Curly Brackets

From time to time someone has objected to the fact that I included information from the Social Security Death Index in the Note fields of my genealogy files.

One person pointed out that even though a family member was dead there was still someone in the family drawing Social Security benefits under the deceased person's Social Security number.

RootsMagic has an option that allows us to make parts of our Notes private. To do this you place curly brackets {private text} around any text in a Note that you may want to consider private.

There are three curly bracket options when you, print reports, export GEDCOM files or create websites.

• Remove the curly brackets and the text inside them
• Display the curly brackets and the text inside them
• Display the text inside the curly brackets without the brackets

I'm considering adding curly brackets around Social Security numbers in my largest genealogy file. This will give me the option of displaying the Social Security Death Index information with or without the Social Security Number.

To implement this idea, at this late date, won't be an easy task. There is no way to do a global search and replace.  While I can easily find each record that contains Social Security information it will be necessary to execute the find command thousands of times to find the Notes that need to be modified.

I've already tested this idea several times when I encountered Social Security data in the Note of records that I was updating.

Dick Henthorn

17 February 2015

Transitioning to RootsMagic 5

Some comments about moving my genealogy files from my old desktop computer to my newer laptop computer and from older versions of genealogy programs to my latest genealogy program.

My current genealogy program is RootsMagic 5. The majority of my genealogy files are still on my desktop computer in either PAF 2.31 format or RootsMagic 3. There are many issues with the desktop computer which should encourage me to move on with the transition.

Yesterday I resolved an issue with RootsMagic 5. I didn't have the folder structure set up correctly on my laptop. With Email help from my friend in West Virginia, Vernon Anderson, I was able to understand and fix the problem. RootsMagic 5 suggests the creation of five folders and details how to make them work with Windows 7 and it's Library and Folder design. I created:

• Backup
• Data
• GEDCOM
• Multimedia
• Reports

I created a sixth folder which I named "GEDCOMin." I'll use this folder to stage incoming GEDCOM files that I plan to load into RootsMagic 5. The GEDCOM folder is where RootsMagic 5 writes any GEDCOM files that the program creates.

During some recent testing I discovered that a good way to move a RootsMagic 3 file to the laptop computer for loading into RootsMagic 5 was via GEDCOM. The steps I followed were as follows:

1. Create GEDCOM file from RootsMagic 3 (old computer)
2. Send the GEDCOM file to myself, using Gmail attachment (old computer)
3. Download the Gmail GEDCOM file into my Download folder (new computer)
4. Move the GEDCOM file to my GEDCOMin folder (new computer)
5. Import the GEDCOM file to RootsMagic 5 (new computer)
6. Compare counts for People, Families, Events, etc. (old & new computers)
7. Create a backup GEDCOM with RootsMagic5, in my GEDCOM folder (new computer)
8. Create a backup using RootsMagic 5, in the Backup folder (new computer)

The file I moved today (31 July 2013) was my Henthorn, Carlson, Hagstrom, Marquinez file. This file consists of:

• 5216 people
• 1939 families
• 5602 events
•   838 places

Mr. Dickie

31 July 2013