lines. The import routine would only retrieve the first line; it reported lines 2+ as errors. Fortunately, the import routine generates a .LST file that shows what it dropped. In my case, 147 entries had to be manually fixed. This one file recovery was well worth the purchase price of FTM 2010. My caution: Be very careful of people who tell you to generate a GEDCOM file then import that back into FTM. It may not be as clean as they imply.

We had long ago quit putting photos, documents, etc. into FTM. We now put all photos, documents, etc. into a program called FlipAlbum. This program allows us to build electronic versions of family photo albums that can be burned to a CD and sent to anyone with a computer (they also usually work in many DVD players but not as nice). FTM is now just for text data only.

Broderbund started out with a good/great product. I’m afraid Ancestry is about to run it into the ground. As to enhanced performance: I opened the 6344 person file noted above in FTM 13/2006 and FTM 2010 each in its native format. FTM 13/2006 took 3 seconds to display the splash screen and only 13 seconds to display the file contents. FTM 2010 took 9 seconds to display the splash screen and 30.5 seconds to display the file contents. Faster? Not hardly. Well maybe, compared to 2008/2009 as others suggested. If so, FTM 13/2006 must be a Lamborghini.

Like others here, my version of FTM 2010 will be uninstalled and stored with all my previous versions of FTM with a note to NEVER buy another FTM product until they return to the Classic family view. The Classic view can be considered an hour glass view with one generation on each side of the active person(s). How much more do you need? It is much better, cleaner, more readable and simplier in my opinion. FTM 13/2006 has a pedigree view which I think I have used twice. I just don’t find the pedigree view useful in 99.9999999% of my work.

Same issue here ruinning Vista. Tree download gets to 99% “unzipping” and it stalls. Left it for hours and nothing. Contacted FTM Support three separate times and no help. Everything from “just hit F4 and it will continue to uninstall and reinstall to modifying IE Explorer settings. Sombody needs to quickly acknowledge and address this issue or I too will be seeking a refund.