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Archiver > ROOTSMAGIC-USERS > 2005-02 > 1107559007


From: "MScheffler" <>
Subject: RM so superior to FTM
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 18:16:52 -0500


I have a suggestion for Bruce's RM booth he mentioned in the newsletter.
Have FTM and RM set up side by side and get a couple volunteers fairly new
to computers and genealogy to try out the two programs.

I consider myself a fairly sophisticated computer user and expect to at
least get started with a new program without having to read help files.

I have just spent the better part of the last couple hours trying to
import a gedcom file to FTM version 11 and make an ancestor book. It was
not easy to even import the gedcom file!!! Forget the ancestor book.

First of all I could find no easy way to create a new file and import
the gedcom. When I finally did that, it told me I had 92,000 errors in the
list file, then everything disappeared and no data file remained. I tried
it again, and finally got a database with some data, but apparently not all
the facts. It again told me I had more than 92,000 errors. That is over
one per individual person in the almost 89,000 name database. It took at
least 30 minutes to import the gedcom file that eventually disappeared. I
didn't time the second attempt.

Then I tried to create a standard ancestor report. There appears to be
no such standard option. So, I tried a Register report which was on the
list of choices, and it did not even indicate my ex-husband and myself were
divorced. When I look at my individual card, divorce was a fact that
apparently did not transfer via gedcom.

The outcome: I have no intention to even attempt to open up this
version of FTM again. I'm sure I could learn it, but I have no intention of
wasting my time learning any genealogy program that one cannot at least get
started with in 15 minutes <g>. My apologies if I have offended anyone, but
FTM users must have more patience than I have!

Wouldn't it be nice if all genealogy programs were intuitive like
RootsMagic is? When I first started with Bruce's Family Origins program, I
new little about computers and next to nothing about genealogy and I was up
and running almost immediately. RM has many more features than did that FO
program 10 years ago, but has the same intuitive approach as did the early
Family Origins.

Thanks Bruce for a most wonderful program. Now if we could only have
the spouses names added to the children in the collateral lines in an
Ancestor book, I would never ask again for another feature <g> I did find
this feature in the narrative descendant report after believing it was not
there by looking only at the list of children (not the narrative) where I
expected it might be. But I
use Ancestor reports 990% of the time.

I guess I now know why so many people on the various lists have trouble
with gedcom files -- they do not use Family Origins or Rootsmagic.

Again, thanks Bruce for such an intuitive program.

Margaret Scheffler




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