Splitting families on a genealogy program

[Margaret in Burton]

I want to split my data up into smaller units, say one tree for each grandparent or something. At the moment it’s all on family tree maker, mine and my husbands side all lumped together.
I’ve looked at the possibility of splitting on FTM but it would take me months to delete everyone I didn’t want on it, after making a copy of course.

Can someone recommend a program that makes splitting an easier process? I could easily send a gedcom from FTM to another program.

[Phoenix]

I use Legacy, and it's easy enough to make a copy with all ancestors, or all descendants of an individual, but it starts to get complicated if you want both, or cousins-by- marriage etc.

It may also depend how many attachments you have to sources. Gedcoms probably won't include everything.

[kiterunner]

You should be able to do it from FTM, Marg. I've used it before to create a tree for just one grandparent, and I tried it out again just now to make some instructions on how to do it:

File - Export - choose output format required
Where it says "Individuals to export" choose "Selected individuals"
On "Filter individuals" pop-up,
click on name of grandparent then click "ancestors", then on Ancestors pop-up, choose "Include all parents", "Include all spouses", and "Include ancestors' descendants" and set the number of generations to the max allowed. Then click "OK". Then when it comes back with number of individuals included in filter, click OK again (assuming the number looks about right), then click OK again and it should ask you to give the file a name and create it.

[Margaret in Burton]

I did one branch ok, thanks to your instructions Kate but the next two failed due to an unexpected error. :confused:

[kiterunner]

Bother.

[Janet]

Marg, did you try simply quitting FTM and restarting your computer before attempting another export? I suspect it may be an issue of FTM running out of working-storage memory to deal with sorting what you want and don't want in your new tree. Maybe a fresh start would do the trick?

[Margaret in Burton]

Marg, did you try simply quitting FTM and restarting your computer before attempting another export? I suspect it may be an issue of FTM running out of working-storage memory to deal with sorting what you want and don't want in your new tree. Maybe a fresh start would do the trick?

Good idea Janet. I’ll try that tomorrow

[Margaret in Burton]

Decided to look at that tonight. Yes it works. Thank you Janet

[Janet]

Yay! I just had a hunch.