Family Origins exports nearly everything that you have in your database, if you tell it to.
User defined facts are exported, along with the dates, places, sources notes and details, using the name that you have entered in the top name listed, “Abbreviation of fact name (Also used for GEDCOM).” The second line, “Fact name as used in pick list” is not exported.
So, you may want to go through your List of facts and edit the abbreviated names to more closely match your pick list names. (both are listed in the Excel spreadsheet below)
The sentence structure, as you have defined it is not exported either, so you may want to make a test family and assign all of your user defined facts to them and print a descendant book on them from Family Origins, so that you can remember just how you had them defined. (this is listed in the Excel spreadsheet below)
The Fact list let’s you edit facts so that they will not be used in certain places. If you have edited them so that they are not used in GEDCOMs, then they will not be in the GEDCOM file and will not be imported into RootsMagic.
Dick Wells sent me a note detailing a means to check your database for facts that are not exported to a GEDCOM file. With a little expansion, this method will tell you how to set your facts in RootsMagic.
MAKE A BACKUP FIRST!
You can adjust the width of columns in Excel by moving the mouse cursor to the column’s letter heading row and going to the divider between cells where the pointer changes to a double headed arrow, press the button and drag the width to what you like.
You can also hide column(s) by highlighting, then selecting the format menu, columns and hide, to unhide it is: format, columns, unhide.
Information on how to check your FOW FACT's in preparation for Export to RM
To use this method you will need two things, MS Excel or similar program that
reads DBF files, and know where you FOW data files are stored.
Step 1 -
Start Excel
Step 2 - Do
a FILE / OPEN, and navigate to your data folder. Change the "Files
of Type" to "DBase Files"
Step 3 -
Select the "T" file for the database of interest. Database file
names are composed of the first 7 characters of the FOW Database name plus a
single letter. Click OK
Example: Database
"Sample", look for file name SAMPLET.
Step 4 -
Shift the display to the right showing column K. Add the column heading
of EXPORT.
Step 5 - Go
to cell K2, enter "=mid(j2,6,1)" and hit ENTER. The letter
"T" should show.
Step 6 -
Copy cell K2 to the rest of the K column (copy and paste).
All FACT
types with the "T" in the K column are exported in a GEDCOM, those
that are blank are not exported.
By sizing the field widths, and printing landscape, you have 3 things.
First, a list of which FACT's are exported, secondly, the sentence structure
you are currently using for each FACT, and thirdly, a complete display of all
USER DEFINED FACTS (Facts with ID's 10001 and up).
DISCLAIMER: This information is presented as is and does not have the blessing
of Formal Soft or any other business related in any way to Family Origins.
Do not save the file,
it will ruin the database and you will
have to restore your backup
You can save as an excel worksheet, but not the default or a DBF file.
You will notice that the first, “A” column is TAG_ID, The last program assigned fact TAG_ID number is Miscellaneous at number 10000, so anything above that is a user defined fact.
The “B” column is the Short name, that is the abbreviation, or name that is exported to the GEDCOM.
The “C” column is List name, That is your “Pick List” name and it is not exported to a GEDCOM.
The “D” column is “Long Name” this appears to be the sentence structure that you have defined, it could come in handy after you have imported the GEDCOM into RootsMagic.
The “E” Column is the GEDCOM tag. The GEDCOM standard uses many standard fact tags, but nonstandard facts are given the tag of “EVEN” for event, which is followed by a “TYPE” tag that gives the “non standard” name for the event.
The “F” column, “IS_LDS”, denotes the special LDS facts (I think?)
The “G” column indicates whether you can enter a value for this fact.
The “H” column indicates whether you can enter a date for this fact.
The “I” column, OWNER_TYPE, indicates whether it is an Individual, (I) fact or a Family (“M” for married) fact.
The “J” column, FLAGS, has a lot of information, I don’t know what it all is for, but the 2nd through 7th columns are either “T” for true, the fact goes here or a blank space if it does not go here.
They are too hard to read as they are, so a bit of manipulation might be in order here.
You can type headings into the six columns to the right of “J” and below that, a formula, such as”
---- These formulas work for EXCEL 5 through 2000, they might not be exactly right for other spreadsheet programs ----Use one or the other, not both --
| Col | Head | Plain Formula | Fancy Formula |
|---|---|---|---|
| K | F.G.S | =mid($j2,2,1) | =if(mid($j2,2,1)="T"," ","NO") |
| L | Books | =mid($j2,3,1) | =if(mid($j2,3,1)="T"," ","NO") |
| M | IND-SUM | =mid($j2,4,1) | =if(mid($j2,4,1)="T"," ","NO") |
| N | Nt/Sr | =mid($j2,5,1) | =if(mid($j2,5,1)="T"," ","NO") |
| O | GEDCOM | =mid($j2,6,1) | =if(mid($j2,6,1)="T"," ","NO") |
| P | WEB | =mid($j2,7,1) | =if(mid($j2,7,1)="T"," ","NO") |
(The plain formula copies a middle part of the text string in cell J2 starting with the 2nd (or whichever) character and extending one character in length. )
The fancy formula, makes it real easy to see where things aren’t used, use the second of the above formulas. It checks the above character, if it is a "T" then it prints "NO" otherwise it prints a space.
(You can type these in, or copy from here, highlight the section you want and press [Ctrl] [c], and paste in the proper cell in Excel with the [Ctrl] [v] combination.)
If you copy and paste each formula, jump to “Expand Down”
To make entering the formula by hand easier, type the first one into cell, K2 and press the enter key. (If you got it right you see a “T”, or you shouldn’t see anything in K2 if you used the advanced formula) Now go back to k2 and you can see the formula in the edit field just above the spreadsheet.
There is a little square at the bottom right corner of the box that is drawn around K2, move the mouse pointer to that and it will change from a big cross to a “+” sign, when it does, press the mouse button and drag that box to the right, highlighting all of the 6 of the columns that you labeled, then release the mouse button. You will have to go back and edit the 2nd through 6th formulas a little bit.
Highlight L2 and change the 2 to a 3, not the $J2, but the next 2, and press enter,
Now go to M2 and change that 2 to a 4, in N2 to a 5, in O2 to a 6 and finally in P2, change the 2 to a 7.
Now, if the first fact in the list is output to every place, there should be a “T” or nothing in each of the cells in it’s row, depending on how fancy you want to be.
NOW: to copy the formula to the rest of the fact rows:
Move the highlight to K2, hold down the shift key and press the right arrow 5 times and release.
That should highlight the cells just below the headers of your 6 columns.
Now go to that little square at the lower right of those highlighted 6 cells and drag it down the P column until you have highlighted all of the rows that are used by your facts before releasing it, then click once, anywhere to remove the highlighting.
LOOKEY, LOOKEY THERE! All of the cells are filled with the letter “T” (Or they are all empty except for a few that have “NO” in them.)
Now to Print it:
You won’t need all of the columns,
The first column tells you which facts are user defined and which are hard wired into the program. If the TAG_ID number is 10000 or below, it is a hard wired fact, if it is 10001 or higher, it is a user defined fact.
If you use the simple formula, and there is no T in a cell, that indicates that the fact is NOT used in that column heading's output.
If you use the fancy formula, a NO indicates that the fact is not used in that type of output.
If it is not used in the GED (for GEDCOM) column, then that fact will not be exported from FOW and you will have to edit that fact to assure that it does get carried forward for use in RootsMagic.
If there is not a "T", or there is a "NO" in any of the other columns, that will not keep the fact from the GEDCOM file, but you will have to edit the fact from within RootsMagic and tell it where you do not want the fact used.
The sentence structure can be checked in this list and used as a guide to adjusting the way RootsMagic sends the output to books.
REVIEW, STEP BY STEP,
First to Last.
Click Print preview. It will probably cover 2 pages wide
until you narrow the columns considerably. Auto adjust width again and you drag
the right side of several of the columns to the left quite a bit and still see what you need
to see. Several columns widths are determined by the column name, so you can
narrow them considerably, You don’t even need column J anymore so you can
narrow it to nothing. You can also select the whole spreadsheet and reduce the
font size if you want. After you do a
print preview and exit it, you will see a dotted line, which outlines the
pages, use that as a gage for adjusting column widths.
Now, you can either print it out and have a hard copy, or
you can save it as an Excel spreadsheet file.
Go to the File menu and select “Save as” then in the bottom field of the “Save as” dialog, choose the top option, “Microsoft Excel Workbook (*.xls)” the first name will still be the name of your original file which is fine. That will give you an idea which database it came from.
Now you only have to do the same with any other databases that you want to check, before you transfer them to RootsMagic.
With this link, you can download an Excel worksheet that contains all of the functions you need to check out your fact sentence structure, user defined facts which facts are exported and more.
Now you can see what each fact is set up like in this FOW database. If there are any cells marked with "NO" in the "O" or "GEDCOM" column, that fact is set so that it will not export to a GEDCOM.
It is too big to print all of it on one sheet of paper, by hiding some columns, reducing the width of others and reducing the font size, you may get what you want of it to print in landscape mode.
Custom report definitions are not exported via GEDCOM file either.
One way to save the layout of your custom reports would be to go to the Reports menu in FOW, select Custom reposts, Select the one you want to emulate in RootsMagic and choose “Modify Selected Report.” When you get to the edit screen, press [Alt] -[Print Screen] then open MS Paint and press [Ctrl] [v] to paste it there, it will be too large, so answer “YES” when asked if you want to enlarge the bitmap. (Since the copy is so large, you can't set the clip's position easily by clicking outside of the clip, just hit the escape key to lock it in place)
From Paint, you can print a picture of your layout so that you can set up the RootsMagic report to emulate it. It will probably print better in landscape layout unless you crop the image considerably.
Family Origins and RootsMagic both have spelling checkers that you can use to check your notes for spelling errors. Since the word list supplied with the program is limited and does not contain all of the words you might use, especially, the proper names, there is another, user defined, list of words that you can add to as you go.
After several years of using Family Origins some of you have compiled a rather large list of words in your user word list. Since RootsMagic and Family Origins use the same spell check engine, you can save this list and use it with RootsMagic. You have to copy the file, "SPL_USER.TLX" from your Family Origins Program folder to the RootsMagic program folder.
Step by step instructions for those of us under four or over 55 years of age:
Before uninstalling FOW, which I WOULD NOT DO, unless you absolutely HAVE TO have the hard drive space.After installing RootsMagic:
Your user defined word list will now be used when checking your notes in RootsMagic.
It's almost like Magic!
Plagiarizing what Dick said earlier:
DISCLAIMER: This information is presented as is and does not have the blessing of Formal Soft or any other business related in any way to Family Origins.
If you notice that I have made a blunder, or something that I could make more clear, send me a note at:
Alfred D. Eller,