82 replies to this topic

[tschlarm]

Just a thread that may help FTM 'Refugees' moving to RM7...

 

Before export:

===============

Compact your FTM file and let it create a backup. This will clean up your file to make sure there is nothing wrong with the file structure itself.

 

Importing FTM 2008+ into RM7:

============================

Follow the video on the RM web site. Works very well. You might still have a bit of cleanup to do though.

 

Images:

==========

FTM2008+ typically copied all your media/images to a single location. If you want to store your images and RM7 file in a different location you should copy the FTM media folder for your tree to the new location. Then you'll have to edit the GEDCOM in notepad and global replace the old path to the FTM media to the new RM7 path with your media. Unfortunately, RM will not assign the default media item so if you had default pictures for people in FTM these do not get automatically carried over to RM7. Legacy8 does get them correct however, if you go that route.

 

After editing the gedcom then import into RM7.

 

Also be aware that RM7 links to images in their current location and does not copy them to a media folder like FTM did. You will have to copy them manually to a location you if you still want that behavior.

 

After import:

============

Make sure the # of persons match between programs. RM7 shows this under File/Properties. FTM2008+ has this on the Plan View then the More button next to 'About This Family Tree'.

 

Also keep an eye on the # of Sources. This should match, if not, you may have some citations without a source title in FTM. In FTM these can be found in the Sources View, List by Source Title and then scroll all the way to the bottom and find '[Unlinked]'. FTM does not seem to count these in their stats on the Plan View. RM imports them with the citation as the Master Source title. Looked a bit odd to have more sources in RM7 than I started with in FTM.  :-) You may want to clean these up in FTM and then export/import again.

 

The rest of the fields are (for me anyway) dramatically different. RM7 reports 32797 citations whereas FTM reports 3691. Not sure what's up with that yet. Maybe a difference in the way RM handles citations, maybe a bug in the RM display. My guess is that FTM linked (not copied) citations are exported as copies to gedcom which explains the massive increase, because for my 10000+ person file, 3700 citations sounds really, really low.

 

Other fun facts:

I've found that importing the FTM gedcom into other programs like Legacy8 can show possible errors in your current file. Legacy doesn't seem to handle same-sex marriages very well so it warns you when you have a 'husband' with a gender set to 'female'. I found a few things like that helpful. It picked up a few cases where I had set some incorrect values. RM7 doesn't do any kind of import checking of this kind as near as I can tell and doesn't flag this.

 

After the import it may be a good idea to go to File/Database Tools in RM7 and run all the processes just to make sure things are in a good state before you start adding and editing things.

 

 

FTM Facts descriptions shown but not editable:

=========================================

You may have to edit the Fact Types in RM7 or you will have some fact fields in RM7 you can see but can't edit. In FTM I had included a description field for the Burial fact so I could add the name of the cemetery. After importing to RM7 the cemetery name was shown in the list for facts, but I had no way to edit it.

 

Fix: in RM7, Lists/Fact Type List - Select the fact type from the list and select Edit. Check the box for 'Use Description Field'. You may have to do this for multiple facts. Just cursor thru the facts for one of your more documented persons and make sure everything for that fact can be edited.

 

RM7 Sources:

==================

All the FTM sources will come in as 'Free Form' source regardless of whether you used the Source Templates in FTM or not. I didn't use the FTM Source Templates extensively, but just some thing to be aware of.

 

RM7 Free Form sources only provide 1 citation field. Page Number. Whatever you had in the Citation Detail field in FTM will show up in this field after conversion. FTM Citation Text will show up in RM7 Research Notes. 

 

If you watch the Videos on RM7 about sources and citations, you may consider using the RM7 templates. I've played with this and decided that this is great for any new sources I create after converting from FTM. Do NOT create a new Master source with a template (think online census) and then MERGE the old Free Form source into it. Seems to drop the page number field during the merge, at least I haven't figured out where it went to. RM7 master source merge does not provide any way for a user to pick what fields on one template gets mapped to fields in another template. 

 

I'm only a day or 2 into the conversion and a pretty new RM7 user, but thought this might be helpful to others in the same situation. Any clarifications from advanced RM7 users are welcome.

[Reinout van Brakel]

Very nice and helpful. Thanks! I noticed that the facttype Address in FTM is not exported to RM7, or I can't find it in the list of fact types. Some fact types I made myself in FTM are exported. Since I have mulltipe adresses for one person, linked to specific dates, I was wondering what went wrong. I exported all the data to GEDCOM 5.5., including private data. Would it be possible to get a full overview in a table of all the standard facttypes in FTM14 and RM7?

[Reinout van Brakel]

After testing the transfer of FTM to RM7, I must say I am impressed. I am critical about the look and feel, but even the font types used on screen can be adjusted. Also the ability to change the standard sentences in a "Narrative" report are very helpful. This could mean that I can change the standard English sentences into Dutch or any other language. This is not possible with FTM.

 

There are a few issues, I hope that can be clarified or solved:

1) FTM distinguished Private Notes and Research Notes. I used the Research Note field a lot, also to be able to shorten a report: I would only use the Personal notes in a Descendent report. With the export to RM7 this distinction got lost. Now I have one long story for each person in my book. One solution could be to clean all the Research Notes fields in FTM before exporting. I wonder whether there is another solution?

2) My published book is basically one large chapter of a Descendant report and one big chapter with personal Media albums (called Scrapbook in RM7). In FTM you can build a book and select persons, and add personal Media albums quickly. Even though FTM often crashes when I try to do that, it saves a lot of time. In RM7 this is possible as well, however three issues: a) it is not possible to select multiple persons or a group of persons, for which I would like to generate the same scrapbook report. This was not possible in FTM either, but selecting people was easier  only the name of the person is printed. When you have many people with the same names, you want their birthdates and parents included on top like in FTM, c) in FTM you could see in the person index who has media files associated. This made it easier to select people. One solution would be to create a group of people I guess (a nice feature in RM7), and then make one report with all the scrapbooks.

 

Point 2 is the reason that I will not produce a new book with RM7 yet.

 

Overall the flexibility of reporting is impressive. The visual lay-out of some of the standard reports in RM7 is not as good as FTM. I do hope that RM7 takes the time in 2016 to improve that. Hire a Dutch designer (we are famous for that , and it will bring RM7 to the 21st century.

[Jerry Bryan]

This could mean that I can change the standard English sentences into Dutch or any other language.

 

I've never tried producing an RM report in a language other than English, but I suspect it's possible with a few little glitches that you will have to work around. Here are the little glitches I can think of. There may be a few more.

• Prepositions may be a problem. For example, here is the default RM sentence template for the birth event. [person] was born< [Date]>< [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]>. The [Date] variable and the [Place] variable will both produce prepositions, and the prepositions will be in English, viz., John Doe was born in 1850 in Virginia. In some circumstances, the "in" will be an "at", for example with the [Age] variable. You can get rid of the English proposition with [Date:plain] and [Place:plain] and [Age:plain]. If you do so and if you need Dutch prepositions, you will have to add them back yourself in the sentence template. There might be a few other nuances of the sentences that you would need to look at that are similar to this.
• There is essentially an internal sentence template for what I call the spouse sentence in descendant narrative reports. This is the sentence that introduces the spouse. You have only partial access to the sentence template for this sentence. After producing an RTF file, you might have to use Microsoft Word or some such to clean up the punctuation in these sentences. I actually do so with a script, but however you do it, it has to be done. The default in English is fine by the way without any cleanup. I have to do the cleanup only because I make rather radical changes to the default sentence templates. So you might or might have a problem with the spouse sentence if you change the sentence templates to Dutch.
• In the NGSQ and NEHGS formats for descendant narrative reports, there is a list of the children for each couple and then the children appear a second time in the next generation if they get married or have children (or both). The "list of children for each couple" includes only the most basic facts for the children with the expectation that their full history will be listed when they appear for the second time in the next generation. The sentences in this "list of children for each couple" seems not to use sentence templates at all. I suspect that this will be your biggest problem in producing reports in Dutch, assuming you choose to use either the NGSQ and NEHGS format. You might have to edit each such list of children by hand in an RTF report to translate them from English to Dutch. The alternative might be to use one of the outline formats instead for descendant narrative reports: Outline, Henry, or D'Aboville. The thing I don't like about the outline reports is that each person only appears once in the report, which has the effect of breaking up a person from their birth family. There is no list of children for each family that's all in one place. For example, suppose you have a large report such as 200 pages, and suppose the youngest child of the root couple died as an infant. The root couple will appear on page 1 of your report and their youngest child who died as an infant will appear on page 200 of the report.

Jerry

[TomH]

Images:
==========
FTM2008+ typically copied all your media/images to a single location. If you want to store your images and RM7 file in a different location you should copy the FTM media folder for your tree to the new location. Then you'll have to edit the GEDCOM in notepad and global replace the old path to the FTM media to the new RM7 path with your media. Unfortunately, RM will not assign the default media item so if you had default pictures for people in FTM these do not get automatically carried over to RM7. Legacy8 does get them correct however, if you go that route.
 
After editing the gedcom then import into RM7.
 
Also be aware that RM7 links to images in their current location and does not copy them to a media folder like FTM did. You will have to copy them manually to a location you if you still want that behavior.

It is neither necessary nor perhaps even advisable to copy/move the image files from the FTM folder, especially if you intend to keep working on your Ancestry Member Tree and use TreeSync until the end. FTM names each successive file with a serial number 1 higher than the highest one in the folder. So I would keep the FTM folder intact to avoid potential name conflict. That saves the step of renaming the paths but even if you do copy the folder, you can use RootsMagic's Search & Replace to repoint the database.

[TomH]

I hope the failure of RootsMagic Import to acceptably handle the profile photo will get fixed soon. It seems to be a frequent source of complaint in the wave of FTMers who are looking at alternatives. Long before the current wave, I developed a batch workaround in SQLite: Media - Set Primary Photo for Persons

[tschlarm]

It is neither necessary nor perhaps even advisable to copy/move the image files from the FTM folder, especially if you intend to keep working on your Ancestry Member Tree and use TreeSync until the end. FTM names each successive file with a serial number 1 higher than the highest one in the folder. So I would keep the FTM folder intact to avoid potential name conflict. That saves the step of renaming the paths but even if you do copy the folder, you can use RootsMagic's Search & Replace to repoint the database.

Thanks for the input. In my case I had my files in an FTM directory that I wanted to change out of, make a clean break if you will. In that case I just copied the files to a new location. Being a new RM user I wasn't aware of the S&R could also re-point all the media files. Being a software dev (not of FTM) it was more obvious to me to just S&R in the gedcom file. I had also seen that suggestion elsewhere at one time.

 

My experience with the FTM media renaming seems to be when I had a file with an existing name in the media folder, then it gave me the generic name. My file was originally from FTM 2006 and prior where it embedded the media in the FTM file itself. When the FTM2008 conversion came along I got a few media0*.jpg files, because FTM2006 didn't keep the original filename I guess.

 

Thanks for the S&R tip.

[tschlarm]

I hope the failure of RootsMagic Import to acceptably handle the profile photo will get fixed soon. It seems to be a frequent source of complaint in the wave of FTMers who are looking at alternatives. Long before the current wave, I developed a batch workaround in SQLite: Media - Set Primary Photo for Persons

I see your script was last updated in 2013. Does this script still work for RM7?

 

I see that Legacy 8 just (yesterday) tweaked their gedcom import to handle FTM "better". Maybe RM will follow suit...

[TomH]

I see your script was last updated in 2013. Does this script still work for RM7?

 

I see that Legacy 8 just (yesterday) tweaked their gedcom import to handle FTM "better". Maybe RM will follow suit...

AFAIK, yes.

[Perking812]

I converted my FTM 2014 file to a GEDCOM and subsequently imported it to RM7; while my sources seem to have made the conversion, it appears that the linkage of a specific person to a specific source that existed in FTM does not exist in RM7.  Do I need to do the import differently?  Have I just not looked in the right place???

[Renee Zamora]

If they were connected to a source citation make sure you look on the source level for the media there.

[mmurosky]

Thank you for sharing!

[CLMartin]

FTM 2014 gedcom to RootsMagic issue.

 

MEDIA:

FTM gedcom does not bring over Dates or Descriptions for media to RootsMagic (gave me a few funny symbols in the description), nor does it bring over media Notes, so that doesn’t work either.  Changing the Dates and Descriptions to the media Notes DID work for Legacy.  Any thoughts?

 

 

TRUNCATED EVENT:

FTM gedcom truncates Event/Field descriptions to RootsMagic to 67 characters (including spaces).  Are we SOL?

 

SOURCES:

FTM gedcom transfers sources to RootsMagic in this way:

“Citation Detail” just fine.

“Citation Text” shows up in what RootsMagic calls the “Research Note.”

“Web Address” is NOT transferred.

 

*Unless there is a fix, I can only suggest that ALL citation descriptions (including the web address) be manually copied and pasted in FTM into the “Citation Detail.” I, for one, don’t want my information put under “Research Note.”

[Laura]

SOURCES:

FTM gedcom transfers sources to RootsMagic in this way:

“Citation Detail” just fine.

“Citation Text” shows up in what RootsMagic calls the “Research Note.”

“Web Address” is NOT transferred.

 *Unless there is a fix, I can only suggest that ALL citation descriptions (including the web address) be manually copied and pasted in FTM into the “Citation Detail.” I, for one, don’t want my information put under “Research Note.”

RM has a note boxes for Master sources labeled "Source text" and "Source Comments" for notes that pertain just to the Master source.  These notes are not printed in any report except the Source list report.  This is where we would enter notes relating to the Master source that we don't want printed in other reports.

Is this where your "Citation detail" notes from FTM would be put?

The Source detail note boxes are named "Research notes" and "Comments".  These are the notes that are printed in Narrative, Family Group Sheet, Research Notes, and other reports if you choose to include them in the report.

If FTM's “Citation detail" notes import into one of the Master source text boxes, you might want to do cleanup in FTM and put source notes you don't want to print in reports in the "Citation details" and notes you do want to print in reports in "Citation text".

There is also a choice to not print Source detail Research notes or Comments for Citations for each report.

Citations in RM is the Master source + Source details [if there are any Source details entered].
 

[mmurosky]

Hi,

 

What this is what CLMartin is trying to describe with regard to a source citation. 

 

Family Tree Maker has a source citation screen that can be opened for each source. The Source tab has fields for:

• Source Title
• Citation Detail
• Citation Text
• Web Address

This is a screenshot from my tree for reference. 

 

When she is going an import the citation detail is moving into the Research Note field.

 

The source citation in Family Tree Maker is associated with a Source Group

 

[Jerry Bryan]

One thought I have after looking at the screen shots from FTM is that where source data from FTM should go in RM depends to a certain extent on whether the RM user is primarily a source splitter or a source lumper. Another thought I have after looking at the screen shots from FTM is that FTM appears to have a source and citation data model that RM is desperately lacking and that therefore it is hard to map the FTM source data to RM in a way that makes any sense. Let's see if I can describe these ideas a little more clearly.

 

FTM appears to have a named list of Source Groups. I think for most users, these Source Groups would come closest to corresponding to Master Sources in RM. You can get a list of RM Master Sources just like you can get a list of FTM Source Groups.

 

FTM appears to have a named list of Source Citations and a list of all of the facts to which each named "Source citation" is linked. It is of particular interest that each "Source Citation" in FTM appears to be able to be linked to multiple facts. RM does have source citations, but they are not named and you cannot easily get a list of them. And each one of them is linked to exactly one fact in RM.  Indeed, if you want the "same citation" in RM to link to multiple facts, what you really get is a separate and identical copy of the citation rather than the "same citation". This design feature of RM is the root cause of why it's so difficult to make changes to every occurrence of the same citation - because there is no such thing in RM as "every occurrence of the same citation". Each citation only occurs once, and to make changes you have to find every citation and change it individually, and there is no list of the citations that's really comparable to the list in FTM. I would be deeply indebted to the demise of FTM and to the influx of FTM refugees into RM if these events would induce RM to adopt the same citation model that FTM seems to have.

 

Having ranted thusly, and given RM's existing and inadequate data model for sources and citations, where do I think FTM's Citation Detail and Citation Text fields should go in RM? Well, if the RM user is a source splitter, then the FTM data should go into RM's Source Text and Source Comment fields in RM's Master Source. And if the RM user is a source lumper, then the FTM data should go into RM's Research Notes and Comments fields in RM's Source Detail. But I doubt that RM's import of FTM data provides FTM users with the option of making such a choice.

 

Advice for FTM users: don't worry too much about what RM's Source Text, Source Comments, Research Notes, and Comments fields are called. They are all really just notes. Think of them as Note1, Note2, Note3, and Note4. Note1 and Note2 are associated with RM's Master Source which appears to be like FTM's Source Groups. Note3 and Note4 are associated with RM's Detail Text which appears to be like FTM's Source Citations only without the ability to name them or to get a list of them very easily. But do consider very carefully Laura's advice about which of these notes can and cannot be printed in association with footnotes and endnotes. What I'm calling Note3 and Note4 can be printed along with footnotes and endnotes, and what I'm calling Note1 and Note2 cannot be. In the language of RM, Research Notes and Comments can be printed along with footnotes and endnotes, whereas Source Text and Source Comments cannot be printed along with footnotes and endnotes.

 

Jerry

 

[Laura]

CL Martin says the "Citation detail" is fine and the "Citation Text" research notes in RM.
 

mmurosky said the "Citation detail" notes are going to Research notes in RM.

 

CLMartin suggests moving the "Citation Text" notes to "Citation details" so there will be no notes in Research notes.

There would not be any point in moving the notes in FTM if both are being imported into the Source detail, Research note box in RM.

So, where are the "Citation detail" notes being imported in RM?
 

[Perking812]

One thought I have after looking at the screen shots from FTM is that where source data from FTM should go in RM depends to a certain extent on whether the RM user is primarily a source splitter or a source lumper. Another thought I have after looking at the screen shots from FTM is that FTM appears to have a source and citation data model that RM is desperately lacking and that therefore it is hard to map the FTM source data to RM in a way that makes any sense. Let's see if I can describe these ideas a little more clearly.

 

FTM appears to have a named list of Source Groups. I think for most users, these Source Groups would come closest to corresponding to Master Sources in RM. You can get a list of RM Master Sources just like you can get a list of FTM Source Groups.

 

FTM appears to have a named list of Source Citations and a list of all of the facts to which each named "Source citation" is linked. It is of particular interest that each "Source Citation" in FTM appears to be able to be linked to multiple facts. RM does have source citations, but they are not named and you cannot easily get a list of them. And each one of them is linked to exactly one fact in RM.  Indeed, if you want the "same citation" in RM to link to multiple facts, what you really get is a separate and identical copy of the citation rather than the "same citation". This design feature of RM is the root cause of why it's so difficult to make changes to every occurrence of the same citation - because there is no such thing in RM as "every occurrence of the same citation". Each citation only occurs once, and to make changes you have to find every citation and change it individually, and there is no list of the citations that's really comparable to the list in FTM. I would be deeply indebted to the demise of FTM and to the influx of FTM refugees into RM if these events would induce RM to adopt the same citation model that FTM seems to have.

 

Having ranted thusly, and given RM's existing and inadequate data model for sources and citations, where do I think FTM's Citation Detail and Citation Text fields should go in RM? Well, if the RM user is a source splitter, then the FTM data should go into RM's Source Text and Source Comment fields in RM's Master Source. And if the RM user is a source lumper, then the FTM data should go into RM's Research Notes and Comments fields in RM's Source Detail. But I doubt that RM's import of FTM data provides FTM users with the option of making such a choice.

 

Advice for FTM users: don't worry too much about what RM's Source Text, Source Comments, Research Notes, and Comments fields are called. They are all really just notes. Think of them as Note1, Note2, Note3, and Note4. Note1 and Note2 are associated with RM's Master Source which appears to be like FTM's Source Groups. Note3 and Note4 are associated with RM's Detail Text which appears to be like FTM's Source Citations only without the ability to name them or to get a list of them very easily. But do consider very carefully Laura's advice about which of these notes can and cannot be printed in association with footnotes and endnotes. What I'm calling Note3 and Note4 can be printed along with footnotes and endnotes, and what I'm calling Note1 and Note2 cannot be. In the language of RM, Research Notes and Comments can be printed along with footnotes and endnotes, whereas Source Text and Source Comments cannot be printed along with footnotes and endnotes.

 

Jerry

 

Jerry: Thanks much for the informative explanation of what RM is doing with citations; I concluded that, given I have in excess of 32,900 individuals in my FTM file, RM is likely not the software that will work for me.  That is, I have many, many citations to individuals that just didn't make the transformation.  I tried a free version of Legacy Family Tree and it maintained the citation links to individuals and details such as a marriage source citation for an individual.  Consequently, I'm moving on from RM to Legacy.  There are many aspects of RM that I liked, but the citation issue was a deal-breaker for me.

Thanks again,

Perking812

[TomH]

GEDCOM does not support the concept of a single citation common to multiple things (master citation?), at least not obviously. I wonder how FTM exports it.

 

Ben Sayer has started a blog series that should be must reading for someone migrating from FTM to any other software. The first one is Replacing Family Tree Maker, Part 1: How to Scrub Your Data

[mmurosky]

There would not be any point in moving the notes in FTM if both are being imported into the Source detail, Research note box in RM.

 

 

Hi Laura,

 

My understanding from CL Martin's post is that the user doesn't like that the data is being pushed into the research note field in RootsMagic.

 

 

*Unless there is a fix, I can only suggest that ALL citation descriptions (including the web address) be manually copied and pasted in FTM into the “Citation Detail.” I, for one, don’t want my information put under “Research Note.”