Genealogy Software Tutorials for Mac & PC
When you’re choosing a new genealogy application it helps to compare the features. It’s also helpful to quickly see which ones support the features essential to your genealogy workflow and practice.
I just compiled a set of tables I hope you’ll find helpful in comparing features of PC genealogy software. I published it on the Family Tree Maker 2012 buyer’s guide page.
My plan is to update the version I have already created for Mac genealogy software and post it in the same way.
You may be surprised by the number of different ways you’ve entered the same place-name in your RootsMagic 4 software. This is especially true if you don’t routinely check for and correct duplicate place-names. I recommend putting this on your calendar to do periodically just like checking for “duplicate people.”
In this video you’ll learn how to quickly detect and clean up duplicate place-names.
[Read more...]
Last week there was a post on the RootsMagic blog about running RootsMagic 4 on a Mac. I’ve had this topic on my list of future videos for a while and this post pushed it to the top.
As the post says, there are a few options for running RootsMagic on your Mac. You can use a virtual PC program like Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion, but those require you to buy and install a copy of Windows. Another option is to use the Windows emulator called Wine. I prefer a re-packaged version of Wine produced by CodeWeavers, called CrossOver Mac. It’s much easier to install! For only $39.95 you can run some Windows applications like RootsMagic on your Mac without the expense of Windows.
If you’ve wanted to run RootsMagic or are interested in checking out this fantastic genealogy software on your Mac, download the RootsMagic trial version and CrossOver Mac trial version, then follow along with this video which walks you through the fifteen minute installation of CrossOver Mac and RootsMagic 4.
[Read more...]
Entering census events is more time consuming than for other events. The same information is needed for each person enumerated in a household. RootsMagic 4 speeds up the process of adding the same source and event for multiple people with a feature called shared events.
[Read more...]
You can get peace of mind by configuring RootsMagic to automatically store backups of your data both on your computer and off site (on the secure servers at DropBox). All it takes is a free (up to 2 GB) account and this video to show you how to configure RootsMagic. Click here to get your free DropBox account (and earn me a small increase in space for the referral—thanks!). There’s a nice video on the DropBox page that will walk you through the installation and usage.
By the way, don’t try to store and use your database from your DropBox folder. It won’t work properly and may cause you to lose data. Just stick with backing up there.
[Read more...]
You may be shocked to discover that you have the living dead in your RootsMagic database. [I'm just now realizing this should be a halloween post] By this I mean, records for people who have passed, but are marked “living” (the living flag is checked). Cleaning this condition up is made easier by RootsMagic making it simple to select people who are marked “living” and have birth dates prior to 120 years before today.
Cleaning this up is one of those annual maintenance tasks you can do to keep your data clean. I’ll show you, click-by-click, how to do it in this video.
[Read more...]
The genealogy task list is an important planning tool in the genealogist’s kit. Unfortunately, it’s also often overlooked. A recent article, Keeping a Genealogy Task List, on MacGenealogist.com describes the value of this tool and its two critical functions.
RootsMagic includes the ability to manage genealogy tasks and satisfies both of the critical purposes of a genealogy task list: unobtrusive storage and simple, powerful recall. The functions are unobtrusive because they’re built-in to the software.
There is something to be said about keeping your task list in a different application; you’re able to switch quickly away to capture those thoughts that seem to bubble up without regard to what we’re in the middle of, then return to the task at hand without losing your place.
Using the built-in task list means you’ve got to finish what you were doing in the software before capturing your thought. That’s dangerous because that kind of delay often causes us to write the task on a scrap of paper or envelope back. We all know that those things get misplaced—not what we want to happen to our research plans! The offsetting positive of keeping the tasks in your genealogy software is that it’s all in your genealogy software.
Recalling tasks in RootsMagic is powerful, but could be simpler as you’ll see in an upcoming article and video. Meanwhile, in this video: Adding To-Do Items in RootsMagic 4, I show you how to add each of the three types of to-do items in RootsMagic:
A person to-do is a task that’s associated with a specific person. Likewise, a family to-do is one that is associated with a specific family. A general to-do is one that is not associated with a person or a family. Each type is added in a different way. Watch this video to make it all clear and put this important genealogy planning tool to use.
Download this video to your computer for your private use by control-clicking [available to members only (you choose the amount to donate)] and choosing “Download Linked File As” or “Save Link As” (depending on your browser).
Sooner or later most genealogist need to combine two genealogy databases into a new one. In this video: Combining RootsMagic 4 Databases, I show you, step-by-step how it’s done.
Download this video to your computer for your private use by control-clicking [available to members only (you choose the amount to donate)] and choosing “Download Linked File As” or “Save Link As” (depending on your browser).
The ability to print wall charts from genealogy software is a great feature. Unfortunately, most of us are unable to print on a sheet of paper bigger than 8.5″ by 14″. Having a relatively small printer at home needn’t limit our ability to share these beautiful wall charts with others. By capturing the printer output instead of sending it to an actual printer, we end up with a file that can be emailed or taken to a professional printer. We save to a standard format like PDF so that the print shop can read the file without having to own the same genealogy application we do.
In this video screencast I walk you through downloading a free PDF print driver called PrimoPDF, installing it, configuring the “printer” for a wall chart in RootsMagic 3, and viewing the resulting file. Please follow along and share the fruits of your research by printing big, beautiful, wall charts.
Adoptive relationships can add enough confusion to our genealogy research. We don’t need to be confused by how to represent them in our genealogy database software. In this video I walk you step-by-step through the process of setting up a person as adopted daughter.
[Read more...]
Father and husband. Family historian. Founder, Things to Teach, Inc. Creator, GenealogyTools.com, FreeObituariesFound.org, and Lineascope.com. [Read More …]
Recent Comments