[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Tech question re Family Tree Maker

[Gary Warner]

Lloyd,

To do a merge well, you need a good genealogy program.  I have not explored 
the latest Family Tree Maker (FTM) program, but when I compared the merging 
(and other capabilities) of FTM 10, PAF 5, and Legacy 5, Legacy was the 
clear winner.  You can see the comparison I made of the three programs at 
the SGGEE website at

http://www.sggee.org/CalgaryConvention-genealogysoftware.pdf

That link will not come through on the mail list, but you can copy the line 
to your browser navigation bar and it will then take you there.  Or, you 
can just navigate to the news section of the website.

The key features of a good merge program are:

1.  The program needs to automatically present the possible matches of 
names for you to review and decide if you want to merge the names or 
not.   Some programs will find many good matches, but some programs seem to 
think that the data needs to be identical to be merged.

2.  You should be able to select the data that you want to keep and what 
you want to throw away.  For instance, if one name showed the birth as Sept 
12, and another name that you are sure is the same person showed 1934, you 
should be able to combine the two pieces of data WITHOUT exiting the merge 
routine.  Some truly bad programs will take these two pieces of data and 
make them alternate entries that you need to then go back and merge after 
you exit the merge routine- IF you can find the merged names later.

3.  You should be able, while in the merge, to compare the data for (not 
just the names) of the parents and children to confirm that a match is 
warranted.

4.  After the merge is complete, you should be able to confirm that the 
merge is really complete.  That is, that you do not have any merged persons 
with multiple sets of parents, as is the case in an incomplete merge.

I could go on with more things, but the proof of a good program is to try 
for yourself to merge two separate files with several programs.  You would 
have to purchase FTM to do this comparison, if you do not already have it, 
but you can download both Legacy and PAF for free to do at least a 
comparison of your present program to those programs.

I merge tens of thousand of names against other names every year for SGGEE, 
and I can tell you that without a doubt that of the three programs I 
mentioned, Legacy is by far the superior of the three.

Anyone else have a better program for merging of data?

Gary Warner
Gig Harbor, Washington



At 09:22 PM 2/26/2005, Lloyd Friedrick wrote:
>When I began my family tree research, I made an error in setting up separate
>files for my maternal and paternal lineage.
>
>I have just  upgraded my FTW and now I plan to merge these rather large
>files.
>
>Is there someone on this list that has had to merge files and would they share
>their experience with me and perhaps others.
>
>It seems to me that with the many duplications in my two files, there is bound
>to be many areas of conflict in the merging process.
>
>I will appreciate any advice that someone would offer.
>
>lloyd friedrick
>
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