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-
- Getting Started Suggestions
-
- Just play with the program awhile before you actually begin
- entering your data. Enter a few persons. Link them together in the
- family database to create a few family records. Try out all of the
- keys. Read the help screens. This will give you a chance to get used
- to the program. When you are ready to get serious, go to the Utilities
- Menu and choose the Re-Create Data Files option. It will clear
- everything out so that you can start with a "clean slate".
-
- Just in case you are like me and too eager and/or unwilling to
- read the rest of the selections in the Helpful Info section, here are
- the important things to remember:
-
- 1. F1 is the Help Key. Use it.
- 2. Reindex often.
-
- When entering information about individuals, be sure to use
- the name that the person was given at birth. This means that
- females should be entered using their maiden names. Family
- Scrapbook has special places for recording nicknames and official
- name changes. By clarifying these things, your ancestor search will
- be more accurate and less confusing.
-
- The Family Database is used to record kinship (blood
- relationships). This means that when entering children you should
- only enter the biological children of the parents...not step children.
- Each marriage should have a family record in the database.
- Whenever two people that did not marry have children together, it
- should also be recorded in a family record. The date code field for the
- marriage date will allow you to specify when people are unmarried.
- Doing this will insure that your reports show true blood
- relationships.
-
- Entering Data
-
- When typing in data you must press ENTER or leave the field
- (up arrow or down arrow) before the program will recognize the
- change. If you press F10 (save) before doing this, the changes that
- you typed will probably not be saved to disk.
-
- Entering Dates
-
- The date format that Family Scrapbook supports is the Day-
- Month-Year format that appears to have become the standard among
- genealogy programs. Here is the format of the date fields:
-
- DD-MMM-YYYY/YYYY
-
- The day must be entered as a number. Single digit days may
- be entered with either a space or a zero in the left digit. Months
- must be entered as a three character alphabetical abbreviation. The
- abbreviation is the first three letters of the name of the month. The
- first character will be forced to uppercase.
-
- The year should be four digits long. If you must enter a three
- digit year, make the leftmost digit a zero. The extra four digits are
- for entering a double date.
-
- Entering New Records
-
- The F3 (Add) key will blank the database screen so that you can
- begin entering your data. When done entering, press the F10 to save it.
-
- Viewing Records
-
- It is very easy to view your data with Family Scrapbook. The
- page-up and page-down keys allow you to step through the database
- in record number order. The search command (F6) will give you access
- to a window of scrolling records that are sorted in various ways (you
- must keep the database properly indexed for this to work correctly).
- Some areas in the program have other commands that will let you quickly
- jump to different records...Be sure to read the help screens to learn
- about them.
-
- Editing Existing Records
-
- Relax. This is easier than you probably think it is. Just get
- the record (person) that you want to edit on the screen, make
- whatever changes are necessary, and save the record by pressing the
- F10 (save) key.
-
-