Family Historian User Group

Hi, I have used FTM 2005 for a very long time but have been looking to update the software I use. I recently downloaded FH 6 and really liked the look, flexibility, reports etc. I imported my GEDCOM which is quite large now (18k people) and came across a number of problems (I did look at the instructions for exporting from FTM but my version is just too old and doesn't have a few of these options). I could manually correct the errors but that would literally take weeks if not months.
I am told that there may be plug ins available to automatically correct these problems - but I would be grateful for any help on this. My problems are:
- Every occupation is entered into the place of occupation field - they all need moving into the description field
- Each address I've entered arrives divided into road/town/county and is added as a UDF which will need to be re-input as one single string (I must have only 200+ of these)
- The Marriage "Ending Status" doesn't get imported, it just gets added as a UDF in the marriage record - so that's at least 8,000 marriage ending statuses which at least need to be manually reviewed
- Each individual notes record doesn't get associated to the person record, but instead a separate record is created and a link associated with the person record. This is no problem except it's not how I would want it to be and if you have a note associated to the person record then you get the first line of the file shown in the person box (I know there is a Plug In for this)

Many Thanks for any help you could give!

Welcome to the FHUG.

I presume the instructions you have followed are in how_to:import_from_family_tree_maker|> Import from Family Tree Maker (FTM).

Yes, Plugins are probable solutions, but the FH 30-Day Trial does not support Plugins, so you will have to trust that they offer a solution and buy an FH licence.

1. Occupation in Place field
   See FTM to FH6 custom facts corrections (13081) which has the Move Chosen Fact Place to Value Plugin attached and should perform the correction for Occupation Attribute facts.
2. Address road/town/county UDF
   Should be fixed with a new custom Plugin, so please post either a screenshot of the UDF or a snippet of GEDCOM.
3. Marriage "Ending Status" UDF
   Should be fixed with a new custom Plugin, so please post either a screenshot of the UDF or a snippet of GEDCOM.
4. Individual notes record
   Yes, the Clean Up Notes Plugin should fix that.

It is also possible that the Change Any Fact Tag Plugin may help with 2. and 3. above.

See info:forums#posting_topics|> Posting Topics for advice on posting screenshots, etc.

BTW: Have you any problems with migrating Media from FTM to FH?

Hi There,

Thank you for your prompt reply! In answer to your question and requests:

- Yes I will have a great deal of trouble migrating my Media: FTM 2005 compresses and stores pictures/media within the single .FTW file along with the family tree database. Thankfully I have all my media files also stored separately as .jpg or .bmp and I only have about 400, so this will be a task but not impossible!

For address UDF entries, FTM 2005 adds the information on separate lines within the GEDCOM as follows:

1 ADDR
2 ADR1 14, Road Name
2 ADR2 Village Name
2 CITY Town Name
2 STAE County
2 POST Postcode
2 CTRY Country

For Marriage Ending Status UDF, FTM 2005 has a similar thing to FH but it adds a field to specify how the marriage ended which is normally Death of one spouse but could be Unknown or Divorced with a date and location so I'll show you three possible GEDCOM entries for this below:

1 MARR
2 DATE 26 APR 1969
2 PLAC St. Anne's Parish Church, Brondesbury, London
2 SOUR @S017636@
1 _MEND Death of one spouse

1 MARR
2 DATE ABT 1980
2 SOUR @S015911@
1 _MEND Unknown

1 MARR
2 DATE BET OCT AND DEC 1969
2 PLAC Dartford Registration District, Kent
2 SOUR @S017295@
1 _FA1
2 DATE UNKNOWN
1 _MEND Divorce
1 NOTE @NF0061@
0 @NF0061@ NOTE
1 CONC The reference for this marriage is Dartford 5f 538 Dec 1969.

Hope this is the information you require.

Cheers,
Dave

Sorry!

Having read my post, to clarify: FTM 2005 therefore doesn't have any links to media files because they're all stored internally in the database file so there is no possibility of automating this bit.

And here is another Divorced ending status which hopefully might clarify what each line does:

1 MARR
2 DATE 6 MAR 1965
2 PLAC St. Anns Church, Tottenham, Middlesex
2 SOUR @S017775@
1 _FA1
2 DATE JUL 1979
2 SOUR @S017775@
1 _MEND Divorce

I think _FA1 is "Divorce"

Thanks again,
Dave

Can we put Media to one side for a moment.

The Address UDF will need a tiny custom Plugin to convert the subsidiary fields into a single comma separated ADDR field within say a standard Residence fact, or a custom Contact Info fact.

The existing Change Any Fact Tag Plugin can fix the 1 _FA1 and 1 _MEND UDF.
The 1 _FA1 UDF can be converted to say a standard Divorce event.
The 1 _MEND UDF can be converted to a custom Marriage End Family Attribute with a Post-Marriage time frame.
(You would use Tools > Fact Types to create the new custom Marriage End fact before running Plugin.)

When you come to do the media, there are a couple of useful hints to help.

You can drag and drop all your media of each type in and FH will create media records for each file.
You can then use the Media Window with the Unlinked Media View, to work through your media adding them to the correct items.

If you have lots of "cutout" heads (which was normal for FTM) remember you don't need to bring these in, bring in the original photos and use the tool within FH to draw around the faces when linking to individuals. This means you keep the faces in "context" and you can use the Media Report to document who is in the photographs.