Notes attached to characteristics and events (so called facts) are a good place to store proof statements and arguments. Strangely, these are not enabled by default in Family Tree Maker 2010. In this video I show you how to enable fact notes and provide some valuable tips about how these notes export in GEDCOM format. I also show you where the same type of notes can be found in other PC and Mac genealogy software. This may make it easier to figure out which notes go where when importing a GEDCOM in Family Tree Maker 2010.
Thanks for this Ben! My “pre-order” of FTM for Mac finally arrived yesterday and I’ve used both of your excellent videos for importing my Reunion database into FTM.
Glad to hear it Robert!
Okay, after playing with FTM for Mac for a couple of hours, it certainly *looks* nicer than Reunion. But it seems so slow. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. Has anybody else noticed this? I tried both compacting my database and going offline and both seemed to help a little bit, but not enough to make it bearable to use. I’m running a 2006-vintage 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 3 GB of memory.
I too am underwhelmed by it – lack of speed is a big issue- even on my Mac Pro with 2 quad core Xeon chips @ 2.8 GHz and 8 GB of RAM.
But also just where everything is has me bamboozled at the moment too – perhaps having been a Reunion user for 18 years or so has got me fixed in on their way of getting to things, but it just seems that it’s too hard to find everything about a person and or a marriage/family.
Clicking on the green leaf is helpful, but doesn’t always work – that was one of the main reasons for getting Family Tree Maker for Macintosh – and the ability to geocode the places, which does work, although I don’t like being fixed in on how Ancestry thinks I should write out place names – for example I have
Abbey St. Bathans, Berwickshire, Scotland
That needs resolving apparently, and the suggestion is
Abbey St Bathans, Berwickshire, Scotland
despite that even the Bing map has it as Abbey St. Bathans!!
Oh Well I have no intention of switching to FTM full time.
Roger
Thanks for another great lesson, Ben. I’ve used Reunion for many years and still think it’s wonderful. My original intention was to continue using Reunion and try FTM as a backup. After playing with FTM, though, I must say I’m preferring it despite its problems.
I’m not experiencing speed problems on either my MBP or iMac so can’t address that. Mainly, I love the format–with the People window open on my 27″ iMac display I feel like I have the world at my fingertips. ;-} That said, many things about Ancestry itself bother me and I don’t trust FTM to stick around the way Reunion has, so I continue to update both programs and keep backups of the images I download from Ancestry. Would so love to see a major update for Reunion but think I’ll continue to use both apps for now.
Roger, on your place names, you can “teach” FTM to present names the way you choose. Type places in manually for a while before using Tools to resolve all place names. I really like the resolve place names tool, and my file is “trained” pretty well now to use formats of my choosing. HTH.
Ben, you continue to be our best resource for Mac software and you’ve done a marvelous job of remaining objective when reporting on the various apps. Thank you so much for everything you do.