Broken links in FTAnalyzer Website

The links aren't actually broken they just haven't been created yet. I'm sure the documentation team will hear your plea and get to work on a Getting Started section real soon.

If there is a specific issue or problem perhaps if you post the question here it would help write the document. There is a catch 22 when writing getting started documents, by the time you are proficient enough to write the document you no longer can remember all the issues you had when getting started. So if someone like yourself could assist by posting some "starter for 10" how do I questions it would help enormously with writing the documents.

Basically it would be a great help seeing the program from a fresh pair of eyes perspective so if you could help just by asking your questions that would be really great. Remember ALL your questions are perfectly valid, it's usually the seemingly trivial or obvious questions that people feel embarrassed to ask that are the ones that really need to be covered in the documentation.

 

Hi,

Would you like to try the newly written Getting Started section and let me know what you think?

 

OK, I've updated all the sections that I can.

I'm afraid I can't do the sections on the Family Tree Software that I don't use.

 

Can I suggest that you mention that hardly any family tree programs use gedcom as their default file format, but that almost all can export (and import) gedcom files.

And also not to panic if there are a lot of errors, because FTA will help you fix them!

Also, a couple of typos for Alexander - 'errrs' for 'errors' as in 'over 20 errrs'; 'entered' for 'entering' as in 'This will mean that the census report will show everyone as not yet found on census and the Lost Cousins report will report no-one with a census needing entered to Lost Cousins'

 

Peter, I've made updates to getting started as you've suggested, thank you.

I'm not sure where the typos are though?

 

Nor am I. Hopefully not in the program as I've just this second released an update.

 

Both in the program - sorry if that wasn't clear from my post.

 

Thanks Peter, I've changed that. I'll not bother making that v2.1.2.2 tonight though two updates in quick succession is probably a bad idea.

Actually I'm hoping to lock down any major changes now so I'll only make emergency changes for fatal bugs. As I'd like to avoid releasing something with major changes for a while.

 

Thanks, I've fixed the typo.

Can I suggest that you look at the Census report then this weekend. It will show you people that were likely to be alive at a census time but you don't have a census for. Double clicking on the name of a person on that report will search the Ancestry website for you making it much quicker to get results than typing in yourself thus maximising the census searching data you can get from Ancestry's free weekend.

 

Hi,

The screenshot that you attached is actually a shot of the census report for 1881.

On the Lost Cousins report, the red's and grey refer to the status of that person for that census year. A grey box shows that the person was not alive for that census year and a red box means that no census information has been recorded.
As you say, this is probably an issue with your software and its age. For FTAnalyzer to work correctly, census information has to be entered in a specific way so that it creates a record in your gedcom file that can be analysed. Similarly for Lost Cousins data. As this non standard, you will have to create a custom record to enter this data.
Entering the data in this manner into Ancestry Family Tree 9.0.4 maybe possible, or it maybe time to think of an upgrade to currently available software which does support easy entry of census and Lost Cousins data.

 

Hi,

Can you create a test gedcom for me please? One with a single person in it to which you have added a 1911 census and a Lost Cousins fact for 1911?

If you prefer, you can send a small gedcom snippet of your tree with the individuals that aren't working to my PM. Please don't post your tree here.

 

Hi you may be confusing two different things. You say you entered a lost cousins fact and the program said you had no census facts.

A Lost Cousins facts is a note to the program to say you have entered that person on the Lost Cousins website. A Census fact is quite different that records that you found someone on the census.

So these are two different fact types. Does that help ?

 

Correct.

FTA does not know who you have entered on to Lost Cousins. So that it does know, the user has to create a new Fact (called Lost Cousins, and includes the census year date) for a person in their FT software.

This new Fact and that you have also entered Census data into your FT software allows FTA to work fully.

So to recap, there are 2 bits of data needed by FTA to allow it to report correctly, a Lost Cousins Fact and Census information.
These 2 bits of data are entered into your FT software. FTA uses these 2 bits of data to populate the Census and Lost Cousins reports.