A 'fillable' family tree for idiots

[AudreyF]

Not exactly writing up my family history because I'm fairly well on with it. But, I'd like to find a good way of presenting the family in a diagram. Previously, I have used Publisher with little boxes and typed in names and drawn lines etc. but there must be a better way. As the tree grows it gets unwieldy, going over several pages, boxes changing size etc. etc.

Everything I find on line seems to be a PDF for printing and then writing the information in by hand. I want to download something, fill it in on my computer and then print or not as I need.

Any ideas what I can do ..................

Thanks in advance.

AudreyF

[Lesley Robertson]

Are you using a genealogy programme for your data? Most of them can produce such trees, with options about who to include... I use Family Tree Maker (other software is available), and it does most things (although I've had to keep FTM 2005 running as well since the next version deleted my favourite format).

I find that non-genealogists find the traditional ancestor trees (here's X and X's parents and grandparents, etc) to follow, but the descendant (here's your ggradfather, and his kids and their kids) is also popular as long as youkeep it reasonalbly simple - that's the joy of letting your genealogy software generate different trees, depending on who you're going to talk to.

[AudreyF]

Well, I have two distinct needs.

The first thing is to provide a 'direct line' only tree for my children with them at the bottom, rising up through my husband and I, our parent, grandparents etc. No siblings or second marriages of anyone - just a very direct blood line.

The second requirement is to produce a tree for a distant cousin/his family where our common ancestor is a great grandfather and it goes back three generations above him. For that tree (as a 'one off') for him who is a 'layman' I want a tree which shows a second marriage in every generation, siblings, children of second marriages - basically everyone in a reasonably small family/timescale.

I do have FTM but use it mainly as a local 'back up' to Ancestry if I decided to unsubscribe so I haven't really got to grips with FTM and printing from it.

[Wilkes_ml]

I also use family Tree maker, but I break my family up into smaller individual trees with just a couple of main surnames per tree.....that way I can find which branch of my family I want quickly and the trees never get too big. I also play around with the publishing features in the FTM programme. I now update all my trees via ancestry and synchronise them with FTM programme, so they can be backed up.

Each tree can be individualised....I make the boxes for men and women different colours and shapes, and you can add as much or as little into each box.

[Lesley Robertson]

A lot depends on the FTM version, but you can certainly do all of that. As Wilkes says, it's a good idea to break things into little trees, especially if you're going to print on A4.....

The assorted reports and trees can probably be found under "publish" unless they've moved them since ver 2011...

[tony vines]

I break my family up into smaller individual trees with just a couple of main surnames per tree.

Does this mean that each tree is within a separate file within FTM?

I can see why doing this would be helpful but I can't see how it would work within the same file. I don't use FTM but the principle would be the same in any such programme I guess.

[Wilkes_ml]

Does this mean that each tree is within a separate file within FTM?

Yes I have a separate FTM file for each "family"...basically I have a folder on my PC divided into maternal & paternal, then every surname has a separate subfolder.... I save each FTW and backup file to each subfolder, along with all scanned documents ect, so when I open family Tree maker, I can have multiple trees in the "drop-down" menu that is on my 2012 version. If I re-install family Tree maker on a new PC, I have all my FTW. files and back up files on an external hard-drive, and now the cloud, so I can just load them back in to family Tree Maker.......if that makes sense!

I also have another separate tree which is just direct ancestors from myself, with the bare basic information so I can quickly view all my ancestors, or print a very basic ancestor tree rather than a descendant tree.

p.s. I did this right from the start of my research so, it was a habit I got into, and I never ended up with a enormous file that was difficult to find my way around. It also meant that if for some reason one file became "lost" or corrupted, it wasn't so much work to re-do it (that was before I backed up my back ups after an unfortunate death of my PC)

Michelle

[jaxandfamily]

Tribal pages have a nice little fan chart that will cover 4 or 5 generations