Family Tree Maker

I need help from someone who uses Family Tree Maker. Both my brother
and I have and use FTM to track our familes, ancestry etc. I add to my
program and he adds to his. How can we send the files to each other
and keep all the data compiled in one file? Merge command only does one
individual at a time. We want to copy and add to each other's file. Liz

Charlie Hoffpauir...

You can't do that easily with FTM I suggest you both get a better
program. I know RootsMagic will do what you want, and I think Legacy
will also.
Charlie Hoffpauir
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/

Lesley Robertson...

It would help to know which versions you're using.
I have FTM 2005 and it has 2 merge commands - for individuals and for all
duplicate people. The first thing to do is to make backup files with
different names so they can't be written over (I put them in a completely
different folder so FTM won't even notice them to that if something goes
wrong , all is not lost). Then load up the bigger of the 2 files and use
append/merge to read the second file in. It should start checking for duplo
people itself, but you are going to have to check a lot manually unless the
2 files have identical entries for each duplicate person. For example, if
one of you has Kermit MacMuppet born abt 1952 and the other one has Kermit
MacMuppet born 23 Jan 1952, it may not spot that it's the same guy.

If you know which branches are different, you can limit the work by making
up a set of small files that only contain the different branches. For
example, one of you might have the children of Kermit's sister Piegi
MacMuppet and her husband Ralph, the other only has Piegi. Then set up that
branch on the screen, use export individuals in tree and merge that file
with the other one, the you know that Piegi is the only duplo you have to
worry about.
Check the file carefully afterwards as odd things can happem - you'll need a
bit of patience.
BTW My family has found that it pays to have one master file to which odd
side branches are added, and then copies shared periodically. MUCH easier!
Lesley Robertson