Genealogy Chat

Yes Heather, you are right. When I restored the trees I gave them the family name and then put backup.FTM. Lo and behold I have family files, which store the originals and backup files both on the computer and a beautiful silver disc that also has the trees. Whooopppeee.... you learn something every day. Jean x.

You brave girl Jean. I thought it would probably be ok , but didnt want us all to try it and find our stuff had disappeared. So did you open a NEW file for the back up stuff? And now you have two files on the puter with the same stuff, yes?

Heather, You are brilliant. It works. I have now made a complete back up of my family trees......and what is more important I have SEEN that I have the backup LOL. Thanks very much. Joy, Don't know if that has been of any help to you. I do hope so. Jean x.

Right peeps for fear of us all losing our info, I have now contacted the technical department of FT and sent them an email re our concerns. Hopefully a nice young man in Utah will be perusing it and will reply asap. I will put what they say on here. By the way, they recommend using a new cd for every back up you do.

Hi guys, just seen this thread. Here is what FT says to do: To Open a Backup Copy of your Family File: 1. From the File menu, click Restore from Backup (ALT + F, T). The Open Backup Family File dialog box appears. 2. Click the down arrow attached to the File name field, select the name of the file to be restored, and continue to step 3. If the name of the file you want isn't listed, click the Find file... button at the lower left of the box. The Find File dialog box appears. For more information on this dialog box, click here. 3. Click the Restore button. The New File dialog box appears. 4. Give your new file a new name so that you can distinguish it from your original file. The file name can be any valid Windows file name, but it must have the extension .FTW. 5. In the Location field, either accept the default location to restore your file and click OK, or click the Change button to select a different drive and folder to which you want to restore it. Family Tree Maker begins restoring your file. If you are restoring a file from diskettes, Family Tree Maker will prompt you to insert the diskettes as needed. Simple eh? Its that word 'restore' that worries me. We just want to see its there, dont we? I suppose if you open a New File then the stuff from the back up goes on there?

I have read this with great interest, Jean (having recently ''burned'' onto a so-called rewritable disc), and look forward to reading more, because I am rather lost myself now! :-) Joy

Oh dear, this is all too much for me. Will have to go and lie down in a dark room. Judy... followed out your instructions but when I right click just get an option to open and it opens FTM as it would normally. Peter ... will give your suggestion a try. Does this mean I will have 2 copies of FTM on my computer then? Jean x.

FTM updates it's data file on-line so it needs write access. Copy your cd backup onto your hard drive and open it from there and you should be ok.

PAF doesn't need read/write access I don't think. I have a removable drive, and FTM always complains and says I need to save the file elsewhere, whereas PAF doesn't care.

Have you tried opening the CD Drive, placing your mouse over the name of your tree and RIGHT clicking - choose OPEN WITH from the drop down box and then clicking on FAMILY TREE MAKER?

Tracy..... thanks for replying.... I am a complete technophobe ...... I don't understand why I can't open the disc to read it. I don't want to alter it.... it is purely for back-up. What sort of programme do I need? Jean x.

It's possible that you are using a CD-R disk and/or drive. FTM needs Read/ Write access. Once you put something on a CD-R disk, it can't be altered. You might need a CD-RW one for it to with with FTM (or you could download another program)

Backed up my FTM files as Heather's helpful tip. Burnt the trees to CD..... my question is how do you check that the info is stored there. Have put the CD back in draw, gone to my computer, clicked on CD drive ..... up comes my trees with back up on the end, clicked on one to open it and get a box with the heading new tree with the name of my tree inside....try to open it and a message comes up saying I have insuffient rights to open this file. Can anybody tell me what I am doing wrong pleeeeeeeeese. Jean x.