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Some common cleanup things to consider before making a gedcom (or importing to The Master Genealogist)

Most people using Family Roots have some “no record” people that will get lost in a gedcom. To preserve the “no record” people, we’ll do this methodically, starting with the spouses. (If you don’t mind losing the no record people, this can be skipped. I’d advise doing it.)

From the FR main menu, use Alt-R(ecords) and choose Search Record Content (if asked about erasing list in memory, say ok)
Type in the number of the "Spouse #1" field and press <return>
Type in "<not>#" (without quotes) and press <return>
Alt-F and choose Begin Search, then choose Entire Database or a part at a time using 1-50, then when finished 51-100, etc until all done.
That will put a list in memory and you might want to print it out for now (you may not need to once you get used to doing what needs doing).
To print the list, Alt-P and choose Sorted Lists, then List in Memory, then Record Number etc.
This gives you a list of people between 1 and the end who have spouses with no record number. Don’t worry about how many there are, you just want to eat the elephant one bite at a time.)

Look at he first person in the list who has one No RN spouse. Make a note of the name. Alt-N(ame) and choose Add Names and type in the name - you needn’t bother with married names for the women because most programs handle that differently, so no need to waste the extra keystrokes. After you are back from the add names screen, then go to the spouse 1 field and use the F-10 key which will put that spouse’s record number there.

By the way, I use (_____) (_____) for unknown name elements.

Don’t get sidetracked with doing the No RN children until you are all done with the spouses.

When the time comes to do the No RN children, here’s the steps for that.
Do the same type of search we did for finding the no record spouses only this time use the Child #1 field. Again, go to the record and then choose Alt-N(ames) > Add Names, adding the name of the child. Then use F-10 to put that new RN in the field where the child’s name is typed in. Go to the child and make sure their other parent’s record number is filled in. If the first parent only has one spouse, then both parents will have record numbers. If the first parent had multiple marriages, then the other parent will be blank and you’ll need to decide which one is the parent. If you don’t have any way of knowing, then it is ok to leave the other parent blank.

Last section is the No RN parents. First do a search on the father. I’ll repeat the steps again.
Alt-R(ecords) and choose Search Record Content (if asked about erasing list in memory, say ok)
Type in the number of the "Father" field and press <return>
Type in "<not>#" (without quotes) and press <return>
Alt-F(ile) and choose Begin Search, then choose Range of Record Numbers, and choose (for example) 1-50

You should now be used to adding the name, and then using F-10 to put the number in the appropriate field (Father, in this case). Then, if the mother already has a number, go to her record, and put that newly made father into her spouse field. Now comes the tricky part - you need to go to each of the children, and make sure that the father’s RN gets put it there too. It’s not automatically done. Once that family is finished, go to the next person on your list.

Once that’s done, do the same search to find the <not># people in the Mother field, and do them.

Almost done. Do a final record search, one field at a time - the father, the mother, the spouse, the child, to make sure that none got missed.

Once you are done, then you are ready to do one of three things. 1) keep using Family Roots, 2) make a gedcom file to go to another program, or 3) send the data to Wholly Genes to import into The Master Genealogist format. There is no extra charge for the latter, just buying the program.

Another common problem is "non-standard" dates. If you know you've used them, be aware that a gedcom export will preserve them, but most gedcom imports will throw them into an exceptions file. You might want to clean them up too.