FTM - Help what does this mean?

[MattD30]

Hi all

I hope someone here can help me. I am having problems merging some of my files on FTM. Unfortunately each time I try to import files into my main family tree file I keep getting a message which says "Cannot complete this operations, there are too many Book Items."

I've not seen this in the past.

Thanks
Matt

[familydar]

Long ago I can remember getting something similar, I think to do with sources - "book" is one of the options for source media and I think it might be the media that's selected by default.  If your two files both have the same source names but defined differently in the two places, perhaps one as "book" and the other as "magazine" for instance, this might lead to problems.  Or when you add up the sources in the two files they could exceed the number allowed (don't know what this number is but there will be one) and FTM uses this error message rather than something more meaningful.  If it does look like too many sources, don't panic, the likelihood is that you will have a number of them that are completely redundant and can be deleted as they belonged to individuals who have been separated out into a different tree.

I've never knowingly created books but in my antique FTM V6 there's a menu item "books", it might just be a case of deleting a few.

You could try compacting your files just in case they've become a bit fragmented - ctrl alt C in FTM6.

Another possibility is that it's got itself confused and is generating this error message because it doesn't know what else to do - this can happen if it's the last error message in its look-up table.

I can't find any specific mention of this error message in my FTM6 manual.

Jane :-)

[[Ray]]

Hi     

PLEASE ensure that you have multiple backups on separate "drives".       

Export your tree(s) with identifiable file names.     

Then try your "merge" offline ie not using Anc.     

Any further problems? I volunteer to try your merge, here.     


R

[MattD30]

Long ago I can remember getting something similar, I think to do with sources - "book" is one of the options for source media and I think it might be the media that's selected by default.  If your two files both have the same source names but defined differently in the two places, perhaps one as "book" and the other as "magazine" for instance, this might lead to problems.  Or when you add up the sources in the two files they could exceed the number allowed (don't know what this number is but there will be one) and FTM uses this error message rather than something more meaningful.  If it does look like too many sources, don't panic, the likelihood is that you will have a number of them that are completely redundant and can be deleted as they belonged to individuals who have been separated out into a different tree.

I've never knowingly created books but in my antique FTM V6 there's a menu item "books", it might just be a case of deleting a few.

You could try compacting your files just in case they've become a bit fragmented - ctrl alt C in FTM6.

Another possibility is that it's got itself confused and is generating this error message because it doesn't know what else to do - this can happen if it's the last error message in its look-up table.

I can't find any specific mention of this error message in my FTM6 manual.

Jane :-)

Thanks for that info. I must admit I'm more confused though. I tend to keep all my source references in an Excel database so the new trees I'm importing into the "main" tree don't have the sources written into them yet. If that's the case surely they shouldn't clash?

I'll see if compacting helps.

Matt