Loading Family Tree Maker from a Disk--Too Hard!--Compouter Genealogy Society of San Diego--November Meeting

Loading Family Tree Maker from a Disk--Too Hard!

In my blog of 1 November, I discussed the problems I had merging two of my trees on Family Tree Maker (FTM).  Since FTM tech support had no solution for my problem and determined the program was corrupted, I decided to delete FTM 2014 and reload the program. I started that process yesterday afternoon about 3 pm.  At about 4:30 pm, after being unsuccessful in trying to get the disc to load, I contacted technical support.  I got a very nice and helpful lady and she talked me through the process which included disabling the Norton firewall, closing all applications and opening Internet Explorer.  We then copied the FTM disc from it's location in the disc drive.  The next step was to paste that on the desktop and then open the program.  The instructions for this, which she sent me, were 2 1/2 pages long.  Unfortunately, that didn't work; despite trying it about three times.   I keep getting a widow that says "Can't read from the source file or disc".  I had also uninstalled FTM 2014 from the computer prior to trying to load the disc.  At 5:40 pm, I finally gave up.  I spent another hour this morning; but still couldn't get the program to load.

  

The technician said she spends about half her time each day helping people with this same problem--trying to install FTM 2014.  She said both Norton Security and Windows 8 further complicate the problem.  I will say that I had no problem loading FTM 2014 on my Windows 7 laptop. I asked her if it would work better if I downloaded the program from their web site; but she said I would have to pay again for the program to do that. Seems like they should be able to give me a temporary pass code for a one time download, assuming that would work better than the disc.    I am wondering: "What happened to being able to insert the disc in the drive and have it auto load?"

Obviously, there must be problems doing that; but the current situation is totally unsatisfactory.  People should not have to spend half a day trying to load a program.  I recall when I originally loaded FTM 2014 a few month back, I had to call technical support.  We were successful then in getting it to load; but as of today, I am still unsuccessful in being able to reload FTM 2014, let alone solve the merging problem.  I hate to have to revert back to FTM 2012, which I fortunately still have loaded on my computer.  I did notice a statement on the FTM website this morning that if the aforementioned procedures for loading 2014 wouldn't work, call them back again and they would have the technician take control of the computer and load the program.  I guess that will have to be my next move if I want to use 2014.
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Computer Genealogy Society of San Diego--November Meeting

I received the following notice about the CGSSD November meeting:

The Computer Genealogy Society of San Diego meets on the 3rd Saturday of each month (except December) from 9:00 a.m. to noon on the campus of UCSD, University of California, San Diego. See our map page for directions.

The next meeting will be held on 16 Nov 2013 from 9:00 am to noon. Here are the details:

Annual Meeting and Election of Officers

25th Anniversary Celebration!

• 9:00 - User groups: Legacy and Roots Magic. SIG: DNA.
• 10:00 - Break / Anniversary Cake
• 10:20 - Announcements / Giveaways / Annual Meeting and Election of Officers
• Short Updated History of CGSSD by Joan Lowrey, followed by program:

"Excel and Word, the Genealogist's Best Friend"

by Hal Horrocks

Excel and Word can greatly enhance your genealogy research.  Examples showing how they can be used in your everyday research will be presented.  From taking your current database and converting it to Excel for better examination to extracting large amounts of data for finding those tough to find ancestors will be shown.

A native Californian and longtime Orange County California resident, Hal Horrocks is a professional genealogist, teacher, and lecturer.  He has been doing family research for 15 years and is a member of Association of Professional Genealogists (APG), Genealogical Speakers Guild (GSG), Orange County California Genealogical Society (OCCGS), Guild for One-Name Studies, Manchester & Lancashire Family History Society (UK), and Cheshire Family History Society (UK).  He has written several articles for publication in the UK.  He is also the current President of OCCGS. In addition, he has developed a web site for the Horrocks surname that includes a one-name study, a DNA study, and family trees for Horrocks researchers.  Hal has been giving lectures to genealogy societies thought out southern California for the last 5 years.

We meet at the Robinson Auditorium complex on the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) campus in La Jolla. From North Torrey Pines Road, turn at Pangea Drive into UCSD. Free parking is available in the parking garage on the left; use any space other than those specifically reserved for UCSD vehicles. Signs will mark directions to our meeting room. Please refer to our website www.cgssd.org; or the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies website (click here) for driving directions and a map.