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    1. [FTM-TECH] FTM Database Structural Issue
    2. Ken Schroeder
    3. I have been a FTM user forever and have a manually generated Public Member Tree on Ancestry. Until a few days ago I was using FTM 2011 and manually keeping the two trees in sync waiting for the Sync feature code to stabilize in 2012 and 2014. From watching the traffic on FTM-TECH, it appears FTM 2014 with it's patches has reached stabilization for the most part. So I bought and installed FTM 2014 and downloaded the Ancestry database to FTM 2014 without difficulty, so far. I have a FTM 2011 database and FTM still installed for safety until I resolve my problem described below. But now I must find a solution to a database structural incompatibility for lack of a better description. I knew of this issue going in but felt either I would find a solution or one of the experts would clue me in as how to structure my data to get around the issue. Well, I failed, so I'm asking for help. In FTM I always have used the note section for an individual as a large "fact" so to speak. I would put textual information in there i.e. obituaries, abbreviated summaries of Military Registrations, stories, history book subject matter, wills, comments, etc. Some these notes were quite lengthy. When a FTM Genealogy Report was generated that "note data" was included in the report. In the Ancestry Member Tree (AMT), there was no public viewable place to put this "note data" except to generate a story, and so that's what I did via cut & paste from FTM database to AMT database. That was fine when I was manually updating the AMT but I knew that auto syncing was not going to do that for me. FTM 2014 Sync takes the AMT Stories and puts them into a file or link in the Notes section of that Individual in the FTM database. That data does not get included in a Genealogy Report in FTM. FTM 2014 Sync takes the Notes data of the FTM database and puts it into a non-public viewable Note (unless I give the person Editor status). Therefore it is for all practical purposes non-public. I tried creating a Custom Fact in my FTM database (not knowing the maximum characters it would allow). But it does not create a paragraph formatted field, rather just one long stream of characters which is not a good solution. End result is that I can not figure out a Database structure that: 1) will allow me to have a textual field for populating with formatted catch-all general information and be compatible with auto Syncing the FTM and AMT databases and still provide: 2) public viewing of the General textual field in the AMT as well as being included in the FTM Genealogy Report Any suggestions?

    12/18/2013 03:25:06