Ok, so add before delete. But basically the long way. Well, thanks, anyway

Regards,
Noël

I have some photos that show up as a monitor screen, in the Multimedia dialog box. If I double click the monitor, my image viewing program starts up and shows the photo (a JPG or whatever). If I open the properties dialog, the top left field says "Type of scrapbook item: Video clip", but it's greyed out so I can't change it to "Photo/Image".

I don't know how it happened that these photos were classified as videos. Not all of them are. Is there any easy way to get RM to reclassify them as photos, or is it a matter of delete and then add?

I was 3.2.1 and have now updated to 3.2.4.


I'll try again, then...


... and uncheck SmartMerge.

Many thanks.

P.S. When experimenting, I keep deleting and re-copying the copy database. But delete always seems to leave two files, the ones ending _EX.CDX and _EX.DBF. IS this intentional?

Thanks for this reply. And don't worry, I was doing this entirely on a copy of my database, as an experiment..

I'll take up your suggestion of getting rid of duplicated facts as I go. Thanks.

In a previous post, Alfred wrote:


to add a fact to everyone in a ged file which contained all the descendants of an ancestor.

So I used this technique, then imported the ged file back. Then I used Tools/Merge/Automatic merges, and left all boxes ticked.

Then, to compare before and after, I exported this as a gedcom file, and compared it with the previous one, the one I edited to give every body the new fact. The new facts were in a different order - just irritating when you're comparing a large file for other differences. BUT, some other facts had been duplicated. Some Notes facts, but not all, and an Alternate Name fact (I think there's only one in my database). Using RM to view the people concerned in the updated database, the facts had indeed been duplicated, though the people were merged.

I tried again using Duplicate search / merge and merged just the person with the Alternate Name. Looking at him directly in RM, he had the Alternate Name fact twice, again, with the same value.

Is this a known problem, or did I do something wrong?

Also, is there an easier way to compare two RootsMagic databases?

What is "Evidence!", please?

Regards,
Noel

Wow! I'm going to have to take this slowly.

Thanks very much, everybody,

Noël

So I have to use one big database - well I'd resigned myself to that - and then use color coding or a family fact type to filter to a gedcom file. Color coding (NO! colour coding, dammit) seems quickest in the short term, I'd need to add a couple of spouses each time, but the family fact type seems best in the long run, even though it will be a lot of work initially.

But I'm not sure I understood Laura's sentence: "You can use color coding to add a user defined fact for different family groups just as you would to make a gedcom." Should that read "... color coding OR add a user defined fact..."?

Anyway, many thanks,

Noël

P.S. Sorry about the British English rant.

I have had a request for information from my RootsMagic database from a cousin on my father's side. She only wants the stuff on my fathers side, plus my mother herself, as my father's wife, and similarly my wife. The slickest way I can find is (on a COPY of my DB!) to disconnect my mother from her parents, my wife from hers, and then drag myself over to a new DB, specifying "whole tree". And then create a CD from that.

Then a second cousin on my mother's side wants the info from my mother's side, and my wife's sister wants her stuff. And I can do the same thing, but if I update the DB and want to send out an updated CD I have to do it again.

It would be much easier to split my DB into four in the first place. But then my wife and I would be at the bottom of all four trees. Any updates to us and I have to enter it four times. So I can put just my wife and myself (and children if we had any) into a fifth DB. But then I have no parents and no sister, from my DB, and my father has no from his DB, etc. I really need a way of linking from one DB to another, a hyperlink, in fact.

I haven't found a way of doing this. I'm sure this is a well known problem. What do other people do?

And is there a slicker way of splitting off one family than the one I mentioned at the start?