Wednesday, February 11, 2009

I'm #1

With each new hobby there's always the realization of a whole new world out there. Knitting, photography, running. Each has their own little world to navigate. Lingo to learn, tools to aquire, and knowledge to amass. Genealogy is no different.

I've been using ancestry.com not only as my primary research tool, but also as my family tree. I've realized that I need to find a program for helping me manage all of this information I've been finding.

Googling "genealogy software" seemed like a logical place to start. Wow! Definitely lots of choices. After a lot of research, I narrowed it down to a few choices. TMG seemed like the forerunner. I had seen the abbreviation before, but had no idea what it meant. Too Much Genealogy? I think not! Trace My Genes? Nope. Finally in my search for software, the mystery was solved. The Master Genealogist. Of course, why didn't I think of that?

I downloaded the demo video and was definitely intrigued. Downloading the 30-day trial came next. The bad part about having my tree on ancestry.com was that I had no option to use the technology that TMG has for importing data. I had to resort to a GEDCOM. The problem was that when it transferred I didn't like the way it was numbered. I was listed as #744 (or some other ridiculous number).

Now don't misunderstand, I'm really not an egotistical maniac, but in this case I need to be #1. I guess I've been spoiled by the ability to click "Home Person" on ancestry. I need to go back to me when I lose my bearings, or to be able to move on to another line. Since I didn't see any way around it, I've resorted to hand entering each person one by one into TMG. Once I'm past the first couple of generations, I really don't care much about the numbering system, but I need to be #1.

2 comments:

  1. Did you try Family Tree Maker? I think that's the program most people use - because it is so easy to use. It also has a little web search button so if you have a subscription to ancestry.com you can just click on it while you are on the person you want to search for and it looks for all the information for that person - it's fabulous for me.

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  2. Welcome to geneablogging! I've given you an award to start you off on the right foot! You can visit my blog at www.omchorations.blogspot.com to pick it up. Right click on the award, save it, then post it here. Then, pass it on! Keep it up!

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