We have an experienced and capable replacement for my role in this community. I would like to introduce you to Russ Hannig. Russ has been with The Generations Network for almost four years, most recently with our magazine and book department. He also started at TGN working for our Member Services department which has given him great insight into the customer base and their needs. Russ is determined to keep you posted on the latest Family Tree Maker news, updates, and helpful articles. I’m confident you’ll find that he hasn’t missed a beat.  Please offer a warm welcome to Russ.

Kind Regards,

Ben

If you are interested in being a volunteer beta tester please fill out the screening questions at the following URL:

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey.zgi?p=WEB227Z3B5DELF

You will be contacted via email if you are selected to be part of the beta test. Thank you in advance for the help and support!

The following items are scheduled to be presented:
• Find and Replace
• Filtering Features
• Working with media
• Sources and Source Citations
• Searching anywhere on the Web

There will be a 20-minute Q&A session afterward.

To attend the webinar, you must first register here.

Duff Wilson will be presenting and yours truly will be moderating. We hope everyone will be able to attend and look forward to having a great presentation and discussion.

Service Pack 3 contains critical stability and performance enhancements. I strongly urge you to install this service pack at your earliest convenience.

The following updates are included in Service Pack 3:

1. Major enhancements in performance
2. Major enhancements in stability
3. Book layout in charts
4. Ability to create saved versions for all charts and reports
5. Ability to save user created templates for charts
6. Ability to apply predefined templates for charts
7. Enhancements to place interactions
8. New Find-and-Replace dialog
9. And much more…

Click Here for a more detailed view of the enhancements and bug fixes included in SP3.

Do you already have Service Pack 3?
If your Family Tree Maker 2008 version number is lower than 17.0.0.965 you will need to install Service Pack 3. To check your Family Tree Maker 2008 version number:

1. Open Family Tree Maker 2008 
2. Click the “Help” menu item at the top of the program 
3. Click “About Family Tree Maker…” 
4. On the Product Information tab there is a version number. If the version number is lower than 17.0.0.965 you need to install Service Pack 3.

Auto-installation
Most users will be able to install Service Pack 3 automatically. To do so:

1. Connect to the Internet 
2. Start Family Tree Maker 2008 
3. You should receive a notification that an update is available. Click the “Update” button 

Microsoft Windows Vista users may need to complete the following additional steps to auto-install the service pack:

1. Close Family Tree Maker if it is open. 
2. Right-click the shortcut for Family Tree Maker 2008 and select “Run as administrator.” 
3. You will be asked to confirm that FTM.exe should have rights to access the computer. Click “Allow.” 
4. The notification that an update is available should appear at this time. If not, please complete the remaining steps listed below. 
5. Click the “Help” menu item at the top of the program. 
6. Click “Check for Updates…” 
7. The program will check for an update and notify you if one is available. 
8. If no notification is displayed and your product version number is not 17.0.0.965 then please do a manual install as described below. 

To manually install the service pack:
If you do not receive an update notification and you are not running version number 17.0.0.965, you will need to manually install the service pack.

1. Close Family Tree Maker 
2. Download the patch 
3. Unzip the file 
4. Run the .exe file

Please note: When installing the executable patch, you may be asked to locate the file to patch. You can select either the Family Tree Maker shortcut located on the desktop or the ftm.exe file which should be located in the C:\Program Files\Family Tree Maker 2008 folder.

To verify that the update worked do the following:

1. Open Family Tree Maker 2008 
2. Click the “Help” menu item at the top of the program 
3. Click “About Family Tree Maker…” 
4. On the Product Information tab there is a version number. If the update was successful the version number will be 17.0.0.965 
5. If no notification is displayed and your product version number is not 17.0.0.965 then please do a manual install as described above

Technical support is also available at 1-877-FTM-2008 (1-877-386-2008).

Below is a list of enhancements and bug fixes currently included in SP3:

Enhancements/New features:

• Major enhancements to performance, improvements including:
  • Startup time
  • File load time
  • Report/Chart creation time
  • General navigation
  • Memory usage
• Major enhancements to stability throughout the program
• Book layout in charts for:
  • Descendant Chart
  • Hourglass Chart
  • Vertical Pedigree Chart
• Ability to create saved versions for all charts and reports
• Ability to apply predefined templates for charts
• Ability to save user created templates for charts
• Enhancements to place interactions, including:
  • New Change Place Name dialog allowing for easier changing of place name and description information
  • Double-clicking and right clicking additions to the Places workspace
• New Find-and-Replace dialog with additional ability to search with wildcards and to specify where to search in and enhanced information showing where the item was found.
• Major enhancements to the Analyze/Compact file functionality
• Outline Descendant report has Items to Include options
• Inclusion of Married Name AKA and Titles in index
• Automatic simple backup at shutdown
• Ability to turn off place authority searching when entering place names
• Enhancements to the RTF export
• Ability to add boxes in charts to a “Marked Box” category and modify box settings for these boxes
• Preparer Information in the footer for charts
• Options to include spouses and children in filtering and exporting  of people

Major enhancements to Sources including:

People Workspace

• Copy and paste source-citations.  After copying (from source-citation dialog or sources toolbar), you can paste a duplicate source-citation or a link to the existing one via the “New” source menu.
• Ability to copy source-citation at creation for pasting

Sources Workspace

• Double-clicking on a source title in the “Sources” workspace displays the “Edit Source Title” dialog for easier editing of sources in this view.
• Double-clicking on a repository in the “Sources” workspace displays the “Edit Repository” dialog for easier editing of repositories in this view.
• Right-mouse menus have been added to the left panel.

Repository Dialog

• The “Repository” dialog is resizable.

Source Title Dialog

• The “Source Title” dialog includes a usage button that displays usage for that source (This is redundant in the “Source” workspace, but useful elsewhere).
• The “Source Title” dialog is resizable.

Source-Citation Dialog

• The “Source-Citation” dialog is resizable
• The “Source-Citation” dialog includes a reference to the number of linked facts.
• Addition of a copy button (see copy and paste source-citations above).

Find Source-Citation Dialog

• The option to “Link To Existing Source-Citation” is changed to “Use Existing Source-Citation.”  Then there are two buttons in the resulting “Find Source-Citation” dialog.  After finding and selecting a source-citation the user can choose “Link To Citation” or “Copy New Citation”.  The link option does the same as “OK” did before and the new copy option adds another easy way to create a duplicate source-citation.
• Performance when listing by people is greatly improved.
• The “View by” setting is remembered so that if you view by source title for example, it comes up that way the next time.
• Left and right panels are sized proportionally when the dialog is resized.

List of some of the higher priority bugs that have been fixed:

Charts

• Made default settings more like FTM 16 default settings.
• Changes made in Box, Border, and Line Options don’t force a chart reload unless necessary.
• Export to image decreases the resolution (DPI) of the image if the image is very large.
• Charting uses less memory.
• Charting draws faster.
• Saved chart dates and times work for international dates.
• The User Interface recognizes metric regions and sizes are shown in centimeters or millimeters for Metric regions.
• Improved drawing and scaling of the “Advanced” layout for Standard Pedigree charts in Poster layout.
• Background colors stay in synchronization which background images changes and vice-versa.
• Facts that are description centric, such as AKA, now default to options that are meaningful.
• Miscellaneous UI changes such as hiding the “Advanced” button when in book layout or not in Standard Pedigree charts.
• Improved loading time for Box, Border, and Line Options dialog, Fonts Dialog, and Page Setup.
• Improved pedigree line drawing for special conditions such as parent box smaller than child box in a Standard Pedigree.
• Improved the restoring of box sizes on reload or opening a saved chart.
• File dialog restores to last directory used.
• Quick Print Dialog did not have the correct values in the header control.
• Selected boxes in charts have “more emphasis” to show that they are selected.
• Improved displaying of all Shared Facts.
• Improved drawing speed and memory usage for pedigree lines in the pedigree chart.
• Improved drawing of pedigree lines in the pedigree chart by calculating the overlap and thus finding a new “center” point.
• The <LINE> “fact” or divider line can now be a different color and width than the pedigree line. This makes it possible to do some nice contrast inside of the person box.
• If a fact is changed it is picked up in the chart. The chart doesn’t reload and often the fact change is such that this doesn’t matter. If the chart does need to be regenerated there is now a generate button too.
• Saving of POSTER size images of all types of charts. (Export Image)
• Gradient box fill ability. Note that some printers can’t handle gradient and transparent at the same time.
• Throttle the chart size after 14 generations for Pedigree charts in poster layout. All other charts have a 99 generation limit now. Charts over 13 generations will set the spacing to collapsed.

Reports

• RTF output is not easily editable
• Photo album excludes non-image media items.
• Title includes primary person automatically for some reports
• Ahnentafel Report - blank lines between end notes
• Ahnentafel Report - disappears when checking Use short biographies
• Ahnentafel report - name and sex fact notes don’t display
• Export to RTF, data fields are underlined
• Individual Report - Name options don’t apply to all names
• Outline Descendant Report - export to RTF includes weird characters
• Outline Descendant Report - Items to include, include blank facts not working
• Outline Descendant Report - name of focus person not in title
• Place Usage Report - missing fact labels
• Register Report - Also Known As not displaying correctly
• Register Report - names in all caps
• Register Report - not seeing Name fact note
• Register Report and Ahnentafel Report - information repeating
• Report Titles not updating
• Spouse sorting in individual report is fixed
• Civil and Canon values in Kinship report is fixed
• Individual report sorting spouses incorrectly
• Notes do not appear correctly in reports
• Bold, Italic, & Underline in notes don’t appear in Individual Report
• Photo album report – images per row setting not working
• Documented Facts Report – non-preferred facts not appearing, their sources are
• Photo Album Report - blanks out with non-image media items
• Photo Album Report - sorting images (images are now sorted by caption and filename)
• Kinship Report - sorting individuals
• Register Report - crash saving report
• Research Note Report - not displaying bold, underline & italic in notes
• Relationship Report not working in People module
• Photo Album not working in People module
• Individual report displays preferred name for all name facts.
• Fixed numbering problem in Outline Descendant report

Find and Replace

• Clicking stop before results are found messes up what gets found and results in a crash
• Can’t find words with punctuation at the end
• Certain characters (<>) caused the found text to not be displayed
• Crash navigating to people collection after “Go To” from find and replace
• Change all place names dialog pops up even if there is only 1 fact associated with a place
• Can click find and replace when there is no tree loaded

Copy/Paste Sources

• Pasting Link/Copy to a source causes problems with the reference note
• Pasting a duplicate source doesn’t copy the source note
• Paste option not active on facts that have no data
• Ability to copy source from Manage Source view added

File Merge

• Marriage fact of preferred spouse was shown for all spouses in the host file
• Improved people matching
• File merge creates multiple relationships for the same person
• FTM crashes when merging creates a recursive relationship (i.e. child is his own father)
• Improved matching accuracy and performance when files are derivatives of each other

Web Merge

• Crash when changing a place name in web search and then merging
• Clicking on “Create Page Archive” before Web Search is completely loaded crashes FTM
• Source not added to sex fact if default merge settings were changed
• Added drop-down to select a different source title when editing source
• Web Merge Wizard dialog doesn’t display the correct instructions when merging images and notes (but no facts/people)
• Crash when editing a screen scraped place name and then trying to merge
• Multiple copies of the same media being saved to the media folder when merging the same Ancestry.com record multiple times

General

• People filter updated to be more correct
• Crash after compact then backing up fixed
• Gedcom export was doing certain fact types (description only, etc.)
• Export of living people no longer uses Living as their name. It keeps the name but hides all other facts.
• “Approximately” or “Approx.” should be recognized as “Abt. for dates
• Britain resolve place name selection of United Kingdom clears field
• If the history is empty it shows the same names as index
• Program crashes when you delete a person from the History panel
• Edit source dialog/Reference note doesn’t display citation text when is should
• Children sorting in family panel  fixed
• Change place name issues resolved (crashes when adding just description and other problems)
• Modified reference notes correctly imported
• Scrolling problem in source list in person view
• “Approximately” or “Approx.” now recognized as “Abt. for dates
• Relationship information now showing up in English installs in non-English speaking countries
• Crash when merging two people together, sometimes
• Crash when changing person’s name due to Operating System audio driver crash
• Crash when adding sources – it may crash one more time, then on restart fix the problem
• Crash when adding media types .gif and .ICO
• Fixes to resolving place names without a city name
• Non-preferred facts show up in reports
• Problems importing sources from FTM 2005 files
• Marriage data not showing in hourglass chart
• Ahnentafel numbers are not correct
• Export not working when “Include private Facts” deselected.
• Exporting a subset of people still includes all places, sources, etc.
• Resolve All Dialog doesn’t append to description it replaces the existing descry
• Register Report shows same info for multiple spouses
• Alternate names do not appear in the Family Group Sheet
• Error importing v2005 file
• Pressing the ESC key clears the data in a date or description field
• AKA appears out of order in charts and reports
• Media Item Report Export to .PDF not working correctly
• Printing a Pedigree Chart from People isn’t working
• Moving a place to a description then moves the description to the place
• Pedigree, Descendant, Hourglass, & Vertical Pedigree Charts - settings not saved
• Import of media caption and description is lost via PAF import
• Source not always being added from Web Merge
• Unknown dates not exporting to Gedcom
• Can’t delete project after running media report - media item held open
• UNK should be recognized when entered as a date as Unknown
• Importing GEDCOM file with normal tags
• Duplicate people showing up in relationship view

We are interested in what you have to say. Your feedback and input directly influence future releases of Family Tree Maker – how it will look, feel and function. We invite you to take a survey and share your thoughts and feelings.

Please click here to complete the survey. We appreciate your help.

Best wishes,

The Family Tree Maker team

Many people like the easy flow of entering and editing information from the Family view of Family Tree Maker 16.  As nice as it is, many also complained about having to open the “Edit Individual” dialog multiple times to enter common facts such as AKA, title, christening, baptism, and burial.  While some aspects of using the Family view were nice, the requirement to repeatedly go in and out of the “Edit Individual” dialog box for some common facts made for an inefficient process in many cases.

Family Tree Maker 2008 addresses this issue in its Family view by allowing the right-hand edit panel to be customized.  For instance, if you frequently enter burial information, you can add “Burial” to the right-panel and then you won’t need to go to another screen to enter that information like you did in Family Tree Maker 16.  If you have a lot of Jewish ancestry, you might frequently add Bar Mitsvah and Bat Mitsvah information, so you may want to add those facts to the right-hand panel.  You certainly don’t want to add every fact you might ever use to the right-hand panel, but those that you frequently use.  This makes it possible to add most of your information from one screen without the need to go to another view or open another dialog box.

But what about flowing through your data entry without using your mouse?  Family Tree Maker 2008 has fairly extensive support for keyboard navigation.
 
From a selected person in the pedigree or family panel, press the Tab key to move your focus to the edit panel on the right.  Then tab through the fields and enter information for that person.  To add or edit another family member, press Ctrl + Tab to return to the family panel.  Ctrl + Tab is a common standard way in Windows to move from panel to panel.  Once your focus is back in the family panel, use your arrow keys to move between parents or children where you can add new family members or edit existing ones by pressing the Tab key and repeating the process just described.

Family Tree Maker lets you rate the reliability of your sources. You can rate each source-citation to note both the legibility of the source as well as its potential accuracy (i.e., primary source, secondary source, family legend, etc.).

1. Click the Sources button on the main toolbar.
2. Find the source-citation you want to rate and click it in the Source-Citations list.
   (The screen shots are not meant to be a model for proper sourcing, but illustrate how rating sources works.)
   
3. Click the Links tab, if necessary.
4. If the source-citation has more than one individual linked to it, click the person’s name on the Links tab.
   
5. Click the Rate the source icon (a yellow star). The Rate Source window opens.
   Note: You can click the gray (X) button or the Reset button to clear the current rating.
   
6. Use this chart to change the source’s rating:
   

   To do this	Do this
   Use your own rating system	In the Quality score section, click the number of stars to indicate your rating. The more stars you choose, the higher the quality of the source-citation as it pertains to that fact.Note: In the Ratings column, self-rated stars appear in blue.
   Use a standardized rating system	Click the Use standardized ratings checkbox. Choose how to rate the source:   Source. Choose whether the source is an original document or a transcription or translation of the original. Clarity. Choose the legibility of the source. Information. Choose whether this information comes from primary or secondary sources. Evidence. Choose whether the source states a fact or requires additional evidence.  Note: In the Ratings column, standardized stars appear in gold.

7. If necessary, you can add additional comments about your ratings in the Justification field.
8. Click OK. You will see the rating you chose for the source-citation on the Links tab.
   Note: You can also see the rating in the People workspace. Click the Person tab.; then select the sourced fact in the Individual and Shared Facts section. The rating appears on the Sources tab in the editing panel.

Note that source-citation ratings measure the quality of a source-citation as it applies to a specific fact rather than to the quality of the source or source-citation in general.  That is because a single record may provide excellent proof for one fact but marginal proof for another.  For instance, a census record often lists a person’s name and age at the time of the census.  Thus, that single record provides fairly good proof of the person’s name (3 or 4 stars), and only a vague reference to a birth date (1 or 2 stars).

Please let me know your thoughts on rating source-citations.

Support for all media files

Users can link to any type of media by selecting “All Files” under the “Files of type” drop-down. The default is set to image files, but any type of media can be linked.

Address report

An address report can be created following these steps:

• Open the “Custom Report”
• Click the “Reset” button
• Click the “Items to include” button
• Click the blue + button. The Select Fact window opens.
• Choose “Address” from the Facts list and click OK.
• In the “Included facts” list, highlight a fact, such as birth, and click the red X button.
• Click OK.
• In Individuals to include, click “Selected individuals.” The Filter Individuals window opens. No individuals should be included in the report at this point; if there are, click Exclude All to clear the report.
• To choose a group of descendants, click an ancestor’s name in the “Name” list
• Click “Descendants.” The list on the right side of the window now includes a list of that ancestor’s descendants.
• Click OK. The report opens.

Add a new Source-Citation

In addition to adding source-citations to facts in the People workspace, you can create new source-citations in the Sources workspace as well by clicking the ‘Add’ button in the upper right section of the ‘Sources’ workspace.

Place Warnings

Users can choose to have Family Tree Maker 2008 ignore the place warnings and remove the question marks in the Places panel.

This can be done under “Tools - Options - Warnings” and then uncheck the “Show unrecognized place name indicators” box.

Font size

Fonts can be set to display larger by clicking the “Use large fonts” box in the General Options window.

Convert names

Names can be converted in Family Tree Maker 2008 to all be mixed-case or mixed-case with capitalized surnames. This option can be found under the “Tools – Convert Names…” section.

• Improvements in stability and performance

• Global find and replace

• Copy / paste source-citations

• The ability to save charts and reports

  • This is an important step toward a full book building feature, which will be available at a later time.

• RTF export enhancements

• Book layout for Descendant Chart and Hourglass Chart

A special thanks to users that are taking the time to report bugs and request enhancements in the enhancement request form. Although each entry cannot be responded to individually, please know that they are looked at on a weekly basis and are helping make Family Tree Maker a better product.