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  5. It's easier than ever before to check your entries from the 1881 Census - more details here

Version 7.0.0 Available plus early MAC version available

Discussion in 'Family Tree Analyzer' started by Alexander Bisset, Oct 31, 2018.

  1. Alexander Bisset

    Alexander Bisset Administrator Staff Member

    • Thanks! Thanks! x 2
  2. peter

    peter Administrator Staff Member

    I presume you don't want me to mention the Mac version in the newsletter just yet?
     
  3. Alexander Bisset

    Alexander Bisset Administrator Staff Member

    It's a bit early Peter the Mac version really doesn't do that much useful to the user. The major hurdle I overcome was getting it to actually load a file and analyse it :)

    Now that bit is done I've added a few initial screens but it's nowhere near as useful as the windows version just now. That said I thought forum members on a Mac may wish to take it for a test drive rather than the general readership of the newsletter. There's a big risk of people flooding me with "why doesn't it do X" type comments if they aren't aware of how developed it is. Not everyone gets the concept of beta software (actually closer to alpha software).

    Now the clocks have changed I'm more likely to spend time indoors and work on the Mac version. So it may deserve a wider audience by spring. Although no promises :)
     
    • Thanks! Thanks! x 1
  4. jorghes

    jorghes LostCousins Superstar

    I would love to test drive your Mac version - it will eventually make my life a lot easier to check for mistakes on my tree (rather than exporting a GEDcom to my dropbox, then having half a second on my work PC to access FTA to have a look for problems.... etc).

    Is there anything particularly you want me to look for?
     
  5. Alexander Bisset

    Alexander Bisset Administrator Staff Member

    Well at present it only has a few of the reports so it's more about me adding functionality than testing as at this stage most of the functionality in the windows version is missing from the Mac. However it does load a tree it does show errors and fixes so it may be of use it's just not anywhere near as complete as the Windows version.
     
  6. jorghes

    jorghes LostCousins Superstar

    Oh it's very useful - been using it to remove errors already. I look forward to seeing more features when they're added.
     
    • Thanks! Thanks! x 1
  7. Helen7

    Helen7 LostCousins Superstar

    I am also a Mac user and have been trying out FTA for the first time this afternoon (having never used the Windows version, so it's all completely new to me). I have found it very useful for spotting 'duplicate' errors in my tree. The program is very easy to use, the GEDCOM loaded nicely and I like the interface with information clearly displayed. The 'default' column width is not really a problem as it's easy to adjust these. The 'loose births' and 'loose deaths' lists are useful (based on ages of children and lifespan it seems) and will act as a prompt for me to investigate these further. I was also impressed when it pointed out where a person in the 1939 register did not have an exact birthdate entered.

    I assume the 'Families' list is not properly developed yet in the Mac version, as many of the 'families' listed only have 1 person, and often this is a female listed as the 'husband' (which has generated a lot of errors in the errors/fixes list!). The families all appear fine in my Family Tree Maker 2017 tree (and on the synced Ancestry tree), with the correct genders, so I've just ignored this list for now. The sources, occupations and fact lists all look good.

    As jorghes said, I look forward to seeing more features as the Mac program is developed.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  8. canadianbeth

    canadianbeth LostCousins Star

    I just downloaded this. I had seen many references to it in other forums but never knew what it was. So, I found many errors relating to dates, but there are some listed that are not really errors at all, just appear to be because they involve both spouses having the same last name. My grandmother's parents were first cousins; they are listed there, as were a few couples in my husband's tree; I am not entirely sure about them though. How do I mark those as not really being errors?
     
  9. jorghes

    jorghes LostCousins Superstar

    I have a bunch of first-third cousins who shared the same names marrying, there's no way that you can really stop that coming up as an error. I just check and then ignore. It's designed to pick up those errors where you accidentally added someone who does need a different surname.
     
    • Thanks! Thanks! x 1
    • Agree Agree x 1
  10. Alexander Bisset

    Alexander Bisset Administrator Staff Member

    On the PC version you can untick the box that checks for this type of error and it won't then show up. Note you may have to use the scroll bar to scroll to the right to see that option it should be the last one on the list at the time of writing.
    upload_2018-11-21_13-7-22.png
     
  11. Alexander Bisset

    Alexander Bisset Administrator Staff Member

    Well...
    upload_2018-11-21_13-12-20.png
     
  12. Alexander Bisset

    Alexander Bisset Administrator Staff Member

    Hmm it would be interesting to see a sample GEDCOM of a family that has only one person and is of the wrong gender. Can you export a single individual from Family Tree Maker 2017 as a GEDCOM file and try loading that back into FTAnalyzer to check it still shows an error. If it does could you send me that sample file so I can check what's going wrong as it should work correctly.
     
  13. Helen7

    Helen7 LostCousins Superstar

    Thanks for looking into this. I've done as you suggest with a single individual and loaded it into FTA (version 1.0.3.0 which I think is the latest one) and I still get the same error. The GEDCOM is attached.
     

    Attached Files:

  14. Alexander Bisset

    Alexander Bisset Administrator Staff Member

    Thanks. Looking at the GEDCOM without even loading it into FTAnalyzer I can see that Lucy is a member of 3 families

    Code:
    1 FAMS @F55@
    1 FAMS @F81@
    1 FAMS @F1598@
    
    In Family with the ID of F55 she is a wife with no husband listed although the text mentions Charles Barton
    Code:
    0 @F55@ FAM
    1 WIFE @I183@
    1 MARR Oct-Dec 1854
    2 DATE 25 DEC 1854
    2 PLAC Tring, Hertfordshire, England
    ...
    In Family with the ID of F81 she is a wife with no husband listed although the text mentions Richard Sumers (sic)
    Code:
    0 @F81@ FAM
    1 WIFE @I183@
    1 MARR Oct-Dec 1873
    2 DATE 15 DEC 1873
    2 PLAC Salford, Lancashire, England
    ...
    In Family with the ID of F1598 she is a HUSBAND!!! with no other details recorded in the file.

    Now I'm assuming there's no husband record for the families because the husbands wasn't in the export file but it might be that there's an issue with those husbands?

    As for the empty marriage - This might be one for the folks at Live Chat on Family Tree Maker site to assist with to work out why it's got those details exported to the GEDCOM as it must be in the file somewhere for FTM to export that.
     
  15. Helen7

    Helen7 LostCousins Superstar

    Yes, Lucy was married twice - to Charles Barton (with him in 1861 and 1871), then Richard Summers (spelt Sumers on the marriage certificate, hence the Sumers(sic), with him in 1881), and in the 1891 census she was a widow (but living with her daughter and a lodger, so not alone). So the empty marriage is very odd. I looked through all the women in my tree showing this error (37 of the 831 women in my tree) to see if there is a common factor, but I can't see one. Two of them weren't married, but the other 35 were (usually just the once!) but some died before their husbands, some were widowed, some have children, some don't, and they are from various branches of my tree. I can't see anything unusual about their husbands either. The other 500 married women in my tree don't show this error, so why these ones do is a mystery.

    Thanks for the link, I'll investigate.
     
  16. jorghes

    jorghes LostCousins Superstar

    I just noticed this - this can be an error in your family tree - I've had to fix it plenty of times.
    It can happen when there is a phantom person (often known as "unknown spouse") attached to a marriage - i.e. you added a marriage to a female relative without first adding the spouse (or the marriage fact wasn't attached to both spouses), and FTM then automatically adds an "unknown spouse" to the individual as soon as its synced, which doesn't show up on Ancestry, often then forcing the female into the "male" position. Alternatively, occasionally adding marriage records on Ancestry will add the spouse, but as "unknown gender", which can also cause this error if it's synced to FTM before you change the gender of the spouse. - thus again adding the unknown phantom spouse. (I have also known this to occur when FTM doesn't sync properly and proceeds to duplicate everything you've done since the last sync when it fails...)

    Often then, you have to go to that person on FTM, add the marriage to the actual spouse and often then have to detach the "phantom" spouse. That can also then create marriage facts without attached persons. I solve that problem by creating a new fact and transferring all the marriage facts which aren't attached to anyone to that particular fact, then deleting the fact and thus deleting everything attached to it.

    I'm looking to see if I can create screen shots, but I think I recently cleaned out my "phantom marriages attached to no-one"/unknown spouses problems...

    EDIT: Since I did clean out my phantom spouses and empty-of-people marriage facts, I'll see if I can tell you how to find it.

    For Lucy - if you bring her up on the family tree view (not the person view), and her and at least one of her husbands appears in the middle panel at the bottom of the page. (The "Family Tree sheet type view below the tree view - very difficult to explain!!)

    In her box, which should give her name, birth/death date and place, there is a smaller box with a human head and a number in the top right. This number is the number of spouses - i.e. with one spouse, it should have a 1, with two spouses a 2 etc.

    I think that Lucy's will instead read "3" - the third being the phantom spouse created by FTM. If you then go into her person page - there may (or may not) be a "Lucy and unknown spouse" shared fact section - sometimes with a marriage unattached to either other spouse there - you then have to do two things - if there's an unattached marriage fact, attach it to the appropriate spouse, and merge any duplicates, or go back to the tree page and right click on the tree representation of the person and choose "detach Person".
    It should bring up a "checklist" of Lucy, both spouses (and shared children), and her parents - you can then "detach" the phantom spouse.
    You can then detach Lucy from the phantom spouse and her position as a "husband" will vanish from the GEDCOM and FTM.

    (problematically, the choice to detach I believe is what then creates the empty, person-less, marriage facts, which I told you how I get rid of them.)

    Hopefully this is not too confusing... I will try and create some clearer instructions as well.
     
    Last edited: Nov 21, 2018
    • Agree Agree x 1
  17. Helen7

    Helen7 LostCousins Superstar

    I have noticed this happening too, but I think I've cleared out all my "unknown spouse" events, and associated them with the right husband in FTM (or deleted them when they appeared with a person who wasn't married). I've certainly checked that the 37 women listed as 'husband' in FTAnalyzer did not have a phantom marriage associated with them, before creating a GEDCOM to upload to FTA.

    I've also noticed this too, but again I have corrected the gender before syncing, and certainly before creating the GEDCOM for uploading to FTAnalyzer. So it's a mystery why I'm getting these 'phantom' families consisting of one woman labelled a 'husband'.

    But thanks for your suggestions, I'll go back and double-check my data.
     
  18. jorghes

    jorghes LostCousins Superstar

    Apologies - you replied while I was editing my response... please check above! (whoops)
     
  19. Helen7

    Helen7 LostCousins Superstar

    Wow, it works! Yes, Lucy's read '3', but this didn't show up on her person page, so I followed your instructions, detached the phantom spouse, then created a single-person GEDCOM, uploaded to FTAnalyzer, and the error has disappeared!

    Many thanks for your help with this. I had always just looked at the person page in FTM for evidence of phantom events, I didn't realise there were 'hidden' events only accessible from the tree view. I have certainly learnt something there, so thanks again.

    I will now go and detach any phantom husbands from the other 36 women, and hopefully it will sort out the problem completely.
     
  20. Alexander Bisset

    Alexander Bisset Administrator Staff Member

    Really good to hear. That should help tidy up your tree by getting rid of those fake spouses.

    Note I've released a new v1.0.4.2 that includes the research suggestions tab that shows who you've yet to find on a census and allows you to double click to search for that person online. It also shows who you've found in a Lost Cousins year but haven't recorded a Lost Cousins fact. Thus nudging you to enter more onto the Lost Cousins website.
     

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