Friday, June 20, 2008

Does any Genealogy software do this? - Post 2A

I learned a lot from my first post with this title - about creating a list or calendar of ancestral birth dates or marriage dates. The summary of responses was here. Several readers helped me out, and I learned a bit about, and gained experience in, several genealogy software programs.

My question is: Can a genealogy software program create an ahnentafel list (also known as a Sosa-Stradonitz list)? This list is defined as a list of ancestors, in pedigree chart numerical order, separated into generations, with birth date and place, death date and place, and marriage date and place. The beauty of this numbering system is that each ancestor has a unique number.

This type of list is a staple of genealogy research. for me, it is absolutely the most useful list to put in my research notebook and carry around - I prefer it to a set of pedigree charts or an alphabetical list of ancestors. Perhaps my preference is due to the over 2,000 ancestors I have in my ancestral database - it is more difficult for me to quickly find a specific person in a large set of pedigree charts than it is in an ahnentafel list.

I have tried to create the ahnentafel list that I want in these programs:

* Legacy Family Tree 7.0 Standard Edition (some limitations in free edition)

* RootsMagic 3 Free Edition (some limitations in free edition)

* FamilyTreeMaker 16 Deluxe Edition

* The Master Genealogist 7.0 - Free Trial (for a month)

* Family Tree Builder 2.0 - Free Edition

* Personal Ancestral File 5 - Free Edition

I have not tried to do it using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 or any other program but the ones listed above. If readers want to provide me with their experiences using other programs, I would welcome it.

I'll write at least two more posts showing my experiences using the six programs listed above.

6 comments:

Kathryn Doyle said...

Randy,

Since I know that Denise is on vacation, I'll answer about Reunion for Macintosh - yes, Ahnentafel Reports can be created. The current version (9) allows for several modifications - number of generations, removing duplication, privacy filtering, inclusion of sources or preferred photograph, layout variation (choice of the specific data fields to be included) and choice of document type (Word, RTF, plain text, Web).

Anonymous said...

There's a few program I know that do not support ahnentafels.
Hereditree 2008 does not really support reports, just some line draw charts.

GenoPro 2007 version 2.0.0.4 does not provide any of the traditional reports.
A point-x update added some reporting capability, but I doubt it really fixed things.

I am pretty sure that MyHeritage Family Tree Builder 2 does not create ahnentafels.
Its ancestral report uses consecutive numbers instead of ahnentafel numbering.
That is the same as long as each generation is complete, so the last few (low numbered) generations are likely to give the impression that it does it right.
Check the earlier (higher-numbered) generations, where you have more gaps, to make sure.
In the case of FTB 2 you'll see that uses consecutive numbering.

Perhaps a more challenging question is whether they will create an index too?
In FTM2008 for example, that capability seems to be missing.

Geoff said...

Legacy Family Tree, even in the free standard edition will do this. Click on the Reports icon, click on the Books/Other tab, then click on the Ancestors book button.

Drew Smith said...

In RootsMagic 3, it's:

Reports
Lists...
Ahnentafel

Note that it lists the facts for each individual in the order birth, marriage, and death.

Drew Smith said...

For Family Tree Maker 2008, it's:

1. Publish
2. Under "Collection", choose Genealogy Reports, then Ahnentafel Report
3. Create Chart/Report
4. Check box for "Use short biographies (B, M, D only)

There does not appear to be an easy way to omit the spouses and children of the reported individuals, short of first creating an extract of just the direct ancestral individuals in a separate file.

David said...

Ancestral Quest has a demo available for download. Most people seem to overlook this program, but I've been using AQ for several years and it does more than I'll ever need it to do.