Genealogy Chat

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.