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<DIV>I find myself half-way between Les and Gary on this issue. I'm
passionate about historical and genealogical accuracy, but I've also downloaded
family files from the Internet and found a wealth of information. I always
treat these as "third-hand" sources though...kind of a roadmap of
possibilities. I use FTM and make a note stating my source and my
confidence level in the source. When I find errors or make
corrections, I note that too. I do this also when I'm given verbal
information by a family member. My first excursion into computerized
family files was using Family Roots on the old Apple IIe. When I was led
to PAF by a Mormon friend, it was such an improvement that I was ecstatic.
Then I found Family Tree Maker and really fell in love with that format.
But, like Les, I find the limitations of the program frustrating. While I
understand that it is better <EM>not</EM> to merge, than to merge the wrong two
people, the fact that this program won't merge if there are multiple exact
matches makes me want to scream and shout. I also use the program to work
on a tribal enrollment project for the Indian tribe I work for. There are
two of us working on this project on our own computers and we decided that the
best way to appoach the project was to do periodic merges of our individual
files. The number of manual merges of individuals needed to keep these
records up to date is astounding. Aside from the multiple marriages and
children that result from merges, I'm also frustrated by the limitations in
<EM>extracting </EM>family lines from a large file. If I want to send
someone only a single family line, it takes several operations to get the whole
family line segregated from the larger file. On the other hand, it beats
the old 3" x 5" card method!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Carla</DIV></FONT></FONT></FONT></FONT></BODY></HTML>