Questions from one switching from FTM to Legacy.
I've decided to use Legacy as my genealogy program and would like your opinions as to my current plan of research. I currently use Family Tree Maker 2014 so I can get the media downloaded to my computer quickly but I do plan to switch to Legacy.
I have been extremely fortunate to have 3/4 of the family stay put in two spots since the early to mid 1800's.
The Irish Catholic 1/4 all arrived in 1840-1870 and married other Catholic families in the same county until the mid-1900's.
The other half all lived within 20 miles of each other (straddling a county line) and married the boy/girl next door for 150 years. I have cousins who have generously supplied me with copies of their decades of research on this branch.
In other words, I have a lot of documentation I can get online at Ancestry.com fairly quickly through public records. (I look at the census reports, etc and make sure it all agrees with my cousin's research/Irish Catholic records I have). It still takes time, but I feel it is quicker for me to work at Ancestry.com clearing up the shaking leaves and checking against my notes than it would be to enter names from the ground up at Legacy.
What would be the drawbacks in continuing to work at Ancestry.com until I got most of my tree entered back through the mid-1800's and then take my Family Tree Maker 2014 sync file and import it into Legacy and continue to work in Legacy from then on? I have a lot of obituaries, photos, family stories, etc that can't be found online. I'm anxious to get started in Legacy but feel my research would be easier if I already had the basic facts available through my import from Family Tree Maker 2014.
Any advice?
I moved to Legacy from FTM. I just imported a GEDCOM from FTM and started using Legacy right away. The first thing I did was tag everyone in my database on #9 then I began comparing my Legacy database to ancestry.com and filling in with my shaky leaf hints. I have been doing this over a long period of time. I still have some people that are tagged on #9 that I am working through slowly to fix citations and download images for. With some recent blog posts from Cousin Russ and Randy Seaver I have been able to add a lot of new and update older information from my import quickly.
ReplyDeleteLeslie, that's a pretty good plan you've laid out.
ReplyDeleteBy syncing your AMT with FTM 2014, you will get the links for all of the images you've attached in your AMT. Then doing a GEDCOM of your FTM file to Legacy will bring all of them into Legacy. Also, your sources should be just as you've put them into your AMT (whether by hand or with Ancestry's citations).
The drawback is, of course, that you now have to enter your other material into Legacy, and you could then GEDCOM that into FTM and create a new AMT, but you won't be able to add the material to Legacy and sync to the earlier tree.
You might experiment with merging a new GEDCOM file of your Legacy tree with the synced FTM database, and then syncing it to the earlier AMT if you want to add the documents and photos you have to the current AMT.
Or you could work in FTM 2014 and sync it anytime at your leisure. There's no reason why you can't add the obituaries, photos, stories, etc. into FTM before you GEDCOM to Legacy. Perhaps you want to keep some of that private, I don't know.
Too many choices, none perfect, I fear. Good luck!
Thanks for input and suggestions! I thought I was on a track that made sense but wanted to check it against the experts. :)
ReplyDeleteShannon, if you have time, could you please add comments from time to time to show how this is all working for you? I am also interested in moving my main file from Ancestry/FTM to Legacy. :-)
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great winter time project - and as Randy Seaver said you have to give it some thought and figure out which method would work best for you. Shannon Thomas I love the idea of tagging people and then working through your database to check and clean up (and if you have tagged your directs then you can clean those ones up first). Leslie McGuire a great question for all of those who are switching software programs and/or cleaning up their family files.
ReplyDelete