First, Considering the fact that FTM is receiving less support now and as a one-name study your database is going to grow, I would seriously consider another Software package. Family Historian, Roots magic, Legacy and some others will all handle large files well, have good sort facility and the ability customize . I use Roots Magic, but I also send gedcoms to a lot of people using other programs and they are able to use them. Roots Magic does assign individual IDs , but I find then hard to remember, so I keep most of my Idenitfiers 'up front' where I can see them easily. At present I have about 20 thousand + in my database with several hundred Johns, Johanns, Mary/Maria?Maries, and so on. 1. I use a four digit family identfier in the suffix field - such as 2014 - if there already is a suffis (Jr, Sr, etc) I just put it after that. John Pepler Jr. 2014 All descendents of a single patriarch receive this number. 2. WHen I have nothing more than a marriage - I qualify the surname spouse with a date in parenthesis after the given name eg John (m-1875-SRY) Again this sorts well. and all the Johns with marriage dates end up at the end of the John list . 3. I sort document images into Family Group folders. They are labeled with the event year, relevant individuals and family number. '1565 Hew Peploe and An Jordaine 1900' is a marriage. '1667 Samuel Peploe birth 1900' is a birth. Both are in the 1900 Family folder and windows sorts them very nicely for me chronologically 4. I keep general folders for each type of event ( Marriage, Birth, Military, Wills, etc.) that I can download new images to until I get them entered to the correct individual, at which point With these very simple adaptions of my habits, I can find individuals very easily and they should all work in FTM as well - though I do think you would be well advised to look into another program since FTM's future is so uncertain, it's gedcom is not standard and it doesn't have some fo the newer organizational features Marie (GOONS 5318) Bringing the world together one surname at a time. 'A Pepler Name' http://pepler.tribalpages.com 'Hedgerow - the Ancestors' http://cranberry.tribalpages.com Pepler DNA Study http://www.familytreedna.com/public/pepler-ow/ 'Scroops, Scropes and Scroopes' http://dentonlk.tribalpages.com 'Peplers and Peplows' pepler.one-name.net ________________________________ From: Ron Lomax via <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2016 5:48 AM Subject: [G] FTM/Organisation Advice Needed Please Hello All, I am relatively new to the concept of a one name study, but have been an amateur genealogist for many years. I would like to pick people's brains concerning how to organise and record the study. According to the WIKI, the most favoured family tree software is FTM, which I also use. I have upwards of forty sourced family trees. If I keep them in separate FTM files, then finding someone is a nightmare, as is checking for duplicates which may link two trees. If I merge all the trees into one FTM file, (some 7000 people), it is almost impossible to locate a particular person, even with birth and death years, due to the 19th century spawning hundreds of Williams, James', Johns and Charles'. I have to use trial and error, and if I do not have either a definite birth or death date, then I may go through each one and not know whether I have him recorded or not. FTM does not give me the option of showing places in the index. I thought of using the FTM Person ID with a prefix representing the tree the person comes from, but this is overwritten if you merge all the trees. There is no report within FTM which shows BMD dates AND place of birth/death, so I cannot export a list from each tree and combine them in an Excel table. I cannot help feeling that, if there are many people using FTM, I am either missing something or expecting too much. I have considered switching from FTM, but I like the interface better than either Legacy or RM, and would prefer to stick with it if I can find a way round my issues. Has anyone else found a solution to this problem, or have I to bite the bullet and use more appropriate software? Any advice would be much appreciated. Many thanks Ron Lomax _____________________________________________ RootsWeb lists - surnames, regions, software, etc: http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message