Quick Tips & FAQs
One Line Help
When you hover over any control on any page, it becomes bold, and a one line of help is displayed at the bottom of the page.
Adjacent image shows that the "Hidden" tick box is being hovered over, and the help line at the bottom of the page indicates what it will do when ticked.
Using the "Escape" Key
You can stop an import that is in process by hitting the “Esc” key at any time. Be aware that what you thought might be loaded probably did not.
The escape key should also reset a filtered view to the default view for that tab.
How Do I Know What Version I am Running?
To determine what version of GDAT is being run, the user must look to the bottom right hand corner of the GDAT Window.
Macintosh Example
Windows Example
The use of the & ampersand character
There is a known XOJO programming constraint which can affect certain fields when using the & character.
The most obvious place this occurs, are the MRCA Note fields.
When the MRCA Note input field on Relative Notes (F1) contains a single ampersand character, some of the linked fields will not display this, and will instead display a short underscore character.
There are a couple of choices here.
If you want to have the & symbol in the MRCA linked fields, the use of && in the input field, will provide a single & in the linked field, but you will have the && in the MRCA Note field and some other fields.
If you don't like the && in the MRCA note field, you have the choice to use a single & and put up with the _ in the MRCA linked fields.
It is recommended however to use the word "and" or use another word or character that displays appropriately in both places
For more information on things - this XOJO thread has some information that may be useful -
https://forum.xojo.com/t/how-do-i-insert-an-character-in-a-button-caption/42823
Commas instead of Period points affecting imports
Note from Becky: GDAT expects all imports to be in English, it wasn't written to be a commercial product nor did I expect international users but glad some have found ways to use it.
In some languages other than English, numbers may use a comma instead of a period for decimals. For example, the English number 94.1 is written 94,1 in French. In Chrome, the display of this number depends on your browser settings. This is a problem since GDAT is looking for period points when interpreting the data.
For sites that require you to use a "Cut & Paste" method of gathering data for import:
Solution: Change your Chrome browser settings:
Click to open the menu in the upper right (three vertical dots).
Select "Settings".
Toward the bottom, click on "Advanced" to see more settings.
Select "Languages".
Click the very first line, "Languages", to open language preferences.
If English is not one of your language options, use "Add Languages" to add English.
Select the options by clicking the three vertical dots to the right of English.
Select "Display Google Chrome in this language". English should move to the top of the list.
Mac users may need to remove all language options other than English.If you wish to use a different language for translating pages, select the options for that language and click on "Move to the top". The top language will indicate "This language is used when translating pages". But English will indicate "This language is used to display the Google Chrome UI".
Click on "Relaunch".
For sites that require you to download a .csv file:
1. Navigate to the place, where you can start the download/request for the csv-files.
2. Before you start the download, change the language-settings of the website. On MyHeritage you can change the language in the upper right corner. Click on the displayed language name, then choose from the popup-window "English" as language.
3. Start the download/request.
4. After receiving the data you can change the language back.
An an alternate solution is to log into the site at using the English version web address instead of the native language site to request data files.
Font and font size
The display font for GDAT and the display size is determined by XOJO. At this point in time, the default font is Georgia. It is not changeable unless through modification to the source code, which is not something that will be covered in this guide, nor in the facebook group.