Going on a road trip? Why not take your ancestors with you with RootsMagic To-Go?
Why Do I Use RootsMagic To-Go?
- When I travel specifically to do genealogy research, I almost always take my laptop, but I have to admit that there are sometimes when it is a pain to carry it around. The Family HIstory Library is a perfect example. Each time I get up from where I’m working to get another film or another book, I have to grab my laptop and take it with me or risk leaving it out of my sight for a period of time.
- When visiting family, I don’t always have my laptop with me, but it would be nice to have RootsMagic with me in case the conversation turns to genealogy. You never know what you might learn
- When I’m travelling for work, I have to take my work laptop along and bringing my personal laptop too is awkward and heavy.
These are all great times to use RootsMagic To-Go.
So how do you use it?
Install RootsMagic To-Go on your USB drive and the utility will take care of keeping your data in sync because it knows if the most recent copy of your database is the one on your computer or the one on the USB drive.
How to Install and Use RootsMagic To-Go
Run RootsMagic To-Go and select the USB drive you just plugged in. If this is the first time you’ve used this USB drive with RootsMagic, choose to install a copy of of the software.
Enter your registration key when prompted. This is the same key as you used to install RootsMagic on your computer.
Next, transfer your data to the USB drive. You can copy one or more files from your computer to the USB drive.
As you can see from the image above, my Bond database on my computer is newer, so it is recommending that I copy from my computer to my USB drive. On the other hand, the Bresnahan database on the USB drive is newer and larger, so it is recommending that I transfer it from the USB drive to my computer. No worries if you don’t remember where you worked on your family last. The software keeps track of it for you.
Once you arrive at your destination, insert the USB drive into the computer you are going to work on. Depending on settings on the computer, it might ask if you want to run RootsMagic To-Go or it might not. If it doesn’t, go to Windows Explorer, find the USB drive and look for the RootsMagic Launcher program and double click it.
RootsMagic will appear on the screen and work just like it does on your home computer.
Thank you for sharing this. I just recently decided to use RootsMagic-To-Go for some of the same reasons you listed. I appreciate the clarity and illustrations.