Saturday, February 26, 2011

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Count Your Trees

Hey genealogy buffs, it's Saturday Night - time for more Genealogy Fun!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  Open your genealogy database in the software of your choice, and use the Help function to determine if your software can count the number of separate family trees you have in that database.

2.  Follow the directions if the program can do it, and Count Your Trees.

3)  Tell us about how many trees you have, and who is the "root" person in the biggest tree.  Tell us if you have any big surprises - did you find any disconnected trees that should not have been disconnected?

4)  Write your own blog post, write a comment on this post, or write a Facebook status or comment.

Here's mine:

I exercised RootsMagic 4 to do this (Tools == Count Trees, and the list opens showing the root person in each tree and then umber of persons in that tree), and found that I have 239 separate trees in my "Master" database.  I wrote about it in Dear Randy: Are all of the people in your family tree related to you?  93.6% of the persons in my database are in my biggest tree, with 37,210 persons.  The "root" person in that tree is "Unknown" - the third and last wife of Robert Seaver (1608-1683).  I have no idea why she is #1, but she is. 

I need to go through all of those other trees and determine if I have disconnected persons.  The RootsMagic system lets the user click on one of the root persons and see their information.  To see another tree, you have to Count Trees again.  Legacy showed me the same number of disconnected trees in my database as RootsMagic did.

In Legacy Family Tree 7, go to View and select Tree Finder.  The first time through took awhile for my tree, but when you have it done, you can go back to it (using the View == Tree Finder link) quickly.

In Family Tree Maker 2011, I could find no way to do this.  In my humble opinion, it should be added to the next upgrade, since it's a useful tool.

In Family Tree Maker 16, I could find no way to do this. 

6 comments:

GenieBeth said...

I could find no way to do this in TMG (The Master Genealogist) 7.0 either. Thanks though.

bgwiehle said...

"Branches" (http://www.branchesgenealogy.com/) can identify unlinked trees and individuals. Last year, I used my free trial period to verify that I had tagged the relevant groups in my trees.

Carol said...

RM shows that I have 2 trees in my main data base. One tree has 1 individual in it, someone I "unlinked" from the data base. I will re-use that number when I add the next person to my main data base.

I have several separate data bases, I use that method for the same reason we use separate directories, to keep things organized in the manner that makes the most sense to us.

Donna Hansen Peterson said...

I used my computer's find file function to find my FTM files. I currently have 7 trees in my Family Tree Maker v 2009 data base. Some are for comparison only,others may be merged with my main tree which is a ancestor tree for my grandchildren so includes their dad's ancestors also.

The current home person on my family tree is Adolph Halfdam Hansen, my Norwegian grandfather.

I used to be able to see the numbers (names, marriages, surnames, etc) for my data base but can't seem to find it in FTM 2009.

Charley "Apple" Grabowski said...

I have 7 trees that I have created in FTM. I have no way to tell how many unconnected family groups there are within those 7 trees. I often add individuals or families that I find info for that I want to save but do not know how or if they connect to me. There have to be several hundred of those.

Mel said...

I used Rootsmagic 3.2.2. Here's my post on my Azorean database:
http://www.researchjournal.yourislandroutes.com/2011/02/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-count-your-trees-part-one/