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Thread: MS Access

  1. #11
    Gill Hart
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    I have been using Access and Legacy for many years albeit for different purposes. I have an Access database which contains information taken from parish records, IGI, online sources etc where I have extracted all references to my surnames within a particular parish regardless of whether they have been proved to be part of the family at that time. I then used this database to try and identify family groups and potential family members.

    I also have a Legacy v6 database which contains individuals that I have proved to be part of my tree and in a lot of cases, the information was taken from my other Access database.

    However, I recently decided that it seemed crazy to re-type the information from one database to another so I wrote a couple of programs to transfer my data from my Access database into a new Legacy database and I now use this to build my potential trees - if/when a group of individuals have been identified as belonging to my tree, I can now use drag and drop into my main Legacy database rather than re-typing the information.

    The routines still need a bit of refining but are generally working well. My Access database has two main tables, Individuals (containing births, bapts, deaths, burials) and a Marriages table. I also have a Locations table and a Sources table.

    The databases have different strengths and weaknesses - the Access database is easy to sort/manipulate/generate custom forms and reports whereas the Legacy database is a full family history program - which is best depends on how you wish to use your data.

    The main reason for posting this is to show that it is possible to transfer information from an Access database to a Legacy one - with the caveat that it does require some knowledge of Access programming and an understanding of how the Legacy tables link together in order to achieve this.
    Last edited by Gill Hart; 27-09-2008 at 10:54 AM. Reason: additional thoughts

  2. #12
    MartinM
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    My at comes off to you!

    My own Access database serves a similar purpose to yours, and does enable me to identify potential ancestors, for later incorporation into my Legacy tree. Unfortunately, the Access database is effectively a list of names and dates, albeit searchable.

    As a user, not a computer expert, I have spent many hours over several years, trying to achieve what you have apparently achieved. I also posted questions on the Office live forums in the hope that others would already have invented this particular wheel.

    Well done!

    Regards
    Martin

  3. #13
    mfwebb
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    I have developed an Access database for our own business over the last 6 years which does everything we want and more. I can produce invoices and reports etc. at the touch of a button. I have taught myself how to write code for Access and can now export information out of the database into specific cells in Excel. Commercial packages on the market relative to our business do pretty much the same but the initial cost 6 years ago was in excess of £2,000 plus an annual licence fee plus £££'s per hour if I wanted any bespoke tweaking. My wife's comment when we looked at what was available was "you can do better than that". So that was my challenge and I rose to it. The current cost of similar packages is now £4,000 and none of them are an improvement on what we already have. I can tweak our database to my heart's content and do it sometimes just because I know how :-)

    That said, I would not dream of spending time developing a bespoke genealogy database in Access when there are commercially available packages at affordable prices.

    I have used Brothers Keeper for over 10 years -- I haven't tried any of the others so can't offer any comparison. It cost me about $35 to register 10 years ago and I can download free updates whenever I want. The beauty of BK is that there is a BK Forum which the developer, John Steed, monitors and takes part in. He answers specific queries and if there are any bugs brought to light he tweaks the programme and makes an updated version available for download on the BK website.

    If you are looking for a genealogy programme I can thoroughly recommend Brothers Keeper -- but bear in mind I haven't tried anything else.

    My advice would be to choose an available commercial programme, learn how to use it and stick with it to begin with. If you want to give other programmes a try for comparison later you can always GedCom your data and import it into another programme.

  4. #14
    Chris85
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    Thank you everyone for your opinions and replies.

    I have had a quick look at both Legacy and Brothers Keeper.
    Brothers Keeper doesn't look to me to be as good as Legacy.
    I've had a look at the introduction videos on the Legacy site and it looks a really good package.

    I think I will continue to use Access though, as I really like that it is fully customizable, and if I want to change something or make it more to my tastes then I can.

    Also I think I may need to learn more about Works and Word as people say it is as good as Access for storing information.

    If it's possible I'd like to put some screen shots of my database up so anyone who is interested can have a look and see what they think of it.

    Thanks all,
    Chris

  5. #15
    petewallacefife
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    I do not have mine on ACCESS but i do have it on EXCEL which is similar . I have arranged the columns as follows .
    As this is a one name study for Dryburgh with 5000 births of the surname named individual persons and not counting the spouses or spouses parents .

    The first column is the name I have given to various lines traced back to a common ancestor and the plan is to hopefully amalgamate the lines together possibly through D.N.A .{ For example LINES are NAMED AFTER PRECIOUS STONES the DIAMOND LINE , RUBY LINE , SAPPHIRE LINE etc }

    LINE / NAME / SURNAME / BIRTH DAY / BIRTH MONTH / BIRTH YEAR / BIRTH PLACE / DEATH DAY / DEATH MONTH/ DEATH YEAR/ DEATH PLACE /FATHERS NAME /FATHERS SURNAME/ PARENTS MARRIAGE DETAILS/ MOTHERS NAME/ MOTHERS SURNAME/ Spouse / Partner NAME /Spouse / Partner SURNAME/ Marriage DAY/ Marriage MONTH / Marriage YEAR / MARRIAGE PLACE / NOTES / CENSUS DETAILS / FINISHED or STILL TO DO / COLOUR of MAIN DIRECT LINE/ COLOUR of JOINED LINE COLOUR of JOINED LINE / COLOUR of JOINED LINE / COLOUR of JOINED LINE COLOUR of JOINED LINE / COLOUR of JOINED LINE / D . N . A TESTING SUITABLITY

    I have them arranged in order of the mothers surname , fathers name , birth year then save then in order of the mothers surname , mothers name , fathers name then save .
    This rearranges them neatly into families by alphabetical mothers surnames and all the children born to each couple in birth year order .
    I would like to be able to transfer all this data into ACCESS as an alternative method of storage .
    I also use legacy 6 De Luxe .

    see website
    www.dryburgh.us

  6. #16
    Famous for offering help & advice michaelpipe's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by petewallacefife View Post
    I would like to be able to transfer all this data into ACCESS as an alternative method of storage .
    s
    You can; just click on File/Get External Data and you can import Excel.

    Michael

  7. #17
    MythicalMarian
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    I first began documenting my own family history research into an Access database back in the mid 90s. I am a total Access fan, and love it to bits. I found it very versatile and you can manipulate your data and have it retrive queries in all sorts of ways.

    For family history, however, it has a huge drawback for me. Although I was able to link parents and children, I was never able to carry on going back in this way to grandparents and beyond. This is something to do with how the database is constructed, and is far too technical to go into. I think the way around it would be to use Visual basic to write some of the programming, but I am not practised in that. Suffice to say, Access is a relational database, in which you link various tables together, but designing any family history programme necessitates the use of your main 'Individuals' table, and the work lies in making sure these individuals can link to others in the same table through a marriage table. (I told you it was technical). I could really only manage this for one generation at a time through the use of a special ancestor code field and marriage field.

    I would always recommend the program for storing complicated data, but as someone said above, it is how you want to retrieve and display that data that determines what program you use. I'd love to hear from anyone here who has managed to get Access to display a pedigree of child, parents, grandparents, etc. like dedicated FH packages do. I found that in the end, it was taking far too much work and far too many unique code fields to make it viable when ones database has over 2,000 people in it! I switched to Family Historian instead.

    Having said that, I do still use mine - I find it very useful to log searches there, for instance, and it is still fantastic for listing baps, burials and marriages, but at the end of the day, these work just as well on a spreadsheet.

  8. #18
    Chris85
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    Quote Originally Posted by petewallacefife View Post

    I have them arranged in order of the mothers surname , fathers name , birth year then save then in order of the mothers surname , mothers name , fathers name then save .
    This rearranges them neatly into families by alphabetical mothers surnames and all the children born to each couple in birth year order .
    In Access I can bring back all of the children of a specific couple, as each person has an automatically generated ID. In the query I can find everyone with that father ID, and order by any field I like, but normally birth year order.

  9. #19
    Chris85
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    Quote Originally Posted by MythicalMarian View Post
    and the work lies in making sure these individuals can link to others in the same table through a marriage table. (I told you it was technical). I could really only manage this for one generation at a time through the use of a special ancestor code field and marriage field.
    As Access generates the unique IDs for each person, I use this ID in a field within the person form. I have father ID and mother ID with a button where you can quickly go to the form of the father or mother. I also have this for husband/wife.

    Quote Originally Posted by MythicalMarian View Post
    I'd love to hear from anyone here who has managed to get Access to display a pedigree of child, parents, grandparents, etc. like dedicated FH packages do. I found that in the end, it was taking far too much work and far too many unique code fields to make it viable when ones database has over 2,000 people in it! I switched to Family Historian instead.
    With the father and mother IDs I can for instance find myself, then click on the father IDs for each person and go back person by person up my paternal line, or any other line I choose.

    Quote Originally Posted by MythicalMarian View Post
    Having said that, I do still use mine - I find it very useful to log searches there, for instance, and it is still fantastic for listing baps, burials and marriages, but at the end of the day, these work just as well on a spreadsheet.
    I find it brilliant for managing what I have looked at, gaps in my research etc. For instance people I have not looked up in various censuses.

  10. #20
    MythicalMarian
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris85 View Post
    I find it brilliant for managing what I have looked at, gaps in my research etc. For instance people I have not looked up in various censuses.
    Spot on, here! Although I've been very pleased with Family Historian, I find that customising my own census queries has a real flaw here. I was trying to bring up a report of folk I hadn't traced on - say - the 1871 census. However, each census in FH is listed as 'Census1', 'Census2' etc, so that choosing '1871' will only bring up the people for whom 1871 was their first census, thus ignoring any folks who had been around longer! I then found I had to write several different queries, which is very time-consuming. I do have to say that although I do like the ease of FH, its querying structure is one of its poorer sides. It would seem that each census entry per person is not being given a unique code in the underlying table structure. You have to constantly change the SQL commands and such like. (Anyone not au fait with querying would find this hard, I'm sure)

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