Clooz-L Archives

Archiver > Clooz > 2000-07 > 0965089927


From: Jillaine Smith <>
Subject: [Clooz] FTW, Word, Excel and Clooz 1.2
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 20:32:07 -0400


Okay, I *am* familiar with spreadsheets, databases, FTW, importing,
exporting, writing users manuals, etc etc etc, so I'm going to document
EXACTLY what I did so that others who are having the same problems I had
won't; and if the software author wants to use my explanation in the next
version of her manual, please do.

The 1.2 manual says on page 29:

"To import people from Family Treemaker 4.4 and above:
1. Create a custom report, select the required field names and make sure
you use the proper date format."

I'm using FTW 7.5.
I know how to create a custom report.
When I try to select the required field names (RECORD#, SURNAME, GIVEN
NAME, BIRTHDATE, MARRIAGEDATE, DEATHDATE), I immediately run into problems:

a. FTW's equivalent of Individual Record Number appears to be "Reference
Number." When I first generated a custom report with that in the first
column, the first column is empty. I.e., my FTW does not appear to be
generating a reference number for each person's record. I discovered that I
need to do make sure the FTW's preferences are set up to generate Reference
numbers. To do this, go to FILE, PREFERENCES, REFERENCE NUMBERS. Click on
Individual. I selected NUMBER ONLY. When the report regenerated itself,
the numbers are now in the left-hand column, but some are 3-digit and some
are 4-digit. I'm worried that this will create problems down the line in my
cloozimp.txt. We'll see...

b. FTW does not give you the option of listing the SURNAME and the GIVEN
NAME separately. I can select LAST NAME and I can select LAST FIRST,
showing up together. But I can't put each name in separate columns. I
imagine this will wreak great havoc when I export to a file, and I will
have to replace the comma between last and first with a tab. Bummer on FTW.

NOTE: Another little idiosyncrasy I found is that Clooz doesn't
import records that have ONLY a first name or ONLY a last name.
Be sure your FTW file has no single-name entries. OR, make sure
that there is a comma where the lack of name would be.
(Personally I use "Unknown" in replace of the surname or given
name when I don't know what it is.)

c. Date format. For each of the three dates that Clooz wants (birth,
marriage, death), the manual says to be sure to use the proper date format:
dd Month yyyy. It's not immediately obvious where to change this in FTW,
but I found it in FILE: PREFERENCES: DATES & MEASURES. Be sure you select
an option that has NO COMMAS in the date format. This will REALLY mess
things up later if you have commas in the date field. It's also important
that when you are selecting a date in creating a Custom Report, if given
the option be sure to SELECT "Show only preferred date".

d. The Clooz manual says to go to EDIT, select COPY REPORT (into the
clipboard), then open up Word or your wordprocessing program, and paste the
clipboard into a [presumably new] file. I learned the hard way that you
can't just use PASTE, you need to use PASTE SPECIAL. For some reason, if
you use only PASTE, it doesn't put a tab between Reference# and Name. But
if you select PASTE SPECIAL from the EDIT menu, then select UNFORMATTED
TEXT, it comes out just fine.

e. Before you deal with the "Lastname, Firstname" problem, you need to
check all other columns for commas. This is very important. I recommend
you SELECT ALL, pull up the RULER, then set tabs so that you can see your
columns evenly spaced. Skipping, for now, the "Name" column, go through
the other columns and get rid of any other commas that appear. Once you've
done that you can do the next step. Then search for any ", Sr." or ", Jr."
and replace them with " Sr." or " Jr." (i.e., replace that comma-space
before Sr. or Jr. with just a space).

f. Now we need to replace the comma between Lastname and Firsname with a
Tab. Select REPLACE (CTRL-H) from the EDIT menu. In the "Find What" box,
type ", " without the quotation marks. In other words, that's a comma
followed by a SPACE. This SPACE after the comma is very important. In the
"Replace With" box, type "^t" without the quotation marks. That's shift-6
followed by a lower case T. That code means "tab." So I'm replacing a
comma followed by a space with a tab.

f. Now, if I've done everything well, and if there are no other commas
anywhere within the document, I should have one column for each of:
Reference Number, Lastname, Firstname, Birthdate, MarriageDate, DeathDate.
Some of the entries within those columns may be empty because I may not
have a date for that particular item. One thing I'm worried about that the
documentation doesn't address is when I have something like "Abt. 1848" or
"Bet. 1847-1850". We'll see what happens to those.

g. Now it's time to take all those tabs and turn them back into the commas
that Clooz requires. Select REPLACE from the EDIT menu (or CTRL-H). In the
"Find what" box, type: ^t
In the "Replace with" box, type ,
This means that you're replacing a tab (^t) with a comma (,)

h. Lastly, you need to change the words of the first line in the file.
FTW exported them as:

Reference number,Name,Birth date,Marriage date,Death date

They need to read, without spaces between the commas:

PersonID,Surname,Given,BirthYear,MarriageYear,DeathYear

Notice that you're adding a new field name or column heading (Given).

Also be sure that there are NO LINES above
PersonID,Surname,Given,BirthYear,MarriageYear,DeathYear

That line must be the very first line of text.

Also make sure that no line begins with a comma. Each line MUST begin with
a number. I ran into this problem because I did not select the "Show only
preferred date" when generating my Custom Report in FTW. The good thing
is, I didn't have to regenerate the report in FTW, and go through all those
steps above again. I just deleted the lines in Word that started with
commas, as this was the line that contained the second, alternate date I
had for some FTW records.

i. Once all this is done, select SAVE AS from the FILE menu. Go to the
directory where Clooz is stored (it might be C:\Program Files\Clooz\).
Select TEXT ONLY from the FILE TYPE window. Call the file cloozimp.txt.

j. repeat "i" again, but call the file cloozimp2.txt. This is a backup
file because as the manual says, once you import cloozimp.txt into Clooz,
the cloozimp.txt file is deleted. Always good to have an extra one handy
so you don't have to run through steps a-h again in case something goes
wrong later!

I did all these steps and finally had a successful import into Clooz!


http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~jillaine

SCHMIDT; Baden, Germany; 1800-1850*
BETZ; Feilbingert, Rheinpfalz, Germany; 1600-1850*
BOHNENBERGER; Unterreichenbach, Germany; 1600-1900
DRESSEL; Feilbingert, Rheinpfalz, Germany; 1600-1850
ERHARDT; Unterreichenbach, Calw Wuerttemberg, Germany; 1700-1850*
FASSNACHT; Altensteig, Wuerttemberg, Germany; 1600-1850*
GENGENBACH; Unterreichenbach, Germany; 1600-1900
GLUNZ; Swaebisch Hall, Germany; 1750-1850*
JAUCH; Baden, Germany; 1750-1850*
LAEPPLE; Altensteig, Wurttemberg, Germany: 1700-1800
SEEGER: Rohrdorf, Donaukreis, Wurttemberg: 1600-1850
WAGNER; Feilbingert, Rheinpfalz, Germany; 1700-1850

* Also: Buffalo, New York, USA; 1847-present


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