Friday, November 25, 2011

File Sharing and Brick Walls - Russ Examines My Database

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My friend and fellow geneablogger, Russ Worthington, offered to "look into" one of my Brick Wall ancestors - William Knapp (1775-1856) after reading about my efforts to create a Research Log in Research Logs in Genealogy Software. Russ asked if I would send him a GEDCOM file for William Knapp and several more generations.  From my genealogy database in RootsMagic 4, I created a GEDCOM file for William Knapp and three generations of descendants and their spouses.  This 86 person file is easy to navigate and use.  I'm more than happy to have another set of eyes, brains, and tools look at one of my enduring Brick Walls (even if he finds flaws with my database entries!).

Russ imported my William Knapp GEDCOM file into Family Tree Maker 2012 and into RootsMagic 4 for comparison and analysis purposes.  I've been working along in parallel in Family Tree Maker 2012 and RootsMagic 4 in order to undersatand what he's doing and to answer the questions that we both have about the two software programs.

He is now analyzing my database, adding content to it, and documenting his work in a series of blog posts on his Family Tree Maker User blog, which I highly commend for your reading.  It's interesting to watch how he is doing this in Family Tree Maker 2012.  These are the tasks he would perform  before he would merge it into his own database.  He is standardizing the database so that he can effectively use it to help me in my Brick Wall problem, doing tasks that I have not thought about doing because they are not in my experience base. 

I'm hoping to learn a lot about how to standardize a database and how to use Family Tree Maker 2012 more effectively.  I really like Russ's "Lesson Learned" at the end of each of his posts!

One of the more interesting things about this work so far is the details of the GEDCOM files created by RootsMagic, 4 and what was imported into Family Tree Maker 2012.  It took a second GEDCOM file to transfer all of the data effectively, and I'll try to describe what happened in a separate blog post.

Here are Russ's blog posts to date (I'll try to update them on a regular basis):

File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 1 - Import (25 November 2011)
File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 2 - Unknown Names (25 November 2011)
File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 3 - Place Names (25 November 2011)
File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 3a - Why Map (25 November 2011)
File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 4 - Person Review (25 November 2011)

File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 5 - Task List (25 November 2011)
File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 6 - Abt Dates (25 November 2011)
File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 7 - Clean Up Notes (25 November 2011)
File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 8 - Import Citations (25 Novrember 2011)
File Sharing and Brick Walls - "Y" in Death Fact (25 November 2011)

File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 9 - Burial Fact (26 November 2011)
File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 10 - Burial Fact Report. (26 November 2011)
File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 11 - Comment and Status (26 November 2011)
File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 12 - Research Begun (27 November 2011)
File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 13 - To Do List (1 December 2011)

File Sharing and Brick Walls - Part 14 - Maps (1 December 2011)

Updated last: 1 December 2011

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