Brothers Keeper to Reunion

[Alex Bach Kristensen]

Since I went from Windows to MAC, I have searched for a proper substitute for Brothers Kepper. I went for Reunion and made a GED file from Brothers Keeper.

Now I would like to check if all my information has been exported and imported. That's an almost impossible task with more than 2.000 people in the file.

Does anyone have good advise about how to make a succesful "conversion" from one genealogy program to another without having to check each information?

Regards Alex, Denmark

[JamesWinfrey]

Re: Brothers Keeper to Reunion

Kristin, Reunion does a great job moving data from other software. You will not lose any data but you will probably need to reformat Facts to make them read correctly. One thing I have had a problem with is that Reunion does not import Cause of Death correctly (in my opinion). There should be a setup option to put it into Facts where it belongs but there isn't. Reunion's default is to put it in the Death Memo field which make reports look very wonky. Other than that you will have a great experience with Reunion.

Now a primer - when you start your gedcom import into Reunion, make sure you review the Tab for how data is to be handled. With this tool you can put things where they should go and can save you a bunch of editing time. If you end up with Facts like New[OCCU], go to Preferences, Fields, Move and put them where you want them.

Have a great experience,

Jim

[donworth]

Re: Brothers Keeper to Reunion

Alex,

What made the transition less anxious for me was knowing I could still run the old Windows program to look up something that I later found was missing. On Intel Macs you can run Windows in Bootcamp and install your old software if you want to have that "security blanket".

But I also spent several days during the conversion process running out GEDs and importing them into Reunion, finding little problems, twiddling things in the old program or editing the GED file directly with a text editor and reimporting, until everything came across perfectly. (Or as near to perfect as I wanted.) My problems were mostly with multiple alternate NAME fields, multiple MARRiage dates/places for a given couple, Occupations that had dates associated with them, and Cause of Death.

Don

[Galvao]

Re: Brothers Keeper to Reunion

Also Parallels does a fantastic job allowing the windows and mac programs to run side by side, and even using copy/paste and drag&drop between them.

[kmgenealogy]

Re: Brothers Keeper to Reunion

...One thing I have had a problem with is that Reunion does not import Cause of Death correctly (in my opinion). There should be a setup option to put it into Facts where it belongs but there isn't...
Jim

Jim,

Go to Reunion>Preferences>Fields>click Facts button in middle upper part of screen...
On left side of screen is "Person Facts". I show "Cause of death" in the list. Click on it once to highlight it and, on the right column, "Default Person Facts", click on "Add Cause of death" button at the bottom. This should put it on everyone's Fact card. You can move it to the position you want it before you click out of preferences.

I don't know if it was always there or if I added it. If you have to add it to Person Facts first, here are the words you need to put in the middle section after you have added it:
Abbreviation
Long: Cause
Short: cod
Font: Default
GEDCOM tag: CAUS

[thboyd]

Re: Brothers Keeper to Reunion

Alex,

On Intel Macs you can run Windows in Bootcamp and install your old software if you want to have that "security blanket".

Don

Better than Bootcamp or Parallels is VirtualBox from Oracle. It's open source and therefore free. I've been using it for years. When I first switched to VirtualBox from VMware Fusion, I felt that it performed better.