[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Merging and changing to Legacy

[Gary Warner]

Lloyd,

Merging of your two files is quite simple in Legacy, but may prove 
very difficult in Family Tree Maker.   The reason is that Legacy has 
a good merge routine, and Family Tree Maker has a very weak 
one.    The difference in the results might be the same if the 
records are identical that are being merged, but only in that 
case.   It is my experience with Family Tree Maker that it does not 
know what to do with differing data, and does not offer you very much 
ability to amend differing parts of the records during a merge.

Be ware that before you do any merge, that you will likely need to 
clean up your Family Tree Maker file in several areas prior to any 
merge (do the cleanup in Legacy.    See my article in the last 
Journal for examples of items that are not handled well by Family 
Tree Maker.    They are, from memory

1.   many variations on place names
2.   differences in surname spellings
3.   comments in events that wind up as places
4.   and the fact that Family Tree Maker converts all persons who 
have only a given name into a person with no given name and only a 
surname (thus a person with a given name of Gottlieb becomes a person 
with no given name, and a surname of Gottlieb).

The master lists in Legacy will help you clean up the Family Tree 
Maker oddities.

Gary

At 12:36 PM 11/08/06, Lloyd Friedrick wrote:
>Now that we are on a thread regarding Legacy, here is my dilemma.
>
>Many, many years ago, I began my family record with Family Tree Maker.
>For some obscure reason, long forgotten, I set up separate files for 
>my Maternal and Paternal family chains. As with most Volhynian 
>families, I soon discovered that there was a lot of inter marriage.
>So now, I have to files with duplicate and somewhat different 
>attached notes on many individuals that I recorded in both folders.
>
>I now intend to change over to Legacy. Do you think I should attempt 
>my file merger with FTW before or would it go smoother with Legacy ?
>
>I did not indicate or bother with source information when entering 
>data on individuals.
>
>Procedural suggestions to accomplish all this would be most welcome
>
>lloyd friedrick  in Victoria on Vancouver's Island