Comments on: Family Tree Maker: Webinar Recap

By: Michelle Pfister

Michelle Pfister — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:35:14 +0000

Karen #43

The Help menu has a good portion of the information that is contained in the Official Guide. The Official Guide is a helpful extra for those who like to work with a printed book, and want more detailed explanations.

The Little Book of Answers covers ways to handle family details that are a little out of the ordinary, for example, how to enter adopted individuals into your tree.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:27:05 +0000

Michelle #41
I agree with everything you stated which is a great tool for correcting errors. It great for identifying why someone is in my tree. However, I used copies of the Kinship Report in FTM 2009 and previous versions for providing to younger family members a list of everyone they are blood related to. These old Kinship Reports where approximately 35 pages long now they are over 90 pages and difficult to read for the uninformed.

Can you possible issue a change FTM 2010 to give the old FTM 2009 Kinship Report also?

By: Mary Lou Biggers

Mary Lou Biggers — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:06:42 +0000

What can you do to help us that have dial-up? We would like this information also.

By: Karen

Karen — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:10:21 +0000

Is everything that is in the
“The Official Guide to Family Tree Maker 2010 Book actually contained in the help secton” of the CD program?
Is the little book of answers FTM 2010 additional information tips to the help program?

By: Andy Hatchett

Andy Hatchett — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:19:01 +0000

Bee Re:#38

I have to start by saying I don’t really “use” FTM as I find it lacks the precision control and customization I feel is needed to produce what I require. My program of choice is The Master Genealogist. I do have a very old copy of FTM that I keep because it does one report that I like so when I want that report I generate a gedcom from TMG and import it to FTM just to run that particular report and then delete that so no data is left in FTM for the next time I need a new report.

That said, my guess would be that FTM needs the numbered version of the files for proper operation. What you might want to do, and it will take a bit of work to set it up, is to do a spread sheet, one column with the name you gave it and one column with the number FTM gave it.

As to how FTM handles backups… I have no clue whatsoever! *grin*

Sorry I can’t be of more help on this. Hopefully a real FTM user will see this and help with your questions.

By: Michelle Pfister

Michelle Pfister — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:50:10 +0000

Chris #30

The relationship calculator in Family Tree Maker 2009 was accurate, but more limited than the one in the 2010 version. Because of this, some relationship problems that existed in the data were not exposed in Family Tree Maker 2009 or were simply reported as “No relationship found.” The new relationship calculator in the 2010 version is much more thorough in finding whatever relationships exist. Some people interpret unexpected relationships as errors in the relationship calculator, when they are actually errors in the data.

If you find something that is unexpected, it probably indicates that there is a relationship you didn’t know about or you have an incorrect parent/child or husband/wife link somewhere in your data.

You can use the relationship calculator from the Tools menu to find these errors and then correct them using the “Attach” or “Detach” options in the “Person” menu.

By: Michelle Pfister

Michelle Pfister — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:49:10 +0000

Nigel #28

Nigel, I’m sorry that you’ve had this difficult situation. We have had no reports of similar problems and have not been able to reproduce this issue on our Windows 7 machines. We will contact you directly.

By: Mary Beth Marchant

Mary Beth Marchant — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:02:01 +0000

For #38-Bee

Duff Wilson was extremely helpful to me with the problem I had getting FTM 2010 to accept one of my files. He kept on with me until the problem was settled. I have found some folks at Ancestry to be helpful and some not so helpful but Duff Wilson is very helpful.

By: BEE

BEE — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:47:21 +0000

Andy, I followed your directions and with a little more guidance, I’m hoping that I can figure all this out before this blog closes. I worked on the smallest of my trees yesterday downloading all the documents to my computer, then uploading them to that tree. I then opened the tree in IE although I always use Firefox, exported it to FTM2010 and am happy to say all the “media files” are there as well as in the folder it created on my computer.
Now my question: I have all these documents that I first downloaded and labeled with the name of the document and who it applies to in a folder labeled with the family name. The media folder that appeared in the “FTM2010″ folder has the same documents with a bunch of numbers as identification. Do I have to keep this duplication? I would prefer the labeled documents over the ones that are numbered, but there is no way I can re-label the ones with the numbers, and I assume deleting them would delete them from FTM, and replacing them with those in the other folder would make them unrecognizable to FTM?
One more question if you don’t mind – if FTM creates an AutoBackup, why does it continually ask if I want to do a “backup” – does the AutoBackup keep updating or not? If I do a “new” backup can I delete previous backups? What about the original AutoBackup? I hope I haven’t taken advantage of your generous offer to help, but this seems to be the only way to get answers in a timely manner. I did get an email from “support” on 5/10 to a previous question with a partial answer, but haven’t gotten a reply to my follow-up question, and may not need it now thanks to this blog, your help, and “trial and error” on my part. I just wish I had known how to download, etc. all those documents as I went along creating my trees on ancestry, as it is now a monumental task.

By: Janice McCoury

Janice McCoury — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:40:40 +0000

I missed the webinar. I just downloaded 2010 FTM and all my notes are missing from the 2009 version. I had to reload 2009 to get to them, is this a fixable issue? What do I have to do to get them into 2010?

Janice