There has been some discussion on the list about how to transfer information between different people in a way that includes all the information you want to send in a format that the receiving person can understand and follow. I developed and tested the following procedure under FTW 2005. The basic procedure should work with earlier releases but the receiving party should be at same or higher release then sending party.

SENDING PARTY

1 Backup everything.
2 Select EXPORT FILE under FILE Menu and click Selected Individuals option.
3 Select the individual you want to start with and ADD (>) them to the output.
4 Add ancestors or descendants of the primary individual depending on what you want to do.
5 Click OK and select folder and file name in which to save file. This file will be saved as FTW Family FILE.
6 Email Exported file as an attachment to receiving person.

Note: This works if both parties use FTW. If you are sending to somebody who uses a different program, Import the exported file as a new FTW file and export it as a GEDCOM that contains only the tree you want to send. Email the GEDCOM as an attachment.

RECEIVING PARTY

1 Backup everything
2 Open email and save attachment to folder and filename of choice. I then closed the window. I did not try to open file.
3 Start FamilyTreeMaker and open FILE you want to update.
4 From FILE menu select OPEN
5 Locate imported file and open it. You now will have both the file to be updated and the imported file open in FTM

At this point you have imported the new file into FTM with all of its contents. You can compare individuals, print reports, copy individuals or trees, or merge the two files.

In my case I had one individual in the imported file that I wanted to add to my database. I followed the instructions in FTM 2005 help for copying an individual between files and it worked like a charm.

I did not try a merge because the rest of the data in the imported file was already in my database and I was burned once by trying a merge. They claim merge is new and improved but use at your own risk.

NOTE OF WARNING

FTM now knows about two files, probably located in different folders. When starting FTM make sure it loads the file you want to use from the proper folder. If you don’t you will wonder where your updates went. I would not do anything except update my main file with data from the imported file and then delete the imported file so you don’t get confused.

What this procedure does do is get the selected data to the receiving party in a format that gives them lots of options.

Curtis Miller

Curtis,
I hope you are still out there....I have FTM 16 and I want to take my step-mother in law's family out of my tree and make her own....can you please tell me the steps I need to do this? I am very unsure when it comes to these kind of things.....thank you. Sandy

Sandy,

Yes, that process will still work for Version 16.

Russ

Hi Sandy.

Still here. That was a long time ago.

I see Russ has already replied to your message.

Just make sure you take a backup first and know where it is on your hard drive and how to use it. You could also make a copy of your file and work with that do to the export. Either way, if things get totally screwed up you can recover and start over.

Curt