General Chat

Thank you all for your kind input. I had a look at FTM but it seems it is a program for the presentation of all the data you have collected in an organised fashion. It might be useful when my tree is more or less complete where I do not have to search and find information that is scattered.

I might tinker with OneNote but the learning curve looks a bit steep.

This afternoon, using Word, I cut and paste all the records in GR, the posts in my two threads, and all the pm's I had with lots of info. I did no formatting or selection - just copied the lot. I have 42 pages of very raw data in Word and am messing around doing searches and updating my tree as I go.

It seems to be as good as I can get at the moment, with no time spent on learning how to use it. But you need to be very disciplined not to get sidetracked if you notice something else on the same screen. The only problem I can think of at the moment is all the info stays scattered. It never becomes organised in those pages. I am still wondering if Access is the answer but am aware each record is only as good as the info I put in.

Talking of screens - Rollo, I use a 24" and 22" monitor set up. I find it very useful when in Lightroom for photo editing. In GR I can have the tree on one monitor while perusing a census record on the other and enter the info I see without having to keep swapping back and forth. Very handy.

Ancestry, Bright Solid etc cannot add updates for BMD from 2006 because the Registry Office has decided that it has no duty to provide the information to them.

As a result the only way to see GRO indexes from 2005 is to go to one of the centres which allows you to view the records.

Manchester City Library
Birmingham Central Library
Bridgend Reference and Information Library
Plymouth Central Library
City of Westminster Archives Centre
London Metropolitan Archives
The British Library*

It is not a funding issue as Ay and poss others have offered to pay to access the records. The likelihood of any change before 2016 is nil.

When I drew out my tree by hand the wallpaper kept tearing. I bought a roll of good quality lining paper, (about £2.50), and found it much more durable.

Mick, if you want to keep the Army thread, copy and paste it into word.
It will be a lot of pages, but you could save it for ever, and print the pages off and compare/contrast different information :-)

maggie (who likes the info in her greasy paws!!)

Hi Mick I save my family history in lots of different formats.
Tree on Ancestry (also backed up) and then also printed out ...and on the wall.

BMD certs. in folders for each family member,and with their info./pics. (as much as I can find) in separate folders.

Brothers Keeper programme that is great for having everything detailed in order and can be referenced or added to easily.

I have my own 'story' books for both sides of my family with snippets of interest/newspaper cuttings/ letters etc.etc.

Might not be everyone's way but it's mine and even though computers are great I still like to read my books and know they'll never crash :-D

Hi Rose thanks for that, will have a go, have subscribed to Ancestry for several
years now and when I started there was only a couple of years delay in info, but
now a birth is 8 years ago, and that child can now be at primary school, its about
they brought things up to date, they charge enough.

F.

Police, spooks and advanced education are moving to large interactive whiteboards and technologies such as MS Surface table sized. They are ideal for family history but you need a bit of a wedge to buy one.

Even if you don't run to a digital whiteboard big screens are much better for FH. Tablets and smart phones are def not ideal.

I don't know why people go on using small screens eg 1440x900 and various 17in formats and even worse when it is now easy enough to get a 22in screen for under £ 150. A second hand 19in 1280x1024 screen can be found on eBay for under a tenner. All notebooks support a 2nd screen.

rollo - OneNote looks tasty! Integration with Word I think, so what I put in Word I can link in one note and search and stuff.

One mystical thing I found. The http://www.4yourfamilystory.com/index.html blog is run by a lady surname Pointer - my great great grandfather's name is Pointer!

Thank you Rollo. Heading over there now

Greenfingers - how do you search the masses of information you have and make links with the results? Or don't you find the need to do that?

If you look at this thread I started here in General called "An Army connection but how?" you will see reams and reams of information. It has a hundred posts most of which contain names, dates, places. I want something that allows me to organise and search that information. I don't want the thread to be lost because the information that might not be useful now might be useful in two months time when something else pops up from somewhere that no one has thought of yet.

Thinking out loud again - I think I want a self-searching database !! Actually, this is what the GR Hot Matches thing does. I want to do it offline on my desktop.

try here

http://www.4yourfamilystory.com/1/post/2012/05/more-onenote-features-to-rock-your-researching-world.html

or here

http://familyhistoryresearchuk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/mobile-monday-microsoft-onenote.html

unless you are into biros spare rolls of wallpaper fax machines carbon copies rolodex filofax and such

Another thing you will discover doing FH is that microfiche still exists. Strange but true.

Ah the wallpaper again (Janet). I can see the attraction. Everything writ and stuck large on a wall with everything before you - a bit like Sherlock and police incident rooms. Everyone coming in can see it, whereas on a puter screen, only the user would (usually). And you can just stare at the wallpaper record and see connections and lines of enquiry that might not have occurred before.

It certainly has its place because even with computer storage and search like HOLMES, the sticky on the wall or whiteboard is still used.

Do you use Word as a search facility or just as a place to store family details on each A4 (or more) sheet?

I'm thinking out loud here - when the Yorkshire ripper was being hunted he had apparently been stopped by police nine times (or his name had been recorded nine times for this or that). Only afterwards was this realised, and several lives might have been saved if a system had been in place that showed these nine records for the same man.

Now think about a family history search. There are births,marriages, deaths, censuses, military records, and many other records, where a person is likely to appear (like the Yorkshire ripper in lots of different records). They may have a link with this person or that address or an occupation, or a district or town and so on. I want something where I can put in a town name and up pops anyone in my family tree who has lived there. I know this can be done, I just don't know how or with what software. Not at the moment :-)

My experience is that I have a pad and do a rough family tree which I work from then type up a written one starting with as far back as I have gone, then i run that off and use as a rough way of adding other info. You can put down jobs etc against the person. Really helps me

I have tried all sorts of ways to save my details, including wallpaper. My most enjoyable and easy to read is one page of A4 in Word with the parents and their children with every bit of information about one family at a time. The heading always starts with the Surname and Year of the marriage of the couple and I keep them in chronological order. I find its the quickest way to find my family even though I can click onto a couple of tree online. Downside might be if there was a fire but then I would use the computer to retrieve the info......jl

Thank you for all the suggestions folks. I have the Office suite so OneNote is a possibility as is Word, and/or Excel. FTM I hadn't heard of but it's a possibility - thank you Rollo - I am a fan of torrentz ;-)

Scozz - a useful thought. Hadn't occurred to me to cloud it all.

To Island and Staffyknot - I use Excel for statistics, accounting, etc. whilst not that expert with it, it did kind of occur to me that a cell can carry one piece of info or many pieces of info. Staffy thank you for the 'How to...' step by step is what I need!

Rose - there's that wallpaper again!!

reverse side of a roll of wallpaper &sticky post ems.

lots of memory sticks,

Acid Free paper is a must.


CDs do deteriate over time,they get brittle.

:-D Frederick,

Mick, Rollo mentions FTM ( Family Tree Maker) some of the newer versions can be picked up at a reasonable price which include a 6 month Premium sub to Ancestry, ( Premium will give you access to London records) you could take a look on Ebay .

After reading all this the mind is boggleing, after 10years

I've only just mastered the ON/OFF switch.

F

There are two programs which are ideal for keeping all sorts of information organised.

"Evernote" is free and runs on pretty well any operating system including smart phones. It can be synched across one or more computers inc the "cloud".

Microsoft "OneNote" is better. It is a component of some versions of MS Office and can be bought stand alone. S/hand versions are about £ 20. There are free versions of OneNote for Apple iOS, Android and MS "Surface" tablet. OneNote will back up to a cloud drive.

Using FTM it is easy to keep a quality version of a tree on the desktop whether you have a sub to Ancestry or not. FTM is good with media and phots and can import/export GED files. It is very easy to get a new older version for £ 8-20 from Maplin, Tesco etc. Many people dislike the last two editions anyway.

If you are really skint it is also ez to find FTM in torrent land but remember that piratez don't give away warez for nowt and tend to include malware.

There are various free document scanning programs which run on smart phones and tablets. These can be very useful when visiting record offices etc.

good luck

PS. Don't forget to update it to a memory stick every week in case you have computer malfunction.