Genealogy Chat

An old tip but one well worth repeating for the benefit of all:

So you posted your question on one of GR's community boards and received answers and maybe census extracts from the good people on these boards who help others out.

DON'T JUST LEAVE THE REPLIES ON GR

It is very easy for the poster or GR to delete the information and you will become very frustrated when you go to look at it again and it isn't there.

SAVE A COPY ON YOUR OWN COMPUTER!!!

One of the easiest ways to do this is to use copy and paste.

1) Copy the answer by highlighting the information (Put your mouse pointer at the begining, hold the left mouse button down and move the pointer to the end of what you want to copy). With your mouse pointer still on the highlighted information right click the mouse and then click 'Copy'.

2) Open a program such as 'Notepad' and paste the information into it (Put your mouse pointer in the empty text box, right click then click "Paste") .

3) Give it a file name that you can easily recognise again E.G 'Bill Bloggs 1871 Census'.

4) Save the file into 'My Documents'

That will ensure that should you need to consult it again the information is always to hand on your computer and only you can delete it.

To retreive the file at any time simply go to "My Documents", find the file and double click on it.

N.B. I have tried to explain the Copy and Paste procedure in full detail just in case there may be someone reading this who is unfamiliar with it.

Good Advice Jonesey, as always.

If you haven't got 'Notepad' , or don't know where it is, C&P into a Word doc instead, and than save as suggested.

I usually print out important info as well.

Good tip Jonesey ,
And if you don't have notepad or Word etc. you can also cut & paste it into an e-mail.

Right click over the local folders in e-mail.........Click New Folder and name it whatever you want..............GENES.
You will now have an e-mail folder named GENES
Create new mail .........cut & paste into the e-mail.
In e-mail click on File / move to folder / choose folder eg. GENES
Your GENES folder now contains the cut & pasted information.

I even use e-mail to write out my messages for GR and cut & paste them into the GR reply box.......it's a lot bigger.

Simples!

Unless you have a Mac instead of a PC it's virtually certain you've got both Wordpad and Notepad on your computer. I'd suggest using Wordpad - it's a bit more flexible than Notepad.

To find either Wordpad or Notepad, click on the Windows 'Start' button, then click on 'All Programs'. Near the top of the window that opens you will see 'Accessories'; click on it and a new window will open with a list of applications including Notepad and Wordpad. Simply click on the one you want.

If using Wordpad, when you come to save your work you will get format options including rich text (rtf) format. Rtf allows you to retain a lot of formatting if you then open the file in another word processor such as Word or (vastly superior in my opinion) WordPerfect.

Hi Jonesy. Your advice and the others is much appreciated . I have never had any training on computer's at all. I am picking it up as I go along. I am 72 years young and have had a great time doing my tree. It has helped my daughter to know about where she comes from as I Have only found her 5 years ago after a 42year search. MAINLY THANK"S to people like yourself. Please keep up the wonderful work. ROY.

Thinking over what Allan mentioned about the Apple Mac, I would guess that TextEdit is the closest Mac application to Notepad. Open Office is a bit temperamental on mine so I use it as my day-to-day word processor at the moment.

Although, saying that, Stickies on a Mac is quite handy - it's like virtual Post-It notes!

Hello Roy (Cockneykid)

Just to say thanks for your appreciative remarks - they're the sort of thing that makes posting here worth while. You've brightened my day already today and it's only quarter to nine!

To add: Having saved it on your computer, BACK UP the data outside of that computer, ideally once a week if you are adding new information regularly.
Cheapest and least hassle is a memory stick, you can save the whole of "My documents" (or just certain files) and update the backup regularly in minutes.

Ok folks, I'm getting the hang of all this and I LOVE the tips Jonesey - they are SO useful.
BUT... about copying the info onto a memory stick.... WHAT???
I've got a memory stick thingy, but HOW/WHAT/HELP?
thanks guys
Jill

For Jillians benefit (And anyone else for that matter)

Memory sticks are great but they do sometimes fail so treat them as a backup device rather than the sole storage place. I am assuming that most people have Windows as their computers operating system so these instructions are based on that.

1) Plug your memory stick into a free USB socket. Your computer will automatically note its presence and will allocate it a drive letter (E:). (F:) ect. If you wish to find out which letter click "Start" and then "My Computer".

2) If you wish to save your file to your memory stick rather than to your computer hard drive instead of clicking "save" as you normally do, go to the top left of your notepad (Or wordpad or whatever) screen and click on "File". On the dropdown menu that opens click on "Save as".

3) On the screen that opens you will see "Save in" followed most likely by "My documents". Click on the arrowhead by the side of that and scroll down until you see the drive that you wish to save the file on. Click on "Removable disk (E:)" ect.

4) Give the file a name and click "Save"

Job done!

Hmph!
Thanks Jonesey
Please don't tell anyone else I'm a bit slow on the uptake......
It's all easy when you know how....
cheers everyone
Jill

Just to add - I have always copied and pasted into word answers to any questions i post on here. I then print these off so I have a hard copy to refer to which I have in a separate alphabetical folder. This has proved very useful on many occasions as i chop and change between my Mums family & my Dads family depending on my mood at the time and I can just flick through the file.

Nudging for newer members

Another way of saving either temporarily or for later reference (not just for GR) is to use Evernotes - it allows you to save and tag under a subject (or more than 1) as you wish and also gets around the backup issue as it is saved and accessible from whichever computer you are using.

Check it out it is easy to use.

http://www.evernote.com

Hope this helps...

Jonesy, you are a godsend, I could not work out how to do this BUT have explained it so clearly, guess what I shall be doing later today. Thank you,

07.49 hrs Spain

Thank you Jonesey and everyone else for this information thread. Just what I needed!!

oldbean

:-D :-D :-D

Joy

Thank you for bringing this thread forward, it will be a great help to me and I suspect it will be a help to many others as well

Bridget :-)

Nudged

And another NUDGE. Such clear advice
:-)