RobJ

After seeing multiple forms of Ancestry.com, shorter and longer, and being too lazy to write out the longer forms, I thought it might be useful to have an agreed list for RM forum users of abbreviations for the more common names we use.  I'm in no way trying to tell people what to use.  Anyone can write them any way they like.  But if someone is wondering what a good shortcut would be, here's a suggested list.

If you prefer something different, no problem, suggest it.  I'll edit this, and use whatever seems to have a consensus.  Yes, A is short, but so what, it's frequently needed, clear in context, without a conflict (and saves typing!).  The only ones that are brand new are A and TS.

RM - RootsMagic (the company, or assumed to be the current version of the software)

RM6 - RootsMagic version 6

TS - TreeShare

Db - Database, e.g., RMDb

FS - FamilySearch

FSFT - FamilySearch Family Tree

FSID - Family Search ID

A - Ancestry.com

AMT - Ancestry Member Tree

FTM - FamilyTreeMaker

MH - MyHeritage

FAG - FindAGrave

BG - BillionGraves

FMP - FindMyPast

TMG - The Master Genealogist

PH - Personal Historian

FO - Family Origins

It's been quieter here lately, so I hope Renee doesn't mind this report!  My current workflow is somewhat different than others, I've been creating RM trees using TreeShare, then selecting one or more individuals to export in a GEDCOM, then import into WikiTree.  Not surprising, there are a number of issues.  I finally discovered the RM export option "Extra details (RM specific)", and turned that off, and that dropped a LOT of extraneous info from the resultant GEDCOM.  But the GEDCOM still includes some RM specific info, that I have to manually remove.  Every image, and that includes the image of every source page, includes RM GEDCOM tags (with leading underscores).  Here's an example (and there are dozens per person):

 

3 OBJE
4 FILE Z:\Data\RootsMagic\Lynch1_media\31111_4330101-00182.jpg
4 FORM jpg
4 _TYPE PHOTO
4 _SCBK N
4 _PRIM N

(This is attached to a source.)  WikiTree's handling of this is partly at fault, and I have to take that up with them.  WikiTree drops the file path (a real problem!  lots of info about the image but no image or even the file name of the image), and it drops '_PRIM N', but keeps the rest, in translated forms.

   'FILE Z:\Dat...jpg' becomes 'File   '

   'FORM jpg' becomes 'Format: jpg'

   '_TYPE PHOTO' becomes 'PHOTO     '

   '_SCBK N' becomes 'Scrapbook: N '

My fix request: please consider _TYPE and _SCBK as RM specific, and don't include them if the option is off.  An Ancestry.com GEDCOM does not include them, is relatively clean (at least for an Ancestry.com export!).

Related issue: (sorry, no example here) before I found and turned off RM specific info in the export, the sources in the GEDCOM included a lot more garbage, including (for each source citation) 3 copies of the publishing statement, one in parentheses, one not in parens but often missing a random amount from the beginning, and a third that literally included the terms PUBPLACE, PUBYEAR, and PUB something else.  It also included a repeat of much of the source name.  While I could use global replace for some problems, every source required considerable editing, much of it by hand, one by one.  Edit: I should have said that this may be partly or wholly the fault of WikiTree, being ill-equipped to handle RM specific tags.  Edit2: I created a GEDCOM with RM specific stuff turned on, to see if I could find an example of corrupted truncated data to show here, but could not find any.  That would seem to implicate WikiTree as the 'truncator'.  They clearly don't know what to do with it all, but try anyway and concatenate everything as part of a 'citation', including 3 variant copies of the publishing statement, 'TID 439', and the 'Publisher', 'PubPlace', and 'PubDate' tags.  Obviously I shouldn't have included RM specific data in the export.

Additional comments:  something I find quite striking is the media included with the TreeShare download.  An Ancestry.com GEDCOM does not include any media (for a tree that I had not added any media).  If I use TreeShare to create an RM tree, a whole bunch of media (much of it in duplicate) is downloaded, into a Media folder, and consists of images of all of the census pages and other source documents.  What is particularly amazing to me is how fast these images are downloaded, as the whole lot of them are generally downloaded faster than I could access just one of them within Ancestry.com!  Clearly, Ancestry must be caching these images, and providing immediate access through the API, but if you try to view one within the Ancestry interface, it appears to ignore the cached version and slowly search and retrieve the original image all over again.  (I won't mention the cryptic names assigned, or the media file duplication, has been reported by others elsewhere.)

Something to add to the Magic Guide - if you have a person in an Ancestry.com tree with multiple birth facts, one of them marked 'Preferred', the download to RM tree may pick the wrong birth fact, and set their birth date wrong.  I have now found this to happen on 2 separate persons, and I have many more to examine.  In both cases, the preferred fact had the most sources associated with it.  (I don't know if this may occur with other facts, if multiples in a profile.)  Once you discover the mistake, it's fixable, just mark the correct fact as 'Primary'.

(I should have spotted this and reported it in the beta period, but didn't see it then.  I don't know if I missed it, or it's a new bug.  I certainly could have missed it, but would be surprised if everyone else did too.)

I don't know if this is the right place for this.  It seemed like an obvious bug, but I couldn't find it mentioned anywhere.  And after reporting it in one place, I discovered a note indicating I had used a channel restricted to other issues, not issues like this one, so here it is (but feel free to delete or move if it belongs somewhere else, or is redundant, or well known).

Click on the FamilySearch icon on a person with a mother or female children, with at least one or more that are NOT matched with someone on the RootsMagic side, and open the comparison screen. Now click on the right-most (i) on the various persons in the Family Members section on the FamilySearch side. When you click on any male (Father or boy child), you will get their info screen and their female spouse will be correct. When you click on any female (Mother or girl child) that is matched on the RootsMagic side, you will get their info screen and their male spouse will be correct. But if you click on any female (Mother or girl child) that is NOT matched on the RootsMagic side, you will get their info screen and they themself will be showing as their own spouse, NOT their male spouse. In other words, if the Family Member is not matched, the female of their marriage will be showing as their spouse. That's fine for males, but not for females.

Edit: I should add it's a minor problem, does not cause any corruption, just adds a little confusion.  It's annoying when you are trying to find all of the info on a person from as many sources as possible for evaluation, and you can't see their spouse here.

(Moderators, feel free to move this as needed, or if already heavily discussed, point me to the discussions - thank you!)

Howdy, first time here, just joining this group of addicts and others (chorus of "Hi Rob") ...

I imagine there are many besides myself with both an Ancestry tree and a RootsMagic tree, and thinking ahead as to what we will need to do.  I understand when the upgrade happens (trying to wait patiently!), I'll have a choice of either creating a new Ancestry tree from my RM tree, or creating a new RM tree from my Ancestry tree, and then attempting to merge them, and finally produce one tree only, available on both Ancestry and RM (at least that's the goal).

But the big question is whether it will be easier to merge the trees on the RM side or the Ancestry side.  I suspect our beta testers may already have some insight on this, and I'd love to hear from them.  I imagine there may be small compatibility issues, on one or both sides, that may dictate which way will be best.  Or the tools to do the merging may be better on one side or the other.

I'd love to hear from others with any relevant experience.  I did my tree work on my Fathers side on Ancestry, and on my Mothers side in RM, and now looking forward to merging the two trees together.