Saturday, July 29, 2017

FTM2017 PC Version - File Clean Up

Observation after installation of FTM2017, where the end user may have done some of the Test Drives offered by Software MacKiev prior to the production release of FTM2017.

Bottom line, I have some file clean up to do.



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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Color Coding and Multiple Ancestral Lines

In my blog post yesterday there was a comment about multiple "lines" being color coded.

http://ftmuser.blogspot.com/2017/07/color-coding-and-civil-war-soldiers.html

Will demonstrate how Color Coding showed that I have Direct Ancestors of multiple lines or from more than one grandparent's ancestry.

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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Color Coding and Civil War Soldiers


This is response to a comment made on this blog post 

http://ftmuser.blogspot.com/2017/07/color-coding-end-of-line.html 

In my reply to the comment, I said that I would do a blog post on how I would answer the question about the use of color coding for the Civil War Soldiers. My approach is to use the Filter In / Filter Out feature. Before I posted my response, I tested it out and it worked as expected. 

My focus is to Identify ONLY my Direct Line Ancestors who might have a Civil War Record that I may not have found before.

This video will demonstrate out I used the Color Coding and the Filter Feature to answer my question.


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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

FTM2017 - No Hints from Ancestry

Just purchased or upgrade to FTM2017 and the People Workspace, Tree View has no Hints.



Simple answer, go to the Plan Workspace and Check the Sync Status:



The answer: You must have an Ancestry Member Tree (AMT) to receive Hints. Those AMTs are what provides us with the hints.

Upload and Line to Ancestry is the Answer. Be sure to check the settings of the Ancestry Member Tree as you upload and sync.

  • Public
  • Private
  • Private, not searchable by Ancestry
Are the options.

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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

Monday, July 24, 2017

FTM2017 - Plan Workspace, Download from Ancestry

One of the new or revised parts of FTM2017 is in the Plan Workspace, in the Download a Tree from Ancestry. Meaning that you already have an Ancestry Member Tree (AMT) and now you want that AMT in FTM2017.


What is on the menu is very different. For privacy reasons I am only showing the first AMT that I can download, but this list is long, for me.

The key is the information that is provided on the right side of the screen


There is a Sort by: (will show in a minute) the Filename information about the AMT, the number of people in that tree and the number of Media files. In the list that you can see, there are two tree names that are look the same, but they are different. You select one and you see the statistics on that AMT.

You can Sort them by Name, Date Modified, Date Created and Status.



At the bottom right of the earlier image gives you some more options. You can Delete the AMT, View the AMT or Download the Tree.


Under the Sort by is another setting, Ascending or Descending order.


With the Check Mark in that box, the list below will be in Ascending Order, in the example above, I wanted it in the Descending order or Most Recent On top.

I will be cleaning of my test AMTs and the old ones as I move my old AMTs into FTM2017.

This makes is so much easier, for me, at least.
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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Color Coding - End of Line

For a long time, I have wanted to look at the Index of Names and be able to Identify the End of Line Ancestor. That is, the farthest back in one of my grandparents line. Color Coding has done if for me.

I have selected the Home person, the Color Coding ICON and selected 4 colors



So each of my grandparents has a different color;

  • Paternal Grandfather = Blue
  • Paternal Grandmother = Red
  • Maternal Grandfather = Yellow
  • Maternal Grandmother = Green
Since all of my direct lines are marked with a color, I can come down the index of names select them and see if that person has any ancestors. If they do not, I clicked on the Current Person and marked them each with a color I probably wouldn't normally select.



These two people are End of Line Ancestors and both will have that pink, BUT will also have which of my grandparents they are end of line for. In this example, the first color is Blue, so this is the end of line ancestors on my Paternal Grandfather.
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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

Saturday, July 22, 2017

Color Coding - End of Line - Not Direct Line

The earlier Color Coding, End of Line blog post was for my DIRECT Line and I used the Filter Feature to do that. But did NOT include 2nd marriages. I only wanted to mark those direct end of line ancestors.

The result of that, is that when I use the Default Filter Feature, I get to see those 2nd marriages.




There are two 2nd marriages on the Left. I can tell because there are NO Color's to the right of their name. They are my Ancestor but by marriage. The arrow points to that fact that this person was married twice.

As a follow up to the earlier blog post, you can easily see the End Of Line Ancestors as they have two colors. The Line Color (on of my grandparents) and an End of Line color.

Liking this feature a lot

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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

Friday, July 21, 2017

Reader Question: Custom Report

A Reader submitted this Question:
I have a custom report that shows all the individuals who are also listed in find a grave, I would like to add a web link to that page to the report, the help says you can do this, but there is no process that shows how to add it, when you "create a Report"
I have a number of Blog Posts on various uses of the Find-A-Grave website. This question is a little confusing for me, and why I haven't blogged about this specific use of a Custom Report. One with links.

Lets break this down a little. First, I would not consider a Link to a Website in a Custom Report. Custom Reports are for People having an event or fact by time and /or place.

To me, Links to websites are part of a Citation. Where did I get that information from? is what the Link provides to us. For me, links in a report would not be helpful, because, in most cases, you can't click on them in a report.

Having said that, if you create the Custom Report that you want, add the "Include Sources" option in the Items to Include list.




You will see the Citations at the bottom of the page. But, you would have to have the Link is the Web Address in the Citation screen, and include that URL in the Citation. I do NOT include any URLs in my Citations. The Source Template feature allows for the publishing of the Web Site address, like http://www.ancestry.com.

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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

Color Coding

FTM has a really cool new feature, Color Coding.

In the People Workspace, Tree View, upper right corner is a new ICON, Color Coding



Clicking on that ICON, you have choices.




I chose All Ancestors, (4 colors)

When I turned that on, The parents of the focus person now have a color below their information.




The first time I turned this feature on, I saw a problem.

I returned to myself, and looked at the Index, in the People Workspace, Tree View and scrolled up the index a couple of times.




The colors indicate my direct line ancestors BUT the color for Eliza Pancoast and John are different from the rest of the Worrell / Worrall individuals.

Below is my 4 grandparents, each with their own color. The Green dot above and underline below is for my Paternal Grandmother. The Red dot is for my Maternal Grandfather. So, I probably have some research to do.



These families were all in the same area at the same time, been there for years, but I did not realize that  the Worrall / Worrell may different or the same family. Remember, in old records spelling doesn't count. I know about the different spellings, but without the color coding, I didn't realize that it may be different families.

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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Photo Darkroon

Photo Darkroom is a new feature in FTM2017. It will allow you do make some adjustments with an image in your Media Workspace, Detail View.

Just below the Images is the button for "Photo Darkroom"



This will open a simple photo editing tool on the left, where you can adjust the contrast



Hovering over the ICONs on the left you will see what you can do.  "You may click the tool several times to enhance the effect" for example.




There is a drop down arrow (just above) what will give you some sliders that you may also use. You will notice below that the image is different. If you look at the slides on the left, it was a little extreme.


You can move the sliders around so that the image is the way you want it. Below, I manually returned the sliders to 0.



 You can click on the ICONS, in this case the 3rd one and adjust the sliders as well



The image is now worse.


BUT, there is an Undo button that you can undo your last change, but you can also undo a number of changes.



There is another View, the one that I use, where you can have the Original on the Right, and the "proposed change" on the left. On the bottom of that image is two boxes, one for one image, like the ones above, or two images, below. That way you have a better idea of the changes you have made.



Also, the Revert to Original option.

This Photo Darkroom feature is in addition to the photo editing feature that is already part of the Family Tree Maker program.

Suggestion: This feature is one of the reasons I always use a COPY of the original media file, when I Add a Media file to my database. If I mess this image up, using this feature, I can always bring in a fresh COPY of my media file.

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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

FamilySearch Hints

One of FTM2017's new features is the ability to see Hints from FamilySearch, similar to what we have experienced from Ancestry.

In the Plan Workspace, upper right corner you will see where you can Login or Logout of either Ancestry or FamilySearch. In this example, I have already logged in.



So I can log out. The usual Ancestry ICON, and the new FamilySearch ICON.

In the People Workspace, at least the first time, you will see:



The usual Login Screen from FamilySearch. Please read the choices and login. The you will see:


This is turning on the Auto-Search feature to FamilySearch. Again, read the fine print and make your choice. There is a FamilySearch Privacy Policy link that you should read.

Once that is done, then you will see Hints, like you see hints from Ancestry.



It's the blue square to the right of the Ancestry Shaky Leaf hint.

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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

What is a Sync Weather Report

When you do a FamilySync™ you will see a new screen, the Sync Weather Report.

The text in this "Weather Report" will most likely change, as this feature has just been turned on for us, the End User. I wasn't going to post this, because it might and will probably change. But what is important is that we just don't click through (Continue Sync) without READING the content of the information that is provided. In this case, the FamilySync feature has a warning about what is going on. The feature is safe, but read the whole message as to that is going on.




Welcome to the Sync Weather Report system.
We created this system to alert you to conditions that may affect your syncing. A orange window like this one means you should experience caution in syncing. A red window means syncing is down or so dangerous that we will not permit you to sync until these conditions improve.




Current Issues
FamilySync has been officially online for just 48 hours now and we see it has some quirks of its own to work out. Here are some notes.
Ancestry Side Changes: You may see changes on the Ancestry side when you didn't make any, especially on your first sync. This is a known issue and is not dangerous. What's happening is FamilySync occassionally picking up "time stamps" that tell us what has changed and reporting them as real changes when obvioiusly they're not. We're working with Ancestry to fix this.

Safe Mode for Ancestry Syncing. When changes are made only on the FTM side, sync speeds are lightening fast compared to TreeSync. But for the moment, syncing Ancestry side changes take place in "Safe Mode' which takes 2-3 times linger than before. While we work with Ancestry to make an Ancstry side sync that is both safe and fast we'd suggest making all your changes on the FTM side.
BUG REPORTING
We are committed to making syncing faster, safer and smarter. If you have issues with syncing please report them using our Bug Reporter system by clicking here. 
The important point here is the level of communication that has been added to this feature. This message appears very quickly at the start of the process so that WE can decide if WE want to continue with this process.

That last paragraph is probably the most important part. If you see a Bug, Report the Bug. That is the only way they know that there may be a problem to resolve. 

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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

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