Friday, August 15, 2008

Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 17: Relationship Reports

I installed FamilyTreeMaker 2008 in early July and uploaded a large database to see how it worked. I also started a new database to test other program features. Please see the list at the bottom of this post for the earlier posts.

In this post, I want to display some pages from the Relationship Reports generated by FamilyTreeMaker 2008.

I'm using my 4th-great-grandfather, Benjamin Seaver (1757-1816), in my database as a starting point for these reports.

When you click on the [Publish] icon on the top menu, you see a list of the different Charts and Reports that can be generated in the left-hand panel. I clicked on "Relationship Reports" and got this screen:



There are five reports in this suite:

1) Family Group Sheet -- the FGS is a detailed report about a single nuclear family) two parents and their children) with names, dates, places, etc. A picture of the individuals in the family can be included.

For Benjamin Seaver, the FGS is eight pages long. The user can add any Fact in the Items to Include list to this chart. If you request Notes, you receive notes for all persons in the family. The first two pages are shown below:



The last page is shown below, and it has Sources below the Notes:

2) Kinship Report -- this report shows how individuals in the tree are related to a specific person.

The default option is for relationships to all persons in the tree (specifically, all persons related to the specific person - ancestral and descendants families). One of the pages of this report is shown below:


There are 55 pages to this report for Benjamin Seaver's relationships. The user can specify Immediate Family or Selected Individuals also. The user cannot add any Facts to this report.

3) Marriage Report -- names of husbands and wives, the date and place of their marriage, and the marriage status. I selected Immediate Family and received this screen:


The user can specify All Individuals or Selected Individuals also. Be careful here - when I selected All Individuals I got a 213 page report of all marriages in my database. The user cannot add any Facts to this report.

4) The Parentage Report -- displays each individual with the names of his or her parents, and the parents relationship to the child (e.g., natural, adopted, foster). I seelcted Immediate Family and received a two page report. The first screen looks like this:



The user can specify All Individuals or Selected Individuals also. Be careful here - when I selected All Individuals I got a 782 page report of all (over 20,000) individuals in my database. The user cannot add any Facts to this report.

5) Outline Descendant Report -- this report shows where everyone fits in the family. Starting with a relative in the past, it shows all descendants (and their spouses) of that person in outline format, indenting each generation.

The first page of the seven page report for Descendants of Benjamin Seaver is shown below:



The user can use the Items to Include button to add Facts to the report. The report can be formatted similar to the Genealogy Reports.

These reports are fairly standard, and FTM 2008 does them satisfactorily, with sufficient Fact inclusion and formatting capabilities.

Creating the Kinship, Marriage and Parentage reports for all individuals in the database can take a long time if there are a lot of persons in the database. I'm not sure that these "all individual" reports are useful to a researcher. I wouldn't print out a 782 page parentage report. I might print out a Kinship report for myself with specified individuals. for instance, I asked for a Kinship report for myself to All Individuals in my database - it was 419 pages. I requested a Kinship Report for Selected Individuals - only descendants of Thomas Richmond (1848-1917, my great-grandfather) - and the report was a manageable 5 pages with 161 individuals, which includes all of the known cousins on my father's side of the family.

Previous posts in this series:

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 1: Loading. Installing the program and uploading an existing database file.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 2: Exploring. Looking around the uploaded database file to see what the different views look like.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 3: The Menus. Most of the menus were itemized and described.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 4: Starting a New Tree. I started a new tree and added some people demonstrating the program options to do this.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 5: Adding a Source. I added sources to the Facts that I previously entered.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 6: Adding Children to a Family. I added children to a family.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 7: The Person Menu. I described the items in the Person menu and attached a spouse to a person.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 8: Finding a Person in the database. I described three ways to Find a person.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 9: Places I. I explored the vagaries of the Places icon.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 10: Places II. The different map types are discussed and displayed.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 11: Places III. The method to Resolve many places with standardized place names is explored.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 12: Charts I. Introduction to Charts and examples of pedigree and descendants charts.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 13: Charts II. Examples of Hourglass, Relationships and Vertical Pedigree Charts.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 14: Charts III. Examples of large wall charts created by FTM 2008.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 15: Genealogy Reports. Description and display of Register (descendant) and Ahnentafel (ancestor) Reports.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 16: Person Reports. Description and display of 5 different reports, including Individual Reports and Custom Reports.

The next post will cover the Places Reports available in the [Publish] menu.

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