Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Does any genealogy software do this? - Post 1

I've been whining a lot about genealogy software recently, but they don't do exactly what I want them to do. Or they hide a neat capability somewhere amidst all of the 0's and 1's.

I thought it would be a neat idea to make a list of the ancestors who have specific birth days - you know, who was born on 10 June, or married on 10 July.

As far as I can tell, FamilyTreeMaker 16 can't do this. I've looked at Custom Reports, Calendars, Sorts, etc. The closest I can come is a Calendar for a specific year that shows the age of persons in my database that are alive at the time.

As far as I can tell, the Standard version of Legacy 7 can't do this (perhaps the Deluxe version does...).

As far as I can tell, The Master Genealogist 7 can't do this (perhaps I am not experienced enough with it in using sorts and filters, but ...)

As far as I can tell, Family Tree Builder 2.0 (the free version) can't do this.

Am I just too dumb or inexperienced to be able to figure this out? Or is the capability just not available?

These are the only software programs I currently have access to.

I labeled this "Post 1" because I think I will have more whines down the road.

If someone has suggestions for how to do this relatively simple sort process in any of these programs, please let me know! Thanks.

10 comments:

RootsMagic said...

In RootsMagic (including the free trial version) you can do Reports > Lists > Birthday / Anniversary list. There are options for selecting groups of people, or only living people, etc. so make sure to choose the ones you are really interested in. It lists the birthdays and anniversaries from Jan 1 thru Dec 31 so you can look at any date to see what birthdays or anniversarys are on a particular date.

Becky Wiseman said...

I haven't downloaded version 7 yet but Legacy 6 has a Calendar List Report - it may be just a Deluxe feature. You can limit who shows up on the report (living only, deceased only, everyone, etc.) and you can run it for selected months, or just one month.

Breeze said...

In RootsMagic go to Reports, Calendar and you are all set.

Jasia said...

I don't have Legacy 7 yet either but you can easily do it in Legacy 6 Deluxe. Search>Find>Detailed Search>Primary Condition...then select "individual" or "marriage", "birth date" or "marriage date", "contains" and "June 10" (or whatever).

Moultrie Creek said...

Reunion 9's calendar will provide the information for today - or any day you specify. Unfortunately, Reunion only works on the Mac. ;)

Shannon said...

I'm using FTM 2005 and if you go to view and then pick calendar ( or hit ALT V,C) and then click on contents and then items to include in calender, you can choose the time period, living only or all, birthdays and/or anniversarys.

Geoff said...

Legacy 7 can do this, including the free, standard edition. Click on the Search icon in the main toolbar, and change the search fields to: Birth Date contains 13 Aug (or your date). Click on Create List. I found 33 other people that share my birthday.

lyn said...

Brothers Keeper will do this. It has a "word search" capability where you can specify specific values for most fields and it will produce a list of the people meeting the criteria. Includes some Boolean capability. This morning I searched with "17 Feb" in the Birth_Date field and it gave me a list of all the folks born on 17 Feb regardless of year.

John said...

I previously resisted, but since MoultrieCreek brought up Mac Software, I feel obliged to mention IFamilyForTiger has an "on this day" function in its menubar that will list all events for any Month/Day specified. (And if you set day = 0, for a whole month, which can be handy for remembering birthdays/anniversaries.)

Unknown said...

Master Geneaologist 7.03 handles this nicely. Report>List of>People and select Filter group. Push add button and change Save Filter as to read "Find all with the same specified birth date" then select "Birth..." for the field, "Date" for the subfield, "Is exactly" for the operator, and enter your desired date in the value field. Make sure the connect field reads "END" and press "OK". Select "find all with the same specified birth date" in the "Filtered Group" window and press "Create Report." You will see a statistical report followed by a printable "List of People" Report.