Genealogy Chat

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Twice I have entered in the last two days, the parents of someone. They are now showing up as hanging from (Mother), not the woman whose name I entered. Looks like the father had two wives, first unknown, second known, and my rellie doesnt appear to have any siblings. Tried to correct it but I cant, cos all are linked to the rest of my tree. This has only happened recently - anyone else with probs? OC

OC Yes, a bit similar, but I uploaded a gedcom. Still, is has one of my great great grandfathers married to 'unknown unknown', whilst his wife is listed with her parents and siblings totally seperately. That's just one I've noticed. Margaret

I uploaded a gedcom. About 1 in 10 on my tree now has no date/year of birth, for some random reason I have yet to identify. It is a great excuse for not opening my tree to anyone though! Merry

Yes, me too. It had me married to my husband ...but also married to one of my distant Australian cousins, 30 years before I was born. My poor husband, not content with a bigamous marriage, was also showing as an orphan. Even though his parents were on there, the lines joining them up were missing. Oh and my Dad's parents were both called Unknown Unknown. Got to laugh otherwise we'd spend all our time crying! Mandy :)

Merry The new tree prog wont let you enter an imaginary date of birth,when all you have is a baptism before 1837! Honestly, even I could devise a better programme than this one. OC

So could I. It's called a pencil and paper.

Hi OC I've had a similar thing happen. Thought it was me. Can't delete as it would mean deleting half my tree. Looks a right mess now. Linda

When you add a father, the program automatically adds a box for the mother, so you need to enter her details there, not add another mother. To fix the problem when you have two mothers, just go to the parents tab, change the parents, and delete the mother you don't want. You can certainly invent a date of birth when you only have a baptism - I've done that loads of times. I just put in the year on the Details tab and check the 'circa' box.

Yes, that's happened to me, and it can't be fixed - as you say, the program's unstable. The only way to fix it is to export to another program, fix the problems and reimport.

Mary Yes, I know what I should do - but its not happening! I had the mother in as Mary Unknown wife of to start off with. When I found her maiden name, I altered Unknown to Bloggs - fine, that appeared linked to her husband, exactly as it should. I then tried to add children and each time I did, it gave them an unknown mother. This hasnt happened before and I too think that you USED to be able to enter 00/00/1821 as a birthdate guess - it wouldnt let me do that, kept honking at me to enter a correct birthdate - I dont know what it is! I'm leaving it for now, my tree is an utter mess. Good job I only park my tree here, dont ever actually refer to it. OC OC

OC, As I said on the other thread I too have had many probs and now resort to overwriting it with my FTM. I fiddled with it today to see if Merry was not alone, and boy is she not!! How spooky OC the guy I picked to meddle with was also born in 1821 and it kept asking me for his exact birthday, Oh how I wish I knew it!!! Fuzzy x

I see what you mean now, OC. It will let you add a date like 00/00/1922 for a marriage, but it doesn't seem to let you do that for a birth. The answer is only to put the year of birth on the Details tab, and nothing in the dob section of the Extra Details tab. However, if you import a gedcom from some programs, the dob is automatically entered on the Extra Details tab (PAF5 does this).

Check what you've put in your PAF program carefully. The GR software does occasionally add extra people (in my case it's duplicated existing people), but I've also found that mistakes I'd made with the PAF program didn't show up until I imported it here.

The first time I uploaded a gedcom to GR I realised I had inadvertently used two different formats for entering dates on my home tree program. (One for dates up to the 9th of the month and different for 10th to the end of the month) This caused problems when the tree was uploaded to GR. So......the next time I did it, I spent an age finding out how to centrally change all the dates on my home program to the same date format. How clever I thought I was when I did it!! Unfortunately, it turned out even worse when I uploaded this second effort to GR and now about 2 - 5% of the people on my tree have no dates at all :o(( Merry

I just wondered, does PAF and FTM, etc.. have a function to validate your GEDCOM files before you export them? I validate my FH3 GEDCOM file before I export and correct any errors that are shown on the report. I don't appear to get any of the problems that are mentioned in this thread. Maybe I am just lucky or maybe GR isn't fully compatible with all the Family History programs available. John

Just sent the following to GR Feedback. I am so fed-up!!! ------------------------------- Please consider restoring the Old Tree Program. The new tree program used to be a useful back-up but, as a main tree program is inadequate and it doesn't work properly. The Old Tree program was crucial to view several generations at a time and was the only way to get a proper overview of a section of a large tree. You have to be psychic to use the new version. The only advantage the new program has is that it can take you straight to a named individual. Surely it would have been simple to have added that feature to the old tree program? Also, it is impossible to reliably print out sections of a tree now. I understand that some people are managing to print trees but are finding all manner of discrepancies. I am seriously considering not renewing my subscription as the removal of the Old Tree Program was done IN SPITE OF plenty of customer feedback. I await your comments on the matter

Just sent the following to GR Feedback. I am so fed-up!!! ------------------------------- Please consider restoring the Old Tree Program. The new tree program used to be a useful back-up but, as a main tree program is inadequate and it doesn't work properly. The Old Tree program was crucial to view several generations at a time and was the only way to get a proper overview of a section of a large tree. You have to be psychic to use the new version. The only advantage the new program has is that it can take you straight to a named individual. Surely it would have been simple to have added that feature to the old tree program? Also, it is impossible to reliably print out sections of a tree now. I understand that some people are managing to print trees but are finding all manner of discrepancies. I am seriously considering not renewing my subscription as the removal of the Old Tree Program was done IN SPITE OF plenty of customer feedback. I await your comments on the matter

I agree wholeheartedly with Tracey. The new programme is not intuitive and it is too easy to add a second spouse rather that amending the blank (mother). And trying to view it is like looking through a keyhole, you lose the overview and have to keep switching from one person to the next to look at spouses and siblings. 'Dreadful' is being too kind to it.

Seems like half my tree are unknowns-no wonder there are so many on gr. Luckily i know who they are! Jennie