I've been a Family Tree Maker "newby" user for over a decade. I'd start and I'd stop, add a few entries, try to create "sources" and "source citations", and add media over the last several years. I've tried to get serious about it recently, having found the time in retirement to devote to "doing it right". As a type A person, I'm not one to be satisfied with a history I can't prove.
My challenge is that due to my years of dabbling, and also to a another Ancestry's member Tree I downloaded from Ancestry and merged with mine at some point, I'm left with a family Tree of some 1000+ individuals with definite but unsourced (unproven) connections. I have a lot of media files with numbers for file names or otherwise labeled that make it difficult to identify who or what they are (although most are linked by FTM to individuals). I may have created multiple sources when I should have only linked my source citation to the original and may have done the same to source citations. And the formats and entries I used in both may be incorrect as I've only recently discovered the templates I should have used from the beginning. As a result, I've created a bit of a mind boggling mess.
I've thought about going into the media folder and start renaming the files for better to understand who they relate to (yes, I've learned how to do that within FTM so as not to break the links). I've also thought about digging into my Sources and Citations to try and correct them to the proper format. This method of attack seems too daunting. I'm thinking, instead, that I should start with myself, and work backward, one person at a time, correcting the sources, source citations, and media that apply to each person. That way, I would feel as if I was making progress. I wish there was some way to change the color of a person in the tree display so that I could show them as complete. In any case, I will keep a list of the people I've "vetted" as checked for accuracy.
Am am I heading in the right direction or do some of you Family Tree Maker users have a better idea or suggestion? BTW, I'm using FTM 2014.
My challenge is that due to my years of dabbling, and also to a another Ancestry's member Tree I downloaded from Ancestry and merged with mine at some point, I'm left with a family Tree of some 1000+ individuals with definite but unsourced (unproven) connections. I have a lot of media files with numbers for file names or otherwise labeled that make it difficult to identify who or what they are (although most are linked by FTM to individuals). I may have created multiple sources when I should have only linked my source citation to the original and may have done the same to source citations. And the formats and entries I used in both may be incorrect as I've only recently discovered the templates I should have used from the beginning. As a result, I've created a bit of a mind boggling mess.
I've thought about going into the media folder and start renaming the files for better to understand who they relate to (yes, I've learned how to do that within FTM so as not to break the links). I've also thought about digging into my Sources and Citations to try and correct them to the proper format. This method of attack seems too daunting. I'm thinking, instead, that I should start with myself, and work backward, one person at a time, correcting the sources, source citations, and media that apply to each person. That way, I would feel as if I was making progress. I wish there was some way to change the color of a person in the tree display so that I could show them as complete. In any case, I will keep a list of the people I've "vetted" as checked for accuracy.
Am am I heading in the right direction or do some of you Family Tree Maker users have a better idea or suggestion? BTW, I'm using FTM 2014.
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