Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Exploring RootsMagic 8 - #2: People Screen, Edit Person, Enter Data

 This is the second post in a series of exploring RootsMagic 8, which was released on 30 September 2021.  The overview post is at Exploring RootsMagic 8 - #1 - the Main Screens.

I imported my RootsMagic 7 family tree, which is synced with my Ancestry Member Tree using RootsMagic TreeShare, and I will be using it for this series of posts.

1)  On the People Screen, I searched for Abraham Seaver in the "Index" pane search box.  The search is alphabetical by last name, first name.  The program provides a list of all persons in the database with that name.

I chose the Abraham Seaver born in 1787 (the third one on the list), and the "Family" pane for Abraham Seaver (1787-1864) opened:


The "Family" pane opened for me in the "Family" view (the second icon below the word "Family" on the screen.  The highlighted person, his parents, his spouse, her parents, their children, and their spouses are listed in the "Family" pane.  Each person on the screen above has a "Card" with their name and birth, marriage, and death information.

Note the WebHints icon and the FamilySearch Family Tree icon on the card for each person on the screen above.

2)  I can Edit Abraham Seaver's information by double clicking on his name in the "Family" view on the screen above:

The left-hand pane of the screen above lists the "Facts" for this person.  I note that I have "Facts" with "Details" for his Person, Spouse, Parents, Groups, WebTags, Birth, Marriage, Death, Ref# and Primary Name.  There are icons for Notes, Sources, Media, Tasks and Addresses to the right of the "Details" list.  I note that I already have Notes and Sources for this person for the Birth, Marriage and Death "Facts."

Since the Person "Fact" is highlighted, the right-hand pane of the screen shows the information related to the Person, including the Given Name, Surname, Prefix, Suffix, Nickname, Sex, Living?, Note, Sources, Media, Tasks, and Addresses.  I can type information into the first 7 items on that list and can click the right-carat (>) on the right side of the bottom five items to see more information about those items.  Each > click will open a new "slide-in" pane so I can edit the information related to that item.

3)  I note that I don't have a Burial Fact for Abraham Seaver, and I want to add that as a New Fact.  I add the Fact by clicking the plus sign icon (+) icon on the right side of the row above the "Fact" and "Detail" line:


First I have to select a "Fact Type" from a list.  I can use the search field to narrow my search - I entered "Burial" on the screen above.  The program gave me two matches, and I chose "Burial" instead of "Alt. Burial."

A Burial "Fact" was added to the "Fact" list on the "Family" pane.  I highlighted that Fact and the Edit pane for the Burial Fact opened on the right-hand pane of the screen above.  

4)  I entered the burial date, burial place, the place details (in this case, the cemetery) into the fields on the right-hand pane of the screen above.  I could have added a Description, a Proof statement, checked a Primary indicator, checked a Private indicator, and the program added the Sort date.  The programmed Sentence for the Fact type at the bottom of the right-hand pane provides a summary of the burial information.

I'm not done yet - I can still add a Note, a Source citation and/or a Media item for this Fact.  I will show those tasks in other blog posts.

Here is the Person screen after I added the Burial Fact and a Source citation:

5)  If I am finished adding Facts, I can also click on the WebHints icon and/or the FamilySearch icon on the Person card (on the first screen of this post) to see if there is online information on Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, MyHeritage.com and Findmypast.com that I should add to the profile for this Person.

6)  As I noted before:  I think that every setting, heading and icon noted above are in RootsMagic 7, either in the icon ribbons or in the drop-down menus (as words).  As I said, there is very little new, but they've moved it all around.  

For those of us who have worked in RootsMagic 7 for years, the learning curve in RootsMagic 8 should be pretty fast.  The workflow is almost identical, but the navigation and the clicking are different, and there are some icons on the screens that need to be explored.

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Disclosure:  I have been a paying customer of RootsMagic genealogy software since about 2006, and purchased RootsMagic 8 as an upgrade package back in 2020.


Copyright (c) 2021, Randall J. Seaver

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2 comments:

Family History Hat said...

I am having major challenges with the file transferring process. I have a number of data bases which I did not clean up previous to trying to transfer them. I think I go out of my way to make genealogy tasks problematic for myself!

Otherwise I am not crazy about the presentation of the page. I will take a short "vacation" from the task as I go out of town to celebrate a granddaughter's reception (the one she was supposed to have last October but was put off because of the Covid. When I return home, I can hopefully re-engage with my challenge and try not to beat up on myself too much!

75 year old me in the age of computers, I (other than being lazy in the past) have enjoyed my previous relationship with RM and will persevere!

Unknown said...

I have about 15 OLD GED files from other people, so the information is not verified. I am opening, entering the information into my main file (manually). How can I add a Verified/Unverified data fact?