Pocket Genealogist is a brilliant companion to Legacy. It will take your Legacy database and copy it to the PDA and is just as usable on an iPAQ as if it were Legacy. There is a full 2-way synchronisation so that changes made on one machine are updated back to the other. So if you change data on Legacy then the next time you "sync" the updates go to the iPAQ. Similarly the other way round. One limitation - you can only make changes on one machine OR the other, not both! So mimics real life in some way. You go out add data in PG then bring it home and it updates Legacy. You add more data in Legacy, sync with the iPAQ and then go out again.
I have used the 2-way process as have many others, and it works great. But the comment about using a PDA as a readonly device is quite sensible. A PDA can lose power from the battery running down, jam up or whatever. If you have to do a hard reset - you lose the lot unless you take precautions with a memory card. It's also quite slow to update "in the field" unless you have an add-on keyboard. What I do on trips is to use good old fashioned paper and pencil, referring to the PDA in a readonly way to check facts when I frequently confuse myself. I then wait until I get home and do the updates carefully, in slow time, on the PC - with time to check for implications, errors, related people who are affected etc. If you are collecting, say, parish register data you could be finding details on lots of people who just happened to use the same church. Better to head the paper with the church and date and write all the entries you want straight underneath each other. To use the PDA you have to keep searching for the relevent person, open for edit, choose the right item to update etc etc. By that time, you could have recorded another 5-6 people on paper (or maybe a simple spreadsheet on the pda). There is one other facility on PG that is useful for recording data when you are away. That is "field notes". For each person you can add data to this, just as you would in General Notes in Legacy. This is available even when the database is readonly. When you do a "sync" the field notes are returned to the PC as a text report. You can then cut and paste the data into Legacy. This is an additional "notes" field to general, research, medical and does not interact directly with Legacy, but comes over as a text file. IMHO it's better to be safe, than sorry, with your data. So - use PG as it's the best portable companion to Legacy there is, but use it as a readonly device unless you are VERY sure you won't mess things up! (example - battery ran down while PG was open. I recharged the battery and all was well except that the database I was using was corrupted. Also it is probably safer to store the database on a storage card as that won't be lost if anything goes wrong. Jack -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Richard Peralta Sent: 17 February 2005 14:22 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [LegacyUG] Question Pocket Genealogist file transfer to Legacy Hello, I am seeking comments about whether data entered into a pocket PC Pocket Genealogist can be accurately and fully downloaded to a Legacy on a laptop, and vice versa (please mention which versions of Legacy and Pocket Genealogist were used). I use a HP/IPAQ pda, which is a pocket PC. I would like to buy software that uses Legacy and will run on my IPAQ. I hope to input and output data while on a trip. A member of the Legacy support staff told me, concerning Pocket Genealogist, that: "I've spoken with several people who use this program. They love it but have found that it's much better to consider a genealogy program on a PDA as a "read-only" and not try editing the data and exporting it back into your main Family File. There's a risk of losing data with any import/export process. You might ask on the Legacy User Group mailing list for users of Pocket Genealogist what their experience has been with editing the program and converting the data back to a Legacy file." I will be traveling overseas, where my previous generations reside. I want to be able to enter the data into the pda, and to have it be retrievable correctly into the Legacy running on my home computer. Before I invest the time in using Pocket Genealogist, I would like to know that its input/output processing with Legacy is fully functional. Thank you for your time, I look forward to hearing from you. Richard Peralta Hyde Park, Utah Legacy User Group Etiquette guidelines can be found at: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp To find past messages, please go to our searchable archives at: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup%40mail.millenniacorp.com/ To unsubscribe please visit: http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/LegacyLists.asp Legacy User Group Etiquette guidelines can be found at: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp To find past messages, please go to our searchable archives at: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup%40mail.millenniacorp.com/ To unsubscribe please visit: http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/LegacyLists.asp
