Friday, October 28, 2011

Follow-Up Friday - FTM 2012, Great Blogs and the ePrize

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I'm writing "Follow-Up Friday" posts in order to highlight comments made by readers that raise issues, and I will try to make useful responses.

1)  In Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 9: The "Ahnentafel Report", Russ noted:

"I thought Anhentafel meant Table."

My understanding is that "ahnentafel" mean "name table" in German.  The American adaptation of "ahnentafel" by most genealogists and companies is really a list of the people in a person's ancestry, along with their birth, marriage and death dates and places.  That is more of an "ancestor list" and I prefer to call it that.  The "Ahnentafel Report" in FTM 2012 is really an "Ancestral Families Report" with names, children, dates, places, notes, sources, etc. 

"...as to images in this type of report, isn't this report a more formal report and that images were not included?  That doesn't mean they shouldn't be, but up until now, I thought that is why they were not included."

To me, a "formal report" is what is published in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, the New England Historic Genealogical Register, and other peer reviewed journals.  It also means to report created by a professional researcher under contract to a person for a fee.  I consider that the "Reports" in genealogy software are useful as working research documents - what information do I have - that can be shared with other researchers.  As such, I would love to have photograph and document images in these reports. 

"I am going to guess that your Export to a wordprocessor statement does not include the Export to RTF feature, as you can export to an RTF."

I can export to RTF, but that does not add the Field codes to a word processor file for names and places that can be used to create an index.  If I save to an RTF file, then I have to either add the Field codes one at a time in order to create an index, or hire an indexer.  Other programs create an index for the export to any format (e.g., RootsMagic).  Obviously, I'm trying to get the best "bang" for the least effort - the Reports for each of my grandparents, with say 12 generations, will be on the order of 600 to 1,000 pages each.  A feature that lets me edit text in a word processor while keeping the index updated is really important to me. 

2)  In Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 10: Making an Ancestral Family Book - Part 1, I noted that the Sources in the "Ahnentafel Report" did not print in the PDF export.  That flaw has been reported to the Family Tree Maker development team.

3)  In Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 7: More GEDCOM Trials, and several earlier posts, I noted that the links to Media items for a synced Ancestry Member Tree/Family Tree Maker 2012 file originating from the Ancestry tree, were not included in a GEDCOM file created by FTM 2012.  That was duplicated by several other researchers, and has been reported to the Family Tree Maker development team.

4)  In What is the Status of the FamilySearch Family Tree?, Jay commented:

"Thank you so much for this posting. I like the white paper, but more importantly, you led me to two of James Tanner's blogs, Genealogy's Star, and Tech Tips. For some reason I had never subscribed to them, so for me they are a great find."

I completely agree with you - James Tanner provides excellent information and commentary every week on his blogs, as do many of my geneablogging colleagues.  One of the things I really enjoy doing is leading readers to other geneabloggers by referring to their posts in my posts. 

5)  In Guess Who Won the AARP "Discover Your Roots" ePrize? I received many congratulations on my random win, and many suggestions for a smart phone - thank you all!  I've now received three of my "prizes" - the FamilyTreeDNA Family Finder test (I need to swab one of these days), a one year Ancestry.com US subscription (I had to cancel my existing subscription, then have AARP pay for the new subscription.  Due to time zone problems, I went through one day of Ancestry.com withdrawal...) and the money (for the smart phone and whatever else.  I haven't bought anything yet).

That's enough Follow-Up for now - I need to get going on entering more data into my RootsMagic database so that I can go find more in the coming months.  I have the urge to do more research.  Where's my to-do list?

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