Storing Information

[John]

Lesley,
I'm going to atempt a short message. A statement which should confuse most people :)

Can anybody recomend a program capable of handling information from diverse sources, i.e. not births, marriages and deaths but information from title deeds, trade directories removal orders etc.
And, to store this material in a manner that allows it to be sorted and retrieved?

John

[Rod Neep]

It sounds like a task for software that stores "collections" of things. But whether or not there is one specifically for this type of thing, or where you can create your fields for your own type of data is a different matter.

Personally, I would use Microsoft Access. Fields can be set up for any type of data you want to store.... and queries and forms can be used to display them in a meaningful manner.

Try exploring the fact that you can link an object in a database to its source. e.g. click on the reference for the will, deed, photo, Word document, or whatever, and it just opens the relevant file from your hard disk.

So... with the database, not only can you have a powerful search tool, but it can be made to actually display the results for you. Hint - have a look at the sample database (Northwind) that comes with Access, and you can see that it can do some pretty wonderful things.

Rod

[John]

Yes, I had a look at http://www.sog.org.uk/cig/vol7/kay/
which seemed to fit my needs but I got bogged down with the thought of learning to work it all. Suppose I'm looking for something like that for idiots!

John

[Lesley Robertson]

Lesley,
I'm going to atempt a short message. A statement which should confuse most people :)

Can anybody recomend a program capable of handling information from diverse sources, i.e. not births, marriages and deaths but information from title deeds, trade directories removal orders etc.
And, to store this material in a manner that allows it to be sorted and retrieved?

John
Several people on the one place studies list have said that they like Custodian, but I haven't tried it. I've got everything in Works database files. I chose Works because it's a little simpler than many of the other databases around, and it did not throw a tantrum when I was converting HTML files to text files to comma separated text files for import from the Scots Origins index. Since I was adding the commas by hand, it was inevitable that I would miss a few and some files were enormous. With Works errors were relatively easy to fix.

[Geoffers]

[QUOTE=John]Lesley,
Can anybody recomend a program capable of handling information from diverse sources, i.e. not births, marriages and deaths but information from title deeds, trade directories removal orders etc. And, to store this material in a manner that allows it to be sorted and retrieved?]

I use Custodian for all records in my one-place study - registers, musters, tax returns, directories, service records - anything. it workds well.

Geoffers
Charlbury, Oxfordshire

[Lesley Robertson]

[QUOTE=John]Lesley,
Can anybody recomend a program capable of handling information from diverse sources, i.e. not births, marriages and deaths but information from title deeds, trade directories removal orders etc. And, to store this material in a manner that allows it to be sorted and retrieved?]

I use Custodian for all records in my one-place study - registers, musters, tax returns, directories, service records - anything. it workds well.

Geoffers
Charlbury, Oxfordshire
How flexible are its search rountines? Can you search on any field at all - surname, occupation, cause of death - the full range?
It's getting more interesting every time someone mentions it....

[Geoffers]

You can search just about anything you want in anyway you desire using Custodian.

Click on 'Custodian 3' on the left of the screen and then 'screenshots' - which will help give you an idea of how it works and some of the search facilities'

Geoffers
Charlbury, Oxfordshire

[Al Jensen]

I would encourage you to give Legacy a good, hard look. Legacy is a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use genealogy program, and the Standard version is available for free (the Deluxe version is also available, for a very modest price). It is based on the Access database, which makes it possible for you to add special fields, or to manipulate your data in any way you desire. It is unlikely that you will need to do so, however, since Legacy has the ability handle whatever 'events' in a person's life you may wish to enter, such as moves, occupations, military service, etc. The company is very responsive to the users, and they have a very active users group.

I worked for three years assisting patrons in the Family History Library with PAF, and I have used a number of other genealogy programs, but the only one I found that had the capabilities of Legacy was The Master Genealogist.
TMG, however, has a very steep learning curve, and is not very user friendly.

No, I am not a sales rep for Legacy, just a very happy user!!

Al Jensen

[Lindad]

Access is great. It is relatively simple to use and enables you to manipulate (in a good way) a lot of information.

[John]

One of the FH magazines had a shareware copy of Custodian II as a give away recently. It convinced me that Custodian Three will do what I need. It doesn't appear to be cheap but it is well documented and fairly straight forward (idiot proof) to use.


John

[Geoffers]

One of the FH magazines had a shareware copy of Custodian II as a give away recently. It convinced me that Custodian Three will do what I need. It doesn't appear to be cheap but it is well documented and fairly straight forward (idiot proof) to use.
John
I'm biased, but I think you've made a good choice. C3 had a lot of problems when it first launched, but these appear to have now been sorted with the subsequent upgrades. I still use C2 on my old main computer (Windows 98) and C3 on a more modern laptop.

Geoffers

[lostfamilies]

Lesley,
I'm going to atempt a short message. A statement which should confuse most people :)

Can anybody recomend a program capable of handling information from diverse sources, i.e. not births, marriages and deaths but information from title deeds, trade directories removal orders etc.
And, to store this material in a manner that allows it to be sorted and retrieved?

John


I have Custodian 2 & being very new to this program as i not used it much but it does seem to have most of what your asking, the other way is to do a database in which can then to your requirements, having looked at various programs for Family Tree i yet to find one that will do all what i would like so i have a few can be a bit of a pain for the family tree but while one is better for data the other is better for reports & Custodian does make things easier if i need to check a census or something that i have input to the program there is a later version than what i have i do not know the difference, my biggest complaint about custodian is that if say i put in details for the 1891 each person is a record where i would have prefered each family being one record after inputting the data.

[Lesley Robertson]

One of the FH magazines had a shareware copy of Custodian II as a give away recently. It convinced me that Custodian Three will do what I need. It doesn't appear to be cheap but it is well documented and fairly straight forward (idiot proof) to use.

John
I'm glad you said that - I've got the cd and have been wondering whether to have a look at it (I've not gotten round to looking at the half dozen such cds I've collected - as they're mostly England-based, there's little urgency for me....)
:cool:
For the beginners among us, it's worth repeating that Custodian is not a substitute for a regular family tree programme - it's more of a "filing cabinet" for storing data without building trees.

[Lesley Robertson]

i yet to find one that will do all what i would like so i have a few can be a bit of a pain for the family tree but while one is better for data the other is better for reports & Custodian does make things easier if i need to check a census or something that i have input to the program there is a later version than what i have i do not know the difference, my biggest complaint about custodian is that if say i put in details for the 1891 each person is a record where i would have prefered each family being one record after inputting the data.
I use Family Tree Maker for the actual genealogy, and MS Works for all my data storage. Because it's a relatively simple database, it's more tolerant of any faults that creep in when one creates comma-separated files by hand, and by simply assigning a reference number to any group (eg a census household) it's possible to run a sort on household as well as anything else. I've been indexing death certs over the past year, and sorting the info on cause of death and then on date was VERY illuminating.]

[lostfamilies]

I'm glad you said that - I've got the cd and have been wondering whether to have a look at it (I've not gotten round to looking at the half dozen such cds I've collected - as they're mostly England-based, there's little urgency for me....)
:cool:
For the beginners among us, it's worth repeating that Custodian is not a substitute for a regular family tree programme - it's more of a "filing cabinet" for storing data without building trees.

I agree that it more of a filing cabinet with one advantage you not got to go to files & look for item as if like me the item your looking for is not to be seen i sometimes go over the file a few times it where i filed it but can't see the wood for the trees so it does help also it another safe guard to have back up of data in case of lost i do back ups to disk as well so i try to keep a few copies of the data in different formats/places so if it a computer problem i covered if it something else that i lose all the cert i will have them on disk when i finished putting all them & the censuses in the program

[John]

I'm glad you said that - I've got the cd and have been wondering whether to have a look at it (I've not gotten round to looking at the half dozen such cds I've collected - as they're mostly England-based, there's little urgency for me....)
:cool:
For the beginners among us, it's worth repeating that Custodian is not a substitute for a regular family tree programme - it's more of a "filing cabinet" for storing data without building trees.
Still haven't put my hand in my pocket yet, but Custodian II is UK based rather than English biased.
And what a super filing cabinet it appears to be! I'm sure that as it is based on M/S Access, there isn't much there that couldn't be done another way but frankly, I don't have the time to learn new tricks, well not ones that don't grab my imagination.
I'm also attracted by the "LDS Companion" a program which converts information from the IGI, 1881 Census Transcription and BVRI to CSV files for import into Custodian. Before you all start shouting at me, I know that is dodgy ground but seems a very good way of sorting possible relationships.

John

[Lesley Robertson]

<Still haven't put my hand in my pocket yet, but Custodian II is UK based rather than English biased.>

I meant that the cover cds tend to be full of Sassenach material!
:rolleyes:
Lesley

[John]

Yeah, that's what I thought you meant! Custodian is pretty neutral :-)

[David Sherriff]

Am I right in thinking that Access is part of Microsoft Office and therefore very expensive for us lesser mortals? Can OpenOffice be used in a similar way to Access?

[lostfamilies]

Am I right in thinking that Access is part of Microsoft Office and therefore very expensive for us lesser mortals? Can OpenOffice be used in a similar way to Access?

As I understand it Access is just another name for the database as there is Excel, Word & Access which are the database Word processing & Spreadsheet applications so earlier versions or other programs that give these could work i am sure if i am wrong someone will be able to put me right but that is how i see these programs working on their own rather than going in to one program & selecting which of these you want to use

[John]

I'm struggling now, this week i got a shareware copy of Custodian 3, oh dear, version2 seems to be far more versitile and easy to use. Any comments or suggestions as to why I should pay another £25 for v3?

John

[Alison]

I've been away on an extended Ancestor Hunt and am just catching up on my mail. I'm very interested in Custodian - looks just what I need to catalogue all of my source material.
However I couldn't find any mention on the Custodian site re importing lots of data that I already have - say from an Excel file.
Does anyone have any advice on this?

Thanks
Alison

[John]

Alison,

though I'm still floundering, both versions 2 and three seem capable of importing data from Excel. There seems to be a plethora of shareware CD's in FH magazines at the moment, probably worth looking at!

Rod, does this look like a candidate for a seprerate forum?

John

[Geoffers]

though I'm still floundering, both versions 2 and three seem capable of importing data from Excel. JohnI seem to remember on the Custoidan mailing list, mention of the fact that Excel spreadsheets need to be formatted to text to import into Custodian. My memory may be failing though and it might be worth checking the mailing list archives.

Geoffers
Charlbury, Oxfordshire