[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] storing genealogical information

[Gary Warner]

Rose-Marie,

Legacy not only has the ability to restore a backup, but it has a file 
maintenance routine that will mostly, but not always, recover your file 
from a crash.

Storing your data is not just making a backup of your data.   What 
happens if the computer dies, or you have a fire.   You should always 
have your data not only backed up on your computer, but also on a flash 
drive that is always with you, or always somewhere that it there was a 
fire, you would not lose it- like at your office.  You might also 
consider sending a copy of your data on a regular basis to one of your 
children and tell them to keep it safe, even if they are not interested 
in genealogy- tell them if they lose that file, you may cut them off 
from any inheritance!

You really do not need to print out your data on paper, because as soon 
as you print it, it will be out of date, assuming that you are actively 
updating your database.   That does not mean that you should not print 
out a pedigree or share family group sheets with members of your family, 
but putting it all in a book does not really do much for anyone, 
especially since finding a particular family group sheet among several 
thousand others can be a daunting task if you do not find it instead on 
your computer.   I am not saying that you might not want to print out 
all of your data if you are sharing a printed book with family members 
who do not have computers, but that task is a large one if you have much 
data, especially if you do not have a good genealogy program that will 
index the printouts like a book.

I am not sure why you would want to try and transcribe your data into a 
spreadsheet or a word processing program once you have it in GEDCOM 
format inside a genealogy program.   The time it would take to do so and 
keep it current would be large, and what would you gain?

You can of course share all of your pedigree, all of your family group 
sheets, and ancestral and descendancy charts and books with anyone by 
making Acrobat Reader (pdf) files of those documents.   That provides 
the data to others electronically, and does not take the paper to do 
so.   I am not sure that all genealogy programs allow you to make pdf 
files of your data but Legacy does- it is an option on the print preview 
screen.

Gary Warner
SGGEE






F&RM Haddad wrote:
> I'm the one who had the near-miss with a corrupted database file that my
> program (yes, Legacy) had the ability to restore. And thank-you everyone for
> your suggestions and good wishes. This has made me wonder how everyone
> stores their genealogical info. Just on a dedicated genealogy program? Also
> in, a spreadsheet program? And/Or also in a Word Processing Program in
> Ahnen-tafel format? What about "hard copy"? I gave my maternal line data in
> chart form to a cousin as a b-day gift, and it was over 120 pages, 5
> generations per page. Many pages had only one or two names on them of
> course, but even so. Since then I've been able to add more material, and it
> would be signficantly bigger now.
>
> So in your opinion, what is the best way (what are the best ways) to store
> your information?
>
> And while on the topic - how do you transfer the information in electronic
> format to someone (say, overseas) who does not have a genealogical program
> on their computer, and may not have Microsoft Word? And I don't have Adobe
> except as a reader.
>
> Rose-Marie
>
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