FTM2014 - Plan Workspace - Open Existing File

This is not a new feature, but a good reminder.

I have an existing FTM2012 file, but I don't want to open FTM2012, select the file, back it up, or restore in FTM2014. I just want to open that FTM2012 file.

In the Plan Workspace, I select File, then Open.

This will open a new window, and we have seen this window before:

I have selected the file, and as I have mentioned before, I include the Version in the Filename. In this specific case, it had not added the build number, it was <filename>2012. When I select that file, it puts the filename into the Open field.

Here is how I created my "FTM2012 Back Up" as I talked about earlier, but it's part of the process of moving from FTM2012 to FTM2014. All I needed to do in put a check mark in the box and the FTM2012 back up was created.

Now we have to Name the NEW file for FTM2014. I entered <filename>:2014-1207 and FTM2012 added FTM, as the file extension.

 After the new file is created, I am taken to the People Workspace and work can begin.
_______________________________________________________________

Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

FTM2014 - Program ICONs on Windows Task Bar

A not so obvious, but very helpful addition is that FTM2014's ICON, on your Windows Task Bar is different. I have both FTM2012 and FTM2014 installed, for the moment, but I can tell the version by the number of leaves.

FTM2012 has 2 leaves, (on the Left), while FTM2014 has 3 leaves (on the Right).

At least in my installation, unlike FTM2012, I had to Pin the program to the Windows Taskl bar. To do that, I opened FTM2014, right clicked on the ICON and selected Pin to Task Bar.

The two recent files above, are the Back Up that I restore from and the file that is now open.

Now, to get rid of FTM2012 from the Tool Bar, Right Clicking on the 2 leaves and selecting Unpin.

Which will leave just FTM2014. The other ICON is Firefox.

_______________________________________________________________

Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

FTM2014 - Plan Workspace Changes

The first visible change with Family Tree Maker Version 2014 is the Plan Workspace. Over the next couple of blog posts, I'll try to point out the changes as I have seen them.

Here is what the Plan Workspace looks like, for a New Tree (or family file).

 Lots of Changes. I'll walk through the major changes here.

 Not highlighted, just above the red box on the Left, is Family Tree Maker 2014.This has been the practice for previous versions, so as you open the program, you know what version you are working on.

The first change is the red box on the Left (I put that red box there, it's not part of the program). This is where you CAN select a different family file. Since this was just opened, no file was opened, so nothing to select, yet.

On the Right, is where the NEW Login is located in FTM2014.

As a reminder, don't forget to Register FTM2014. Each time you install Family Tree Maker, you must Register the program on that computer, Looking into Ancestry.com with your usual Login and Password. I'll create a blog post later on how to do that. The Registration process does NOT appear to have changed from previous version AFTER FTM2008.

To create a new tree (file), this is where you can do this. The format of the information is the SAME, but the location is a little different. You can Start by importing an existing tree. Again, the same steps as before. Will create import an existing tree later.

Before I installed FTM2014, I backed up my file in FTM2012, from the File, Back Up command in FTM2012. So in FTM2014, I want to RESTORE from that back up. As with previous versions, it's the File Menu, selecting Restore ...

Just for a note, other File menu items are, Open a File, like from FTM2012, Open a file in another window, or import as a New Tree. I didn't have to Back Up in FTM2012, but I have a practice of doing that, and I don't rely on the Automatic Back feature for my back ups.

I also have a practice of how I name my files. Normally it is Surname followed by the Version of Family Tree Maker AND the Build of that version. The file I am going to use, is my working file, which I call Master. I want to restore my FTM2012 file. When I backed up the file in FTM2012, I called it Master2014-1207, as 1207 is the 64 bit build number that was installed on this computer. The 32 bit version, I believe, is build 207. So I select that file, it is included in the Open field, as we are ready to Restore that file and open it in FTM2014.

You are then asked to Name the file, I am naming it Master2014-1207 and Family Tree Maker will add .FTM as the file extension.

The normal Restore Process bar appears, and the bar will go across the screen several times, until it completely restored, as a New FTM2014 file.

The new People Workspace will then open and you are ready to go.

.
Yes, There are changes here, but they will be posted over the next couple of days.

To return to the Plan Workspace for this file, there are now TWO Tabs. New and Current, with the To Do list now present.

There will be a follow up Blog Post, to go into more detail on this workspace showing where "stuff" has been relocated. It's basically similar information, but moved around a little.

For me, the change is good, in that I am reminded of my To Do list (Task List), who the Home Person is, and who the Last Person I worked on. More on that later.

Time to get started with this new version of Family Tree Maker.

_______________________________________________________________

Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Family Tree Maker 2014 is 64-bit compliant

I think that many Family Tree Maker users have wanted this feature for a while.

• 64-bit Support—Family Tree Maker 2014 is 64-bit compliant. It will install as 32-bit or 64-bit depending on the system you are using. If you have a 64-bit system (hardware and operating system), you will now have access to additional memory beyond the 4GB 32-bit limit. So any high-memory consuming actions that were not possible with the 32-bit version may be possible with the 64-bit version.

There is no user choices to be made, as the installation will determine which version your computer is using.

The end result should be in the performance within the program.

For FULL system requirements, please visit this website. http://www.ancestry.com/cs/apps/P-5208 and select System Requirements.
_______________________________________________________________

Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Do I start over ???

Do I start over seems to be running wild on Facebook. Folks are realizing that their files are out of control. I got that, been there done that. I understand the problem. My file has always been pretty well documented with Citations, as I have always used the Undocumented Report in Family Tree Maker. When I am looking at my screens, I try to make sure there is at least one citation for each fact. But that is just me.

My thought on the "start over" question was, I have spend 10 to 15 years working with this SAME family file. I have spend many, hours working with it. Do I want to through away those many hours of work?

But the Do I Start Over question has been on my mind. I spent a lot of time thinking about that question, but my answer is different, and it has paid off for me. I learned "my answer to that question" last year. My task was to move ALL of my source and citation information into the Template Feature of Family Tree Maker. I have blogged about that process many times.

How to attack the issue of an an out of control, messy, undocumented family file?

Let me say that over these past years, I have learned a lot about how to do family research. "GPS" wasn't part of my understanding until just a few years ago. How knew about Inferential Genealogy 10 years ago. Who knew the importance of a properly formed citation? I certainly didn't. My understanding of how to do research has changed and far more records are online, we have access to. I chose to work with what I have.

Make a plan.

There are many ways to go at this clean up process, You could do it my "line", by person, but I chose to do it starting with my Sources. That is, intentionally starting with my Sources, moving each of them into the Template format. In doing this, I actually accomplished 3 things.

1) All of my Citations, where the Source is in a Template, are in the Evidenced Explained format, which is my goal

2) In order to "fill in the blanks" of the Template, and complete the Citation, I had to go back to those sources, just to fill in the blanks

3) Picked up the data elements (Facts) that I missed the first or second "time around".

I worked on this and continue to work on this for the past 18 months. Not that I have a lot of Sources, but I took the time, had to re-do some of the work that I had done, but I have better information, more complete information in the Citation and about the people AND relationships within my file, just by looking at the Source.

When I started to look at my data from the Source, I did two things. Learned what the source is all about, why was it created, what was it's purpose. Just look at the Census Records over time. What was the purpose of that Census Record for each Census Year, What was being asked and WHY was it being asked. WHY did the 1940 Census Record have a question about where you were in 1935?

Understanding the Record was where I started, but the next step was, for me at least, What do I want to capture from that Record, any record. Sticking with the Census, do I want to capture if the family owned or rented? I chose not to track that. Was the person listed at being married in that Census Record. I chose to track that one. Just by relooking at the Census Record for that column, I then had a handle on, and could track, at a glance, when the person was married, when a spouse died, so know that I may have to look somewhere else.

A single female in 1910, not with the family in 1920, I might have to look for her, but being married in 1920, so my search strategy for her in 1920 would change.

By starting with the Record, Identifying what I want to capture, got me started. I started with the Census Records, mostly because they are at the top of my Source listing in the Source Workspace, I was able to understand that family make up over time. I made sure that I used the Head of Household and add the household members to that Citation. Making sure that I didn't have a number of the household members with their own Citations.

This gives me ONE Citation for that Household, with the Media file, LINKED to that Citation, and links from that citation to many Facts for that census year.

Here is a link to the work that I did for the 1940 Census.

http://ftmuser.blogspot.com/search/label/1940_Census

So, if I have any question about an entry, I can go to the Source Workspace, and I have then 2 places where I can see the record itself. Either the Media Tab, or the Link to the record, if it came from Ancestry.com.

There were a number of times where I re-merged an Ancestry record because I had done the merge from a household member, but I wanted to be consistent, then cleaned up the entries associated with the "first" non-head of household, but I wanted to be consistent.

Looking that the Timeline feature for the person, you help me identify what information I might be missing or to help understand what happened to a family. The best example was a family lived in one place for a number of years, but between two census years, they moved. Looking at the Time Line, I noticed the move. But WHY did they move. Looking at the Head of Household's timeline, with the Family Included, didn't help much. BUT when I looked at his Spouse, with the family timeline, I realized that HER father had died, just before they moved. Looking a little closer, I realized that they have been living with the "in-laws" in the previous census. So, it appears that the "father-in-laws" death caused the family to move.

Am I done, no. Do I add new information, absolutely. I follow those shaky leaves, but I am spending more time understanding what I am looking at (the source) before I enter the data into my file.

My Citations are far better. I have moved some of the details that I might have in my citation into the Fact Notes or Citation Notes. Moving source information that was in the Person Notes, into Fact Notes or Citation Notes. Also taking advantage of Research Notes, AND adding to my ToDo list. Many of these features didn't exist when I started this file, way back when.

Bottom line here, for me at least, I have learned much over these years, AND Family Tree Maker has many more tools, built in, that I can take advantage of that didn't exist earlier.

Oh, if the plan that you start with doesn't work for you, look at your plan again. So far, my "clean up plan" has worked. That is move ALL of my sources into the Template feature is helping me clean up my file.

One User's Experience.


_______________________________________________________________

Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

More information on FTM2014

I should have posted this earlier.

Here is a link to Ancestry.com with more information on FTM2014.

http://www.ancestry.com/cs/apps/P-5208

Please look at the 4 tabs on that page for more information.



_______________________________________________________________

Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Family Tree Maker Version 2014 announced at the FGS Conference

It’s that time again to announce all the greatest new features of Family Tree Maker. We listened to a large range of Family Tree Maker users to improve our features for 2014 including the roll out of the new Family View display, improved TreeSync, more extensive charts and reports, new organizational tools and more. Below is a list of the newly improved features.

• New Family View — see your family tree in a new way. This additional view makes navigating easier, especially when you want to see extended family members.
• Improved TreeSync — lets you easily synchronize your tree in Family Tree Maker with an online Ancestry.com tree.
  • A more robust TreeSync™ lets you sync even more of your family tree info.
  • Easily share your tree with your family and work on it together. Family and friends can view the online version of your tree without software or an Ancestry.com subscription.
  • Collaborate with the largest, most active family history community in the world. Keep your online tree private or make it public so that others researching your family can find you. You may connect with others who have insight on your ancestors, discover rare family photos, or even find relatives you didn’t know you had.
• More organizational tools — stay organized with new tools that let you sort children automatically by birth order and view people by location, grouping them by country, state, county, and city.
• New and improved charts and reports — more options and views let you display an individual’s ancestors, spouses, and children together. Also, the Index of Individuals Report has been expanded with options for anniversary, birthday, and contact lists and more.
• New tree branch export — a new export option makes it much simpler to export a single branch of your tree. 
• More editing options — save time with the ability to copy and paste facts including related source citations, media items, and notes.
• Improved merging — easily and reliably merge more of the information you find on Ancestry.com.

Family Tree Maker is a great program to help you organize your family history regardless of your level of expertise. With so many features and options, it’s perfect for the genealogist digging deeper into the past and the family historian fleshing out stories. Some of the additional features you may find helpful include:

1. Access interactive street and satellite maps

View important locations in your ancestors’ lives. Or create a migration map showing where events in ancestors’ lives took place.

2. Easily organize media

Add photos, documents, audio and video in one, easy-to-access location. Link media to multiple people in your tree and incorporate them into charts and reports.

3. Share your work with others

Use templates to create beautiful family trees or design your own with powerful charting tools. Enhance charts with backgrounds, embellishments and family photos.

4. Discover new family members — Follow hints from Ancestry.com, the world's largest family history resource.

5. Create Smart Stories — Transform facts from your tree into stories that update automatically as you change your tree.

6. Simplify source creation — Use templates to source everything from online databases to vital records.

7. Use standard location names — Use the locations database to enter place names consistently and in a standard format.

8. Explore data like never before — Use new and improved reports to gather information and export it in a variety of formats. Save settings in one report and apply them to others.

9. Navigate your tree with ease — View multiple generations, navigate to any individual in your tree with a click of the mouse and add or edit life events.

10. Import data from other genealogy programs — Open files created in Legacy™ Family Tree, The Master Genealogist™ and FamilySearch™ Personal Ancestral files.

Version 2014 is now available for pre-sale at 30% off for the early bird genealogist. You’ll have the option to have it shipped to you or download it the same day shipping begins. The pre-sale discount ends September 10^th, so get yours now to take advantage of the 2014 launch.

Google+ Response: Source Template: Baptismal Record from the Family Search website

This is from a Google+ Request:

Got a question for you now that I am about to do my first source citation in FTM 2012.  I have an image of the Baptismal Record for my grandmother that I found over on FamilySearch.org, but am having a hard time figuring out how to do this.

Here is a link to where I found the record image - https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1971-26176-32184-29?cc=1937794&wc=M9MQ-XL5:n549503664

I initially went to add a new source and church records as the category, but that didn't seem to fit, then I went to Digital Archives for the source template and put in the following info:

Collection: Prince Edward Island, Church Records, 1777-1985

Collection Format: images

Website Creator/Owner:  FamilySearch

Website Title:  FamilySearch.org

URL:  www.familysearch.org

Year:  left blank

This record gives her baptismal date, birth date, parents, etc.  If this is the correct template, I'm not sure what to put in the Citation Text box and what to put in the Citation Detail box.

This collection cites to the Anglican Church of Canada, Births, Baptisms 1884-1957.

I hope you can help me with this.  I"m totally lost.

Thanks.

There was a link to this blog post:

http://ftmuser.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-to-source-baptismal-record.html

Not having the name of the specific person, her Grandmother, I can only go so far.

Here is what I did:

Went to the Sources Workspace and selected New, in the upper right, and in the pop-up windows More:

 Then made my selections, based on the image in the link from Family Search:

It was a Church Record, an Image Copy, and it was Digitized Online. This is the Source Template I selected, that best described what was on that page.

Then the choice would bring up this screen:

Looking at the grayed text, that is the information that would be filled in, for data entry from that page:

Prince Edward Island, Church Records, 1777-1985
St Eleanors
Anglican Church of Canada
Births, baptisms 1884-1957

There was NOT a date on Family Search for when that record collection was made available, so I left the Year field blank.

That completed, brought up the Citation Screen:

I entered in the Citation Detail field:

accessed: 20 Aug 2013: Diocese of Nova Scotia, Page 38, Baptisms Solemized in the Parish or Mission of St. Eleanors in the Year 1909, Listed

I would enter the data from the image about the person of interest after the word "Listed"

In the Citation Text I entered:

Family Search: pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1971-26176-32184-29 

Which is the information from Family Search.

I added the Web Address for the image, that was listed in the initial Google+ message. I unchecked the Citation Text and Web Address boxes, (not show that way above).

The next step is to link the Fact collected from that image to this Citation.

I would also download the Image from Family Search and link that image to the Source Template

_______________________________________________________________

Copyright © 2013 by H R Worthington

Ancestry.com - "Old" Search update

I received this email from Ancestry.com and wanted to share it with you:

Russ

 

Good evening,

 

In an effort to continually improve your experience on Ancestry.com, we are asking for feedback on our search function. Our plan is first to gather feedback from our core users. We will take all of that feedback into account when we are merging the functionality of Old Search and current search into a consolidated search experience.

 

You can take the survey here: http://ancestry.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8ubNXU8IiQcxqVD

 

Many of the recent concerns and comments have cited functionality that actually exists in current search, as well as in old search – specifically:

 

1. Our current search experience allows users to view search results as a list of ranked records or as a consolidated list of categories.
2. Our current search experience allows users to do “Exact Match” searches.
3. Our current search experience allows users to specify a “Collection Priority” to filter results by country.

Crista Cowan has a great educational video which demonstrates this functionality in the current search experience:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c423yU5Ccs0

We also have a helpful article which does a side-by-side explanation of how to achieve the same types of results with the current search as in Old Search: http://ancestry.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5569/kw/old

Thank you,

The Ancestry.com Product Team

Ancestry.com - Upcoming Search Changes

I received this posting from Ancestry.com. What I haven't done yet, is to see if there is any impact on Family Tree Maker 2012 with this new search. IF there are any impacts, I'll post a follow up message here.

Ancestry.com is continuing our efforts to improve the search experience across Ancestry.com and will be making changes to our search functionality in the upcoming months. Some features will be added and some will be discontinued. As part of the 2% of our subscribers that use the old search function on the site, we know that you are passionate about the search experience on Ancestry.com and we are reaching out to you to get input on potential improvements. We hope you will take the opportunity to share your insights and feedback on our plans.

To identify which areas of the experience we should focus on this year, we have drawn on customer input, usage data, usage patterns and our old search function for inspiration. From all of that, we are looking at making your time on Ancestry.com more productive by improving these areas of the search experience in 2013:

• More relevant search results with the best results at the top
• Easier refining and control of your search results
• Keeping a better history of the work you have done
• Publishing more new content and more corrections to existing content
• Performance improvements to return results faster

As we begin to make these improvements, we will no longer maintain two separate search systems for the site. Maintaining two systems limits the resources we can use to make improvements and increases the complexity of every improvement we try to make. Additionally, continuing to maintain the two systems limits our ability to direct more investment into other areas like adding more record collections and correcting existing collections.

Based on that, as a part of the work this year we will be bringing together the two search experiences into a single search experience on Ancestry.com. We hope to bring forward the best features of both the old and new search systems into the consolidated experience to facilitate the transition for our users and to improve the overall search experience. We expect to discontinue the old search function as a separate experience within the next 6 months.

As a user of the old search feature, we wanted to give you advance notice and let you influence the changes we are making in search. Please take this survey to share your feedback and ideas on key features to improve.

Best regards,
The Ancestry.com Product Team