Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings issued this challenge:
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:
1) Open your genealogy software program (on your computer or online), and use the Help function to determine how to make a "Problem Report" or "Data Error Report" (or something similar).
2) Create a "Problem Report" or "Data Error Report" in your software for the persons in your tree (either everyone in the tree, or for a selected number of generations of your ancestors.
3) Tell us what type of problems or errors that your report found. Tell us how many errors were found. Tell us what problem or error surprised you.
______________________________
Because I'm transferring all my data from Family Tree Maker to RootsMagic 4, I decided to run the report in both programs.
My FTM file has 3,231 individuals and my RM4 file has only 70 people (gimme a break! It's slow going transferring everything by hand!)
So ... I ran the report in FTM and the first time it was 47 pages long. I almost had a heart attack! Then I realized that it was counting anyone missing a birth date and anyone missing a marriage date. In my opinion, not data errors. After filtering those out, the report magically shrunk to 2 pages.
1. Lots of individuals were flagged because their children were out of order. Indeed they were. A click of the "resort children" button fixed all of those problems, and reduced my report to less than a page.
2. Katherine [Huber] was flagged because apparently she was born (1864) after she was married (1860). I checked my information and found a typo. She was actually married in 1880. This also fixed the problem with her husband being flagged for marrying someone younger than 13.
3. Margaret Egan was flagged for being born more than a year after her father died. Unfortunately, this is a glitch with FTM - her father died sometime in 1862. She was born in December 1862. Thus, not a year later, but FTM reads it that way.
4. There were a couple of individuals flagged for having an "illegal character" in their name, where I had typed the last name as Brown/e or Crow/e. A couple more were flagged as including a title. Two had the first name of Dean, the third was Father Leonard F. Zwinger, who was - indeed - a priest.
5. The remaining problems were not problems as much as they were multiple dates for a single event that conflicted with each other - but this will get sorted out once I obtain the proper documentation.
My RM4 problem report consisted of two entries:
1. My grandmother is flagged as having been married at age 80. This is true. Go Gramma.
2. My GGgrandfather, Joseph Huber, was flagged as being "born after birth." This is also true -- sort of. I have two birth dates entered for him because I still do not have his birth certificate and have conflicting information elsewhere, so his birth dates are one year apart.
I'm glad Randy issued this challenge tonight. I knew those reports were there, I just forget to run them periodically. Maybe I should set up a schedule entry to run those reports the same day I do my backups!
Showing posts with label Family Tree Maker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family Tree Maker. Show all posts
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Family History Expo - Day 2
I really wanted to get this posted last night, but after a 2-1/2 hour drive home and a 750-word essay due before midnight, the blog took a back seat for a moment. Better late than never!
Ok, I told myself I wasn't going to complain about any of the goings-on at the Expo. I understand it's a huge event and there are billions of moving parts and all that. However, I am going to ask one question in hopes that it might help the folks at Family History Expos and Gwinnett Center think about something:
Would it have been that difficult to have someone selling coffee outside the exhibit hall before the classes got started in the morning?
Ok. Rant off.
Even without my morning coffee, my first class managed to keep my attention pretty well. Raymon Naisbitt with FamilySearch spoke about Finding Your Irish Ancestors. Now, I'm still working on my peeps in the United States and am nowhere near ready to dive into any overseas research just yet. Frankly, overseas research scared me a little. Ok, I'm still a little scared of my German research, but not so much anymore with Ireland. I know it's going to be hard to find a lot of records since my preliminary research and unconfirmed information tell me that my ancestors were in Ireland before civil records were kept, and (of course) they were Catholic. I learned that the Catholic churches were terrible record keepers out of fear of persecution. Fabulous. At least now I know before I start my research over there and I can plan around those records (or lack thereof). Nice job, Raymon.
Finally, I was able to get my hands on some coffee and headed to my next class: Finding Your Family's Stories Online. First, I just have to say that Tami Glatz is amazing. How she manages to have that much energy in the morning is astounding (obviously, the speakers were able to get coffee before the classes started!). I have pages of notes just from one hour with her, and I can't wait to get all this information saved into my browser favorites! I know there are stories out there ... now I will be able to put my hands on them! I will be sure to post any findings.
My next class was with Leland Meitzler of Family Roots Publishing: State and Territorial Censuses and Census Substitutes. I know, yawn-fest, right? Well, not so much. Leland was able to keep the information flowing and keep my attention. I learned where to go to look for information for the 10 years in between the federal censuses and in case my ancestor's portion of the federal census was damaged or is missing. Now I have a better chance of being able to find John Charles Slowey's father, and hopefully prove his birth date!
After lunch, Billy Edgington spoke to us about Civil War Records. She really knows her stuff! Now I know what to do with the records I found on Footnote. She gave us some excellent tips on what to ask for and what to expect from the request, and where to go from there.
Now, I've been using Family Tree Maker by Ancestry for a very long time ... since the 1990s I think. This weekend, I broke down and purchased RootsMagic 4. They were having a special for the Expo, so I picked up RootsMagic and the book, Personal Historian, and Family Atlas for 50 bucks. Not a bad deal. It's going to take some time transferring all of my research over to the new program, but I figure it will give me something to do until I have access to the New FamilySearch ... which leads me to my next class Michael Booth, one of the developers of RootsMagic. He spoke to us about how RootsMagic works with FamilySearch. I was impressed with how easy it looked. Of course, all that may change once I start trying to get it to work with my family, but we'll see. He was very helpful after the class in answering some questions I had about transferring my research.
The closing keynote address was given by Holly Hansen, the President of Family History Expos about a brick wall she had recently broken down. Very motivational. They drew the names for all the fabulous prizes after she was finished. The grand prize was a week-long research trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City where the folks at the library would be at your beck and call, paid hotel and everything. It was at about this time in the ceremony that I realized I hadn't written my name on the back of my little ticket that I spent so much time going from vendor to vendor to have them sign off. Oh well. I never win anything anyway.
They will be back next year, November 11-12, and I have already put it on my calendar. My goal for the remaining 364 days until the next Atlanta Expo is to figure out how to be in 11 places at one time so I don't miss anything!
Ok, I told myself I wasn't going to complain about any of the goings-on at the Expo. I understand it's a huge event and there are billions of moving parts and all that. However, I am going to ask one question in hopes that it might help the folks at Family History Expos and Gwinnett Center think about something:
Would it have been that difficult to have someone selling coffee outside the exhibit hall before the classes got started in the morning?
Ok. Rant off.
Even without my morning coffee, my first class managed to keep my attention pretty well. Raymon Naisbitt with FamilySearch spoke about Finding Your Irish Ancestors. Now, I'm still working on my peeps in the United States and am nowhere near ready to dive into any overseas research just yet. Frankly, overseas research scared me a little. Ok, I'm still a little scared of my German research, but not so much anymore with Ireland. I know it's going to be hard to find a lot of records since my preliminary research and unconfirmed information tell me that my ancestors were in Ireland before civil records were kept, and (of course) they were Catholic. I learned that the Catholic churches were terrible record keepers out of fear of persecution. Fabulous. At least now I know before I start my research over there and I can plan around those records (or lack thereof). Nice job, Raymon.
Finally, I was able to get my hands on some coffee and headed to my next class: Finding Your Family's Stories Online. First, I just have to say that Tami Glatz is amazing. How she manages to have that much energy in the morning is astounding (obviously, the speakers were able to get coffee before the classes started!). I have pages of notes just from one hour with her, and I can't wait to get all this information saved into my browser favorites! I know there are stories out there ... now I will be able to put my hands on them! I will be sure to post any findings.
My next class was with Leland Meitzler of Family Roots Publishing: State and Territorial Censuses and Census Substitutes. I know, yawn-fest, right? Well, not so much. Leland was able to keep the information flowing and keep my attention. I learned where to go to look for information for the 10 years in between the federal censuses and in case my ancestor's portion of the federal census was damaged or is missing. Now I have a better chance of being able to find John Charles Slowey's father, and hopefully prove his birth date!
After lunch, Billy Edgington spoke to us about Civil War Records. She really knows her stuff! Now I know what to do with the records I found on Footnote. She gave us some excellent tips on what to ask for and what to expect from the request, and where to go from there.
Now, I've been using Family Tree Maker by Ancestry for a very long time ... since the 1990s I think. This weekend, I broke down and purchased RootsMagic 4. They were having a special for the Expo, so I picked up RootsMagic and the book, Personal Historian, and Family Atlas for 50 bucks. Not a bad deal. It's going to take some time transferring all of my research over to the new program, but I figure it will give me something to do until I have access to the New FamilySearch ... which leads me to my next class Michael Booth, one of the developers of RootsMagic. He spoke to us about how RootsMagic works with FamilySearch. I was impressed with how easy it looked. Of course, all that may change once I start trying to get it to work with my family, but we'll see. He was very helpful after the class in answering some questions I had about transferring my research.
The closing keynote address was given by Holly Hansen, the President of Family History Expos about a brick wall she had recently broken down. Very motivational. They drew the names for all the fabulous prizes after she was finished. The grand prize was a week-long research trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City where the folks at the library would be at your beck and call, paid hotel and everything. It was at about this time in the ceremony that I realized I hadn't written my name on the back of my little ticket that I spent so much time going from vendor to vendor to have them sign off. Oh well. I never win anything anyway.
They will be back next year, November 11-12, and I have already put it on my calendar. My goal for the remaining 364 days until the next Atlanta Expo is to figure out how to be in 11 places at one time so I don't miss anything!
Posts
