To access the “Who Was There” report, select Reports > Lists from the main menu.  It will be the last report in the Lists category (alphabetically).  Highlight the “Who Was There List” and click the “Create Report” button.  RootsMagic will display this screen.

Some Help with the 1940 Census

Let’s say you are interested in finding out who may have been in Iowa at the time of the 1940 Census.  You can simply type “Iowa” for the place, and enter “1940″ for the date (you could also enter the actual “2 Apr 1940″ date if you wanted).  Select any options you want and click “Generate Report”.

Tip: While the report will print in portrait mode, it looks a lot better printed landscape.  Click the “Layout” button and choose to print the report in Landscape.

RootsMagic will create a list of everyone in your file who may have been in Iowa in 1940 (you can click on the image above to see it larger).  Now of course you aren’t limited to typing in states.  You can enter countries, states, counties, or cities.  When entering a place that could be ambiguous, just make sure to enter enough of the place so that RootsMagic can figure out what place you mean.  In other words, don’t just enter “Springfield”, be a little more specific, like “Springfield, IL”.

The “Who Was There” report will list the name(s), birth and death dates, the person’s age on the date you selected, and any events in the person’s life which occurred in the place you entered.  You can also choose to print any alternate names for the person, as well as the most likely married name on that date for any females.

Other Uses For the “Who Was There” Report

While this report can be invaluable for finding people in a particular area during a census, it has a much wider range of usefulness.  Let’s say you wanted to find people under 30 who were in South Carolina during the US Civil War.  In the report options below, you would enter “South Carolina” as the place, and instead of entering a single date, you can enter a date range covering the time of the Civil War.  And finally you can set the minimum and maximum age to filter the results to those people under 30 (or between 18 and 35 or any other range).

The resulting list would look something like this.

RootsMagic also gives you a “People to include” filter which lets you use any criteria you want to further filter the list.  So if you only wanted males in your direct line, you can do that as well.

So while this is a very easy report to use (just fill in the date and place), it can also be a very powerful tool when used with the various options and filters.  And don’t forget that you can always press the “Reset” button on the report options screen if you ever want to go back to the default settings.

• Mar 15 – New Media Tagging in RootsMagic 5
• Mar 22 – New Source and Citation Features in RootsMagic 5
• Mar 29 – New Research Logs and Manager in RootsMagic 5
• Apr 5 – New Timeline View in RootsMagic 5
• Apr 12 – Installing and Upgrading Personal Historian 2
• Apr 19 – New County Check in RootsMagic 5
• Apr 26 – New Reports and Options in RootsMagic 5

To sign up for the free webinars, visit our webinar page at:

http://www.rootsmagic.com/webinars

And don’t forget about our free recorded webinars while you’re there.  We have classes for everyone, from beginners “Getting Started with RootsMagic” to classes for more advanced users, like “Creating Custom Reports with RootsMagic.  We have classes which everyone should watch like “Sources, Citations, and Documentation with RootsMagic”.  We even have classes on using our other software Personal Historian and Family Atlas.

And for those who are thinking about switching or upgrading to RootsMagic 5, check out our newest recorded webinar “Installing and Upgrading to RootsMagic 5″.

The RootsMagic 2012 RootsTech Treasure Hunt is now over.  We wanted to thank the bloggers who placed clues on their sites: Becky’s Grace and Glory (Becky Jamison), DearMYRTLE (Pat Richley-Erickson), Elyse’s Genealogy Blog (Elyse Doerflinger), Food.Family.Ephemera (Gena Philibert Ortega), GeneaBloggers (Thomas MacEntee), Genealogy Gems Podcast (Lisa Louise Cooke), Genealogy’s Star (James Tanner), Genea-Musings (Randy Seaver), Granite Genealogy (Sue Maxwell), Renee’s Genealogy Blog (Renee Zamora), Ruth’s Genealogy (Ruth Stephens), The Accidental Genealogist (Lisa Alzo), The Chart Chick (Janet Hovorka), The Genealogy Blog (Leland Meitzler), and We Tree Genealogy Blog (Amy Coffin).

Many of the bloggers said they had record-setting traffic to their blogs from the thousands of RootsMagic users from around the world who followed the links to find the clue words.  And we heard from many of you who enjoyed discovering new blogs and podcasts with such a variety of personalities and styles.

For those of you that are curious, the 15 words formed this important message:

“Little Orphan Annie says Always Use Roots Magic and Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine”

“A Christmas Story” Copyright Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

We held our first drawing at the actual RootsTech conference and gave an iPad 2 to Margie Grider.  And for those who weren’t able to attend RootsTech in person, we held a second drawing for online entries.

And the winner of an iPad 2 in our online drawing is Barbara Perkins of Vancouver, Washington!  We also drew three more winners who will each receive a RootsMagic super pack which includes RootsMagic 5, Getting the Most Out of RootsMagic 5, Personal Historian 2, Family Atlas, Family Reunion Organizer, and RootsMagic Webinars on CD Volumes 1 and 2, all in a RootsMagic tote bag.  Congratulations go to Henry Boelte of Norfolk, Virginia; Roger Wells of Lexington, Kentucky; and Beryl Godwin of Southend-on-Sea, England!

Thanks to the thousands of you who participated in our treasure hunt.  We had a lot of fun putting it together and we hope you had a lot of fun participating.  Look for more treasure hunts, more connections with the genealogical community, and more magic in the future!

Congratulations go to Margie Grider who entered our RootsMagic Treasure Hunt and won the drawing for an iPad 2!  We didn’t want those who aren’t able to attend RootsTech in person to feel left out so we’re holding a second drawing and giving away more prizes including a second iPad 2!

To enter this drawing, visit http://www.rootsmagic.com/treasure anytime between now and midnight MST on Wednesday, February 8, 2012.  Fill out the online form to be entered into the second drawing.  You may enter even if you entered our “in person” drawing but one entry per person, per drawing.  Winners will be picked at random and notified via e-mail by Friday, February 10, 2012.

Good luck and happy hunting!

]]> http://blog.rootsmagic.com/?feed=rss2&p=1285 21 http://blog.rootsmagic.com/?p=1285 http://feeds.rootsmagic.com/~r/RootsMagic/~3/ZCqQVj7vXDU/ http://blog.rootsmagic.com/?p=1264#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:14:57 +0000 Michael Booth http://blog.rootsmagic.com/?p=1264

It’s been a tremendous last few months here at RootsMagic. We’ve been busy with the new releases of Personal Historian 2 and RootsMagic 5. We’re also excited to participate in one of the largest genealogy events in North America- RootsTech!

We want to celebrate these momentous events with you, our loyal users! And what better way to celebrate than with a treasure hunt where you could win one of many prizes including an iPad 2!

Online Treasure Hunt

We’ve partnered with 15 of the best and brightest genealogy bloggers who will be reporting at the RootsTech conference. Each blogger will place one of 15 clue words on their website. The clue word will look something like this:

From Thursday, February 2 through Wednesday, February 8, 2012, visit http://www.rootsmagic.com/treasure for a complete list of the blogs where the 15 clue words can be found. Visit each blog, collect all 15 clue words, and you could win software, prizes, or an iPad 2!

Enter at RootsTech or at Home

Once you’ve collected the clues there are two ways to enter.  The first is at the RootsTech conference itself.  Pick up an entry card at the RootsMagic booth (#224) in the Exhibit Hall.  Write the clue words on the back of the card and return it to the RootsMagic booth in the Exhibit Hall by Saturday, February 4 at 1:20 pm.  At that time, we will hold the prize drawings.  You must be present to win.

We didn’t want those who aren’t able to attend RootsTech in person to feel left out so we’re holding a second drawing and giving away more prizes including a second iPad 2.  To enter this drawing, visit http://www.rootsmagic.com/treasure anytime between Thursday, February 2 and midnight MST on Wednesday, February 8, 2012.  Fill out the online form to be entered into the second drawing.  You may enter both drawings but one entry per person, per drawing.  Winners will be picked at random and notified via e-mail by Friday, February 10, 2012.

Remember, the treasure hunt doesn’t begin until this Thursday. Good luck!

It’s been a tremendous last few months here at RootsMagic.  We’ve been busy with the new releases of Personal Historian 2 and RootsMagic 5 and now that we have a chance to breathe, we feel like celebrating with you, our loyal users!  And what better way to celebrate than with a treasure hunt where you could win one of many prizes including an iPad 2?

Excited yet?  Well, you won’t have to wait too much longer.  Watch this blog early next week for all the details!

Is it December 31 already?  As has become an annual tradition here at RootsMagic, we’d like to take a few of the last remaining minutes of the year 2011 to review some of our accomplishments from the last 12 months with you, our users.  If you’re not one to dwell on the past, check back Monday as we present our 2012 New Years’ Resolutions with a peek at our plans for the coming year.  But until then, crowd on into the time machine (don’t worry, there’s plenty of room) as we journey back to January 2011.

Free Online Classes (Webinars)

Beginning in January 2011, we pioneered the use of “webinars“, or free online classes, to help our users get the most out of our software.  Over the last 12 months, we’ve offered nearly 30 classes spanning over 30 hours of instruction to answer your questions and to teach you all the ins-and-outs of our software.  And the response has been phenomenal!  Our webinars have been viewed and downloaded hundreds of thousands of times from users in nearly every country on the globe.

And best of all?  All of our webinars are archived and still available, free of charge.  If you haven’t already taken advantage of this resource, don’t wait, pick a webinar on a topic that you’ve been curious about and watch it today!  No other genealogy software comes close to providing the level of support and training that we do.

Sponsorships

This year brought the usual conference travel, but this time we wanted to give back a little to the genealogy community that has given us so much.

At the Southern California Jamboree in June we brought the experience of the Jamboree directly to you.  We sponsored free live streaming of some of the best known speakers in the industry right into your home, including Lisa Louise Cooke, Curt Witcher, David Lambert, Kory Meyerink, and Kerry Bartels.

And at the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference in Springfield, Illinois we sponsored the RootsMagic Cyber Cafe, the place to hang out, go online, charge a device, or print those syllabus pages you needed.

Personal Historian 2 and Personal Historian Essentials

This year saw not one, not two, but 3 new releases.  September brought the long-awaited release of Personal Historian 2, the latest version of our ground-breaking computer software which helps you write the story of your life and of other individuals.  Personal Historian 2 built upon its predecessor and added easier filtering and searching, an even better word processor, improved book publishing, and much more.  We also released a free “Essentials” version of the software to help people start recording their life stories.

But now RootsMagic will be able to notify you anytime there is an update available.  RM5 will display this indicator in the status bar at the bottom right of the program screen if there is a new update available.

Just click that indicator and RootsMagic will download and install that free update for you.  If you want to know what is fixed in the update, read on.

Where is the list of fixes?

We also used to post a blog article any time a minor update was released (along with a list of the items fixed).  The problem with that is that those fixes became scattered all over our blog and you weren’t able to easily find all the fixes in one place.  We have addressed this by putting a pinned topic up on our RootsMagic Forums (you *did* know we had forums, right)?  You will always be able to visit that topic to find out the latest version of the program, as well as what was fixed in each update.  Go to:

http://forums.rootsmagic.com

open the Announcements section (at the top) and you will find the “RootsMagic 5 Update History” right there at the top.