Family Tree Maker: Program Update

From the Ancestry.com Family Tree Maker Blog

Family Tree Maker: Program Update

• Posted by Michelle Pfister
• November 17, 2009

Hello Everyone,

We are soon going to release a small program update to Family Tree Maker 2010, which will address some of the requests you’ve made here on the blog and in other forums.  Here are some of the highlights:

1. Improved Relationship Calculator. Direct-line relationships now take precedence over less direct lines.
2. Greater control over hinting. A new option lets you turn tree hints off, so you can get hints from records only. See the new check box in the Options dialog. Also, the program will stop hinting on trees owned by the logged in user, as well as not hinting records that have been downloaded with a tree from Ancestry.com.
3. Improved data and formatting in a number of reports.
4. Improved support for GEDCOM, PAF and Legacy import.
5. Many other small changes throughout the program to help it run more smoothly.

We appreciate your feedback and suggestions. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us; they have helped us tremendously in preparing this update.

Please watch for the update in the next day or two. When it’s ready, a prompt will display in Family Tree Maker after you start the program. For those of you using Vista or Windows 7, make sure to right click on the Family Tree Maker 2010 shortcut and chose the “Run as Administrator” option to ensure you receive the notification. More detailed information regarding the patch, as well as links to download the patch directly, can be found at the following location starting tomorrow morning: http://www.familytreemaker.com/Support/Patch_2010.aspx.
Thanks!

About Michelle Pfister

Michelle Pfister is a senior product manager for Family Tree Maker. She wishes she could help each individual person with their questions, but she's glad there are many resources available that can help even better (see the blog post "Getting Help"). She wants to hear your thoughts and suggestions on the latest version of Family Tree Maker.

Ancestry.com Adds 600 Navy Cruise Books to Its U.S. Military Collection

Below is a Press Release from Ancestry.com.

Ancestry.com Publishes for the First Time Online

Collection of Twentieth-Century Navy Records

Site Celebrates Veterans Day with Free Access to Entire U.S. Military Records Collection

PROVO, UT (Nov. 11, 2009) – Ancestry.com today added more than 600 Navy cruise books to its online collection of military records to commemorate Veterans Day. This historic effort is the result of an agreement between Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online resource for family history, and the United States Navy. As part of the agreement, Ancestry.com set up scanners on location at the Navy Department Library in Washington, DC, and has spent several months digitizing the cruise books for this occasion.

 The collection of Navy cruise books, available exclusively online at Ancestry.com, represents nearly 40 years of cruises following World War II (1950-1988) and chronicles an estimated 450,000 servicemen deployed at sea during that time. Styled after yearbooks, the cruise books include the names and photographs of individuals who served aboard the ship and highlight not only significant milestones that took place during the cruise, but also the day-to-day life on board ship. While not every Navy cruise was documented in a cruise book, the Navy Department Library has on file an estimated 3,500 cruise books, which Ancestry.com plans to digitize and add to this collection over time.

“When Ancestry.com approached the Navy about digitizing these cruise books for online access, we were thrilled,” said Captain Charles Todd Creekman, Jr., USN (Ret.) Executive Director of the Naval Historical Foundation. “A cruise book offers an insider’s perspective into what these sailors experienced, and the strong camaraderie they established, while serving their country at sea.”

The Navy cruise books are part of Ancestry.com’s U.S. Military Collection, which includes 100 million names that span more than three centuries of American military service.

“When you have a family member who has served in the Armed Forces, you can’t help but be proud,” said Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry.com. “This Veterans Day, we’re celebrating America’s military heroes of yesterday and today and invite every American with military roots to see if they can learn something new about their family member on Ancestry.com.”

In honor of America’s military heroes, the entire U.S. Military Collection on Ancestry.com can be searched free through Nov. 13. To begin exploring your family’s military heritage, visit www.ancestry.com/military.

About Ancestry.com Inc.
Ancestry.com is an online resource for family history and has digitized and put online over 4 billion records over the past twelve years. Ancestry users have created over twelve million family trees containing over 1.25 billion profiles. Ancestry.com has local Web sites directed at nine countries, including its flagship website at http://www.ancestry.com/.

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Ancestry.com Adds 600 Navy Cruise Books to Its U.S. Military Collection

 

To add a note:  I did look at this collection, as I was on board a ship in Vietnam, and read with interest a couple of these Navy  Cruise Books of ships that we encountered in Vietnam. There was one cruise book that was taken while my ship (U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Halfmoon) was in the same port at the same time.

Family Tree Maker 2010 and Windows 7

The Family Tree Maker Blog on Ancestry.Com posted an article on

Family Tree Maker 2010 and Windows 7

It starts with:

With the release of Microsoft Windows 7 this week, many have been asking about the compatibility and testing of Family Tree Maker 2010 related to this new operating system.

The short answer is yes, Family Tree Maker 2010 is fully compatible with Windows 7.

Please read the complete Blog for details.

Source Citation Template - Find-A-Grave

This series of Blog posts will expand each of the Groups and show the various Categories that will appear on the Category menu. The list of Categories to select from. Each of these categories are referred to in Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills

 There have been several Blogs, written today  (10/21/09), on How to Cite a Gravestone from the Find-A-Grave website.

As a contributor to Find-A-Grave as well as posting a blog on Tombstone Tuesday, I thought it was time to continue the Use of the New Templates found in Family Tree Maker Version 2009 and now 2010 and address this specific issue..

Here are two Blog Entries that might be of interest on the topic of Citing Find-A-Grave information:

Citation: Is it ever okay to enhance the standard? Opinions, Please..." by Herstoryan

and

How To Cite A Gravestone from Find A Grave by Thomas MacEntee

In researching Tombstone Pictures on Find-A-Grave, a photograph of the Headstone of Hiram Deats, Jr. Based on the information in my Family File, this was the correct Hiram Deats, Jr.

Figure 246

Downloaded the image to the Media Folder for this Family File, gave it a filename that was meaningful (Deats-HiramJr) and Added it to the Media section for this person (People Workspace, Person Tab, Media tab in the Center).

Hi-Lighting that image, and going to the Right Hand Panel (RH Panel), and selecting the Burial FACT that was already known, from a Cemetery Visit, Selected New, Add New Source-Citation in the Source-Citation portion of the RH Panel.

Figure 247

This brought up a New Source-Citation Screen (2), where New was selected. This brought up another screen, where More (3) was selected, as this is where the Templates are chosen from.

There is a more detailed description on this blog post:

Source Citation Template - Source Group

In that blog the various Source Groups were discussed. From the list of Groups, Cemetery Records (1 below) appear to be the best match. That would be Group 3 

 

Figure 248

Looking at the Category Listing, Grave Markers appear to be the best choice for this Headstone photograph. Selecting the specific Template would be the next choice and that would be Online Image.

Figure 249

This completes the Selection of the Template, but now to "fill in the blanks" for the Find-A-Grave Source.

Figure 250

The Create surname, in this case, is Find-A-Grave. No Creator forname is required, but the Web Site Title (Find-A-Grave) and URL (http://findagrave.com) is entered. The year is also entered.

Clicking on OK will bring up a Specific Source-Citation screen.

Figure 251

For this example, the Date of the Citation was entered in the Citation Details, and in the Citation Text box, the information was transcribed from the photograph of the headstone. Giving Credit to the photographer would also be acceptable.

The Source-Citation will appear like this:

Find-A-Grave, Find-A-Grave, digital images (http://findagrave.com), October 21, 2009. Photograph of the headstone of Hiram Deats Jr - Born Sept 10 1853 - Died Feb 6 1928 - Cherryville Baptist Cemetery Cherryville, Hunterdon County, New Jersey.

Note: When entering information into the Citation Text field, the Enter Key (return) will NOT be recognized in the end note (Source-Citation). In this example you will see Dashes (-) in the entry. "Hiram Deats Jr - Born Sept 10 1853"

Evidence Explained: 5,16, page 229 

Family Tree Magazine - Vote for the 40 Best Genealogy Blogs

Don't know how this happened, but this Blog in on the List. I am overwhelmed. Thank you.

Looking at the entire list, there weren't but one or two Blogs that I don't follow every day and learn from. Please take a moment and review this awesome list of Genealogy Bloggers.

For a little more information please check out the Family Tree Magazine Insider Blog

Thank you.

Family Tree Maker: Webinar Recap

This information can be found on the Ancestry.com Blog:
http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2009/10/02/family-tree-maker-webinar-recap/

Hello Everyone,
We want to thank you all for your questions and participation in the webinar for Family Tree Maker 2010. We had a great turnout, with about 2,000 of you participating live with us that night.
We answered as many questions as time permitted, and we’re sorry if we weren’t able to get to yours yet. But don’t worry, we’ve got a list of the questions asked during the webinar, and we’ll be posting here to answer what we can. Again, specific questions about errors or technical problems will be answered much more quickly if you email support@ancestry.com or give our customer support center a call.
We just wanted to briefly mention some of the more frequently asked questions here:
Q: Will the webinar be available for viewing at a later date?
A: Yes. We will have the archived webinar up on our site in a few days. When its available, you can find this webinar, and past webinars at http://familytreemaker.com/About/Webinars.aspx. The webinars can be found on both FamilyTreeMaker.com in the Help section and on Ancestry.com under the Learning Center.
Q: What about phantom hints with the shaky leaves?
A: We are aware of this problem, and are working on getting things fixed. Right now the best thing is to be patient with us, or email support@ancestry.com for some help.
Q: There were lots of questions about functions in the program.
A: Many of those can be answered within the program itself, so you don’t have to wait for us to get back to you to get working on your family history. To get answers, go to the Help menu in Family Tree Maker, and there you will find the Training Tutorials and Online Help Center.
The tutorials are videos on your program that go over some of the basics of Family Tree Maker, and are great for visualizing what you want to do within the program.
The Online Help Center gives you access to the Getting Started Guide. This handy guide will help you begin your first Family Tree Maker project and master the program’s basic features. You can quickly navigate to the section you would like to see for the answers you are looking for.
Also in Online Help Center is a link to our free online database of Knowledge Base articles. These are often made up of answers excerpted from the Official Guide, and are updated often. These are a lot of the same answers Customer Support would provide–it’s the same set of information they work from when they’re answering your questions. By typing in a few key words of what you are looking for, such as “splitting trees” or “duplicate people,” a list of articles will display that you can browse through to find what you are looking for.
During the webinar, there were many more questions, and just to give you a heads up for what we’re working on to put in the blog post, keep your eye out for these new posts:
Book publishing
Source Citation
Transferring Files
Thanks!

About Michelle Pfister

Michelle Pfister is a senior product manager for Family Tree Maker. She wishes she could help each individual person with their questions, but she's glad there are many resources available that can help even better (see the blog post "Getting Help"). She wants to hear your thoughts and suggestions on the latest version of Family Tree Maker.

Free Family Tree Maker 2010 online class

Family Tree Maker® 2010 has a lot of great new features. Let us show you around.

	Family Tree Maker® 2010 new features online class Here’s your chance to save 20% on Family Tree Maker 2010 and learn how to use it to grow your tree like never before. Join us on September 30th at 8 PM (EST) when some of the people behind Family Tree Maker walk you through what’s new and how to bring your family tree to life in the newest version.
	A few of our developers from the Family Tree Maker team will also be on hand to help answer questions. We encourage you to submit questions in advance through our Family Tree Maker blog. This is the perfect time to get 20% off of Family Tree Maker 2010 and learn about all its unique new features. Order now. Register for free online class.

Speaker: Duff Wilson, Sr., Senior Product Manager – Family Tree Maker Duff has 15 years of software design and development experience creating user–friendly interface designs. His interfaces have earned national awards and numerous patents. He holds a master’s degree from Utah State University in instructional technology with an emphasis in computer–based instruction. He’s also an avid genealogist. In the process of designing Family Tree Maker, Duff has worked closely with countless genealogists ranging from novice to expert.

Moderator: Michelle Pfister, Senior Product Manager – Family Tree MakerMichelle has 20 years of industry experience with companies such as Microsoft, WordPerfect and NTT/Verio. She has worked on products such as Microsoft SharePoint, WordPerfect Suite, Corel WordPerfect Legal Edition and several Verio eCommerce offerings. One of her passions is making software simple to use, yet powerful enough for the pros.

Genealogy.com | Help | Money-back Policy | Unsubscribe | PRIVACY

If you would like to contact Genealogy.com directly, please write to: Ancestry.com Operations Inc. Attn: Customer Service 360 West 4800 North, Provo, UT 84604.

Family Tree Maker: Webinar on Sept. 30th

Please drop by the Ancestry.com Blog on Family Tree Maker:

http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2009/09/09/family-tree-maker-2010-webinar-questions/


To quote the blog:

We have a free webinar scheduled for September 30th at 8:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. In this webinar, you’ll see a demo of the new features in Family Tree Maker 2010. We know it can take time to learn all the details of a rich application like Family Tree Maker. This webinar will hopefully help.
To help us prepare, please enter your questions in the comments section. We’ll try to answer every question in either the webinar or in blog entries here. To keep us all on track, please limit your questions to those regarding functionality in Family Tree Maker 2010.
As always, you can see past webinars on FamilyTreeMaker.com. These will be especially helpful to you if you’ve upgraded from Version 16 or earlier. To attend the upcoming webinar, register here.
Thanks for entering your questions about Family Tree Maker 2010 functionality — we’ll look forward to reading every one. Thanks!
End of Quote:
I have signed up.

Genealogy Guys Videocast and Family Tree Maker

You are invited to visit the Genealogy Guys Videocast at http://genealogyguys.blip.tv/.

Drew Smith, one of the Genealogy Guys, interviews Michelle Pfister and Mark LeMonnier of Family Tree Maker.

The Genealogy Guys Videocast #002 - 2009 August 2

Enjoy what they have to say about Family Tree Maker Version 2010.

Attach Images following Download

In a previous Blog entry

Plan - New File - Download from Ancestry.com - Version 2010

The process of downloading a file from a Member Family Tree, you will notice that Source-Citation Images are not included in the download. The Source-Citation information is present as seen in the Source-Citation in the Right Hand Panel, but a 0 in the second column on the People, Person Facts page indicating no Media is present. Clicking on the Media Tab, in the Right Panel will also show no images.

 

Figure 235

As one who would like the image included in the Media collection for Source-Citations, the following are the steps that will include the Source-Citation image. Figure 234 was from the 1870 Census for Hunterdon County, New Jersey, Delaware Township.

Clicking on this link: http://ftmuser.blogspot.com/search/label/WebSearch will take you to a series of blog entries on how to do a Websearch.

A Web Search is performed on this individual, Hiram Deats was performed, and the 1870 Census Record is Selected.

Figure 236

Clicking on the View Image link, as seen in Figure 236, will bring up the Census Record in the Center, upper portion of the Family Tree Maker screen.

 

Figure 237

After a review of the image, which would have been looked at before, and is in the Member Family Tree, online, there will be a SAVE button, in the upper right corner of that screen. Looking in the box, you will note the it is, already, in the Member Family Tree.

Clicking on the Save button, will bring up a window asking you where to save the image. In this case,  Save This image to Your computer is selected.

Figure 238

The next window that opens will be asking where do you want to save this image. In this case, it is the Media Folder for Descendants of John Deats (1769-1841), which is the file name listed in the earlier blog.

For my file naming convention, I use a YYYY for Year, Undescore, Fed for Federal Census, Underscore, ST for the State Abbreviation, dash, County, dash, Township, dash, pg for Page Number. In the Figure 239, you will see where that information comes from.

In this case it is:

1870_Fed_NJ-Hunterdon-Delaware-pg34.jpg