Genealogy Chat

I recently downloaded this and I cannot get my head around how it works , can someone tell me why I have all these boxes on my Desktop , I have the Tree which says Family Tree Maker 2005 ,I seem to have one Tree symbol for 4 different surnames in my Tree and then some white boxes which seem to all say my maiden name , when I click on some of them I get a box come up saying Gedcom please supply a new name for your Gedcom and save in Desktop??? File name William save as type Family Tree Maker all types, do I need these if so what do I do with them thanks, and please dont laugh at least not out loud Thanks

Ann, they are all ged coms that you must have made for exporting or sending to someone? Im always nervous of deleting them, but I think thats what you can do, if you have no need for them EXCEPT of course your main one!! Say, you decided to make a ged com to send to a friend with just one family or something. When you export it, you give it a name, yes? And then the program saves it. So everytime you do a new gedcom file it saves it for you in case you want it again. Hopefully Peter or some whiz will be on later to explain to both of us if it is ok to delete all the extra ones.

Heather as far as I can tell there arent any names in them and all I did was download the Tree Maker programme dont know where these came from but they appeared at the same time, thanks for trying glad you didnt laugh, or did you????

Well Im smiling wrily a bit now! Wait til an expert comes on.

going out in a minute treating ourselves to lunch out, if any info please leave will be back later thanks again

nudge

Very funny Margaret, nice to see you on here where have you been, 6 years is that all ??? I really wish I was a bit younger they seem to pick things up so much easier. I have though today joined Tribalpages and put my Tree on there have you tried it ?? I thought I would spread my Tree around a bit .I must say I am getting better at exporting .Just about a million more things to learn .

i do not know if this is your problem, every time you open family tree maker it creates a back up file on shut down, so on your desktop you will have say 'my Tree' FTM Family File and 'My Tree' FTW back up file or BKW file, now where you can get a problem is if instead of clicking on the FTM family tree file icon you click on the back up one, before it opens it will ask you to save it with a new name, so you name it 'FAmily Tree 1' and it then opens with all your names, when you close it it will then create a back up on your desk top, and if you then open that one up with the back up file, it will ask for a new name and create another new back up, and on and on, so you end up with a desk top full of Family tree maker icons, but if yo open up the family file one it goes straight into your names with out asking to be saved and when you shut it it dose not create any extra back up files, i dont know if this is what you have done, but i have seen sombady doing this

that makes sense Gary thanks a lot so I can delete these then

what I meant Margaret is the young grow up with PCs so it comes easy, it took me about a month to send my first Text on my phone . Yes where is Judy ???going to bed now goodnight all

Hi All, I am new to FTM too. I have two icons for my family tree file. One of them has what looks like a safe on it so I expect that is the backup file? Gillian

I'm getting worried now - I only have one icon on my desktop, which says Family Tree Maker 2005 - Does that mean by FTM is not doing backups??? Dea x

Dea, Ive only one icon on the desktop - but open 'documents' - I had about 20 on there!! Ive just, with trepidition, deleted most of them - I have dates on all my gedcom files ('name this file' stuff when I did them). So Ive deleted all those I felt really confident about doing, knowing I can restore them from the recycle bin. Ive now been back to my main FTM and everything is still there - sigh with relief - and when I closed down I saw it was backing up. Dont forget to always back up to a cd now and then and use their family home page facility and update that everytime you add or change - at least you will have it safe on one of those three places should the worse happen,.

Heather - I haven't got any in 'my documents' but in the actual FTM, if I go to 'open file' and look for BKW - there are some in there. Is this right, as if they are all in the FTM programme and not outside it on my computer somewhere, - IF the FTM goes wrong, I wouldn't be able to get at them would I? Hope you understand what I mean? - Should they be somewhere else as well? Dea x

I think you are ok Dea, my ones in documents are ones I created in the past in order to send them to people or to export to GR. But, do get some cds and back up the tree. It really is SO easy to do. Go to file, export to - writable cd, click and it does it itself.(of course, you need to put a new cd in the little tray!) When its done it, the little tray will open and there you go, a cd back up copy - do remember to write on it what it is and the date - particularly if you have teenagers who have a thousand un named cds where they have downloaded music. Also do go to internet tab, create your home page, click on that and go through the instructions, (basically clicking next a few times) Make sure you click to hide living persons info - then send it to your own website provided by FTM- all done automatically by the FT program. You will then have 3 copies safe.

Thanks Heather, Yes, I do back up onto discs, so I would only lose the more recent bits I had put on - It's just such a scarey thought isn't it that you could lose all that info when you have spent so much time and effort in finding it ?? Dea x

Horrendous. Do the internet option too - you can add photos and images to it.

it seems to me lots of us are not to clever with this Family Tree thing , maybe some kind person could put a thread on the board with advice and suggestions, I for one would really appreciate it thanks for all replies

As previously stated, FTM makes a back up every time the program is closed. By default FTM saves this back up to it's own folder. When you open FTM double click on the icon that says Family Tree Maker 2006, this will open the program on the file that was last in use the last time you used the program. Go to My Computer, C (Hard drive), Program Files, Family Tree Maker 2006. Your current file should be in there, if it's not drag into there from your desktop, there should be 2 versions of the file, one blue file called 'yourfilename' .FTW. and one red file called 'yourfilename' .FBC. Open the blue one by double clicking on it, make sure it's the right file and then close it again. The next time you open FTM using the Family Tree Maker 2006 icon it will open this file. You can then delete all other files on your desktop. Ron www.genealogyprinters(.)com

Ron thank you thats a very good explanation even I can understand you are very helpful