See my answers inserted below your questions.
Brian Kelly
Rockland, ON, CAN
Rebecca wrote:
Hello All, my first posting:
My questions:
1) RootsMagic (RM) has two separate fields for *place* and
*description*. Based on my research, Family Tree Maker (FTM)
combines these fields into *Place/Description*. As a result,
when I combine (import/merge) a GedCom file from FTM ... into
RM ... all place and description fields are merged.
- For example, occupations, cause of death, occupations ...
appear in the *place* field, not the *description* field after
the import into RM.
Does anyone know why this is happening, what I (my
co-workers?) have done wrong ... and most importantly, how to
remedy the situation?
There is no real "remedy" and you have done nothing wrong. The
error is FTM's for using the same field for two purposes. Legacy
does know about this quirk in FTM and during the import will give
you the option to put the contents of this "dual purpose" field
into the description instead of the place. Since Legacy maintains
a master list of places in a separate table this is about the
best you can do. You could then go through and move the real
places to the Locations field in Legacy.
2) Can I import two different GedComs into Legacy and create
a variance report? A report that only lists the differences
between the two databases? For example, compares each
fact/event, field, note, source? Just a list of the variances
... so that I don't have to look at everything, line by line?
Legacy does have a feature, but I think you have to pay for the
deluxe version for it to work, that will allow you to compare two
files for duplicates, unfortunately this will not show the
differences it only brings up (for merging) those who are almost
the same. It does show the differences between the candidates for
merging. It does NOT show any people that are totally different
so it will not show anyone who is in one file but not in the other.
-Alternatively, is their a utility program available that will
do this?
Don't know of one but since a GEDCOM is a simple text file if you
have a word processor that can compare two files and mark the
differences that might do the job.
-Alternatively, can I import the databases in, say Excel or
Access and create a report? If yes, on this, I'll need
baby-step instructions.
The Legacy database is an Access 2000 database so theoretically
you should be able to do a comparison using Access. I am no
Access expert however so I cannot tell you how to do it.
I also have, copied from another mailing list, an Excel Macro
that will import a Gedcom into an Excel spreadsheet. Again I
don't know how you would do the difference comparison afterwards
though. If you are interested in the Macro contact me off-list
and I will send it to you
Please help. Thank you,
Becky
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