Program features |
Comments |
1. The program is supplied on a single CD-ROM with an install routine, setup.exe in its root directory. Running this will install the RTF Wizard to your hard drive and create a Windows Start menu entry for launching the program. |
The CD-ROM is used purely as a cost-effective installation medium. The actual RTF Wizard program runs from your hard drive. It requires from 8-10MB of free hard drive space depending on whether you already have the Borland Database Engine installed or not. |
2. RTF Wizard has a very comprehensive online Help file that explains all the program functions and is well illustrated with examples and screen shots. The Help is context-sensitive, and a Help button is always displayed on screen. |
You can print the Help file from within the standard Windows Help engine if you need to have a hard copy version. The Help file also contains a full tutorial in the format of a worked example of extracting all references to one name from the 1881 census. |
4. The conversion is carried out in 4 steps: Selecting the RTF file to convert; Selecting the format to convert it to; Entering a new file name; Running the conversion. |
Full warnings are given that the final conversion is going to take place. Before that you can move backwards to change any setting. The original .RTF file from the 1881 British census is neither changed nor deleted. |
4. The conversion is carried out in 4 steps: Selecting the RTF file to convert; Selecting the format to convert it to; Entering a new file name; Running the conversion. |
Full warnings are given that the final conversion is going to take place. Before that you can move backwards to change any setting. The original .RTF file from the 1881 British census is neither changed nor deleted. |
5.The 4 formats that RTF Wizard can produce are:
- GEDCOM (Version 5.5 and 4.0)
- .DBF (dBase IV format)
- .DB (Paradox 7.0 format)
- .TXT (ASCII comma separated variable)
|
GEDCOM is suitable for importing events directly into family history programs. DBF and DB files are open to being imported into most desktop databases. ASCII delimited text files are ideal for import of data into spreadsheets and simpler flat file databases. |
6. You can configure the output of the GEDCOM file to either Version 5.5 or 4.0 (PAF 3.0 or 2.1), and can choose which events to include in the GEDCOM file. |
The 3 events that the program creates use the GEDCOM tags for CENS (Census events), BIRT (Birth events calculated by deducting age from 1881), and OCCU (Occupation events). Any of these events can be toggled on or off so that your GEDCOM file contains only the events you need. |
7. .TXT files contain the full text of the LDS transcript for each field. .DBF and .DB files have field length limits that are explained in the Help file, but which can be varied. |
The configuration utility that is built into RTF Wizard allows you to set the length of .DBF and .DB fields to include as much information as you need, or to be as short as you need. |
8. RTF Wizard uses lookup tables to parse the county and country parts of census and birth places into either their original LDS transcript text or into the standard Chapman Codes. You can configure the program to output the format you want. |
3 character Chapman Codes are ideal for databases where you need to sort people by census place or birth place. All places are parsed into 4 fields for census place and 3 fields for birth place. The last two are always county and country. |
9. One of the limitations of the LDS 1881 British census is that it can only export between 50 and 100 households at a time in RTF format. RTF Wizard allows you to append the results of converting multiple RTF files into one single large database table or CSV file. |
This facility does not exist for GEDCOM to avoid confusion on numbering of GEDCOM pointers. As you may save the same household several times into one file, a free deduplicator program is included for .DBF and .DB files. |
10. RTF Wizard only accepts .RTF files that have been generated from the LDS 1881 British census. |
Warnings are issued if you try to convert other .RTF files. |
11. An additional program is included that will remove duplicate records in .DBF and .DB files created by RTF Wizard. |
If you download all the 5 JONES family members in a household, the LDS software will save that household 5 times in the RTF file. |
