Family Historian User Group

Gedcom Census hiccuped this morning and the data I had entered appears to have been lost from the gedcom, although it is recorded in the census log.

I had both FH and GC open, and had entered family details from 1841, 1851 and 1861 and saved as usual, being prompted to add a birth event for an individual in 1841.  When saving the 1861 census, a message came up saying that FH had been changed by another application and GC would be reloaded, and to save again after that.  I thought it was odd but did as instructed.  I then entered another 1861 census for other members of the same family, and was surprised to be prompted to enter a birth event for the same individual as before.  When I then checked FH, there was no sign of the entries for 1841 and 1851, either under the individuals concerned or in Sources.  However the GC log shows all the entries as normal.  

I had not made any changes to FH during that period, and nothing else was running on the computer apart from the usual background stuff.  I use Windows XP.  I've never had any other problems with GC, which is a brilliant program.  Luckily it was only 2 censuses, although S*d's Law means that they did include lots of unrelated individuals who will have to be re-entered!  Just thought I'd report it in case there was any problem.

Maureen

ID:2544

Do you have Auto-save enabled on FH? Tools->Preferences->File Load/Save.

I've not come across any reason why Gedcom Census would ever log that it has written to a file and not actually done so. Whenever this has been reported in the past it has transpired that GC has been writing to a different file to the one opened in Family Historian. Is it possible that has happened? Please compare the path to the file mentioned in the GC log against the file you opened in Family Historian.

What may have happened that could explain part of this is that you had made a change to Family Historian and not saved. Whilst entering the Gedcom Census entry Family Historian 'auto saved' thus causing Gedcom Census to require a reload. A glitch in the current version of GC does require you to re-enter the bith details (this is fixed already for the next version).

Regards

Nick

Thanks for getting back to me on this. I do have Autosave enabled, every 2 minutes. I am positive I did not go back to FH during the time I was entering data, as that would have triggered the Update message on FH.

The file path on the log is identical with the path to the file I had open, both before and after the hiccup. The log shows I entered 1841 at 11.26, 1851 at 11.31 and 1861 at 11.36. Then I entered a single individual in 1871 at 11.40, when I received the Reloading message, then the family in 1861 at 11.48, which is when I realised there was a problem as the birth event I had already created in the 1841 entry was requested for a second time.

However, checking FH for the time records were updated shows only the individual at 11.40, and the family at 11.48. The previous change was to a different family an hour earlier, at 10.33, after which the program was shut down.

I hope this helps. This particular file has 2317 individuals in it. Once again, many thanks for your help.

Maureen

I just can't see how what you describes can have happened. Very strange. I wonder whether you would mind emailing the log (or at least the part for today) to me via nick AT Gedcomcensus.com?

I'll then go through the program code with a fine tooth comb to see if I can spot a problem.

Cheers

Nick

Many thanks for your offer of help, Nick.   I'll send you the file.

Just to clarify the position further, I do have dozens of gedcom files, because I'm doing a One Name Study.  These are all carefully named and numbered to distinguish them, and most are filed in sub-folders so they don't display immediately when I go to open a file.  NOTHING opens by default, either in FH or in GC; I have to deliberately choose which file to open from the 6 main ONS files or my full family tree, or go deeper into the folders for other gedcoms.  

In this case, the family I was working on was in my full family tree, and has no connection with any ONS file.  The records for this family were created only a few days ago, and simply do not appear in any other gedcom.

My system is about 18 months old, and stable so far (famous last words....!).  I have AVG and a wallpaper program running in the background, and Mailwasher Pro which checks for mail every 14 minutes.  The only recent change was an upgrade to Mailwasher Pro 6 on 1 October.    

I'll continue to work on the family, taking care to update FH manually after each census entry, and I'll let you know if anything else untoward happens.  

Maureen

Maureen

Did you do a save in Family Historian prior to starting work on GEDCOM census?  Because if you didn't, that could explain what happened.  I know that the gap was more than thge 2 minutes you use as your autosave period, but for technical reasons, if you are not actually using FH at all, and it isn't active, the period between saves can be much longer than the autosave period.  But, just to confuse things, you don't have to reactivate FH to trigger the autosave.  If you're not using FH it's going to be a bit random when it happens.

However, if you had no unsaved changes in FH, no save should have been triggered by autosave.

Simon,

No, I don't think I did any work in FH, just opened it up alongside GC with the intention of entering census data, and I certainly didn't do a manual save. So does the fact that GC has changed the gedcom not trigger an Autosave? I'm afraid I assumed that Autosave would save automatically every 2 minutes whatever. Should we be warned always to do a manual save when opening up FH, just in case? And if I opened FH, did a manual save, then didn't make any changes for some time while I was cross-checking the records with Ancestry, and then entered some data, would Autosave have gone to sleep again?

Maureen

I think really that Family Historian autosaving, but after about 10+ minutes instead of 2, is the only explanation for what happened. Even if you made a very small change in Family Historian (e.g. removed a comma in a note), it could trigger an auto save. It doesn't save unless a change has been made. I would suggest you should always do a manual save before going into Gedcom Census just in case though I must admit I hadn't realised before that Family Historian doesn't always save in the period set when not the active window. As it will always take more than 2 minutes to enter a census entry I would have assumed you were 'safe', but clearly not.

Best wishes

Nick

Maureen and Nick

Please ignore my previous email. What I said there was quite wrong. I was in a bit of a rush when I wrote it - always a mistake.

I said in my previous email that if you're not using FH the gap between autosaves can be longer than the amount you specified. However, later I had another think about it and realised that that is not true. Whether you use FH or not, whether it is active or not, if you have autosave enabled to save every N minutes, it will always autosave every N minutes.

Incidentally, one other thing I said which *is* true is that nothing happens at autosave time if you have no unsaved changes.

Maureen said:
>> Should we be warned always to do a manual save when opening up FH, just in case?

Other way round. Just prior to using Gedcom census you should do a manual save in FH.

Hope this helps - and sorry for muddying the waters with my previous attempt.