Monday, February 1, 2010

Tagging Groups of People in Legacy Family Tree

When I made the Birthday Calendar for my ancestors in Legacy Family Tree 7 on Saturday (see SNGF - Creating Ancestral Birthday Calendars), I struggled to "Tag" all of my ancestors so that they showed up on the Calendar. Legacy was the only program of the four that I used that doing this task was not easy - the others had a fairly easy and intuitive way to Tag ancestors.

Legacy Famikly Tree 7 does permit the user to easily "Tag" "Only Living Individuals (and a separate check box for "AND Dead Tagged Individuals")," "ALL Individuals, Living and Dead," "Only Dead Individuals," "Only Tagged Living Individuals," "All Tagged Individuals, Living and Dead," and "Only Tagged Dead Individuals" in the Calendar Creation screen (click on the > Reports button > Books and Other tab > Calendar Creator tab > Include tab). There is no box to click for "Ancestors of Highlighted Person" or "Descendants of Highlighted Person." Perhaps future versions of Legacy will add these options because they would be useful, I think.

In a comment to my post, Gwynn Socolich (of the GSGenealogy blog, Gwynn is a San Diego area genea-blogger) requested a step-by-step of "how to Tag all of your ancestors in Legacy" so here is the process I used:

1) Starting with myself as the highlighted person in the "Family" view, as shown below:



2) I clicked on the "Help" link in the top menu, and in the Search box put "Tags" and from the list of Help articles I selected "Tagging Records" as shown below:




3) The Help paragraphs for this topic told me two things - that I need to "turn the tagging option on" using the General tab on the Options > Customize menu screen. That was the KEY clue to be able to do the task at hand. The screen is shown below, and the check box to "Enable tagging options" is in the lower left-hand corner:



4) After clicking "Save" in the above screen, I went back to my Family view screen and now Tags 1, 2 and 3 (the default tags) are shown next to highlighted person (me) and his spouse (my wife). Tag Number 2 is in Red in the screen below for some reason (perhaps because I tagged myself earlier?). I right-clicked on Tag #2 and the screen for "Advanced Tagging" appeared. I chose myself as the highlighted person, chose to "Tag" rather than "Untag," typed "Ancestors" into the Tag 2 description, and clicked on the "Ancestors" button on the screen:



5) After clicking on the "Ancestors" button above, another screen appeared and here I could choose how many generations back I desired, could pick "Direct Line Ancestors," "Entire Ancestor Line" (which includes anyone linked in any way to an ancestor) and/or "Include Multiple Parents." This second screen is shown below:


6) I chose "Direct Line Ancestors" only (but not "Include Other spouses" or "Include Siblings"), and clicked "OK" and then "Close" on the "Advanced Tagging" screen and I was back to my "Family" view screen. I checked to see if my direct line ancestors were tagged with Tag #2 and they were. Here is the "Family" view for my third great-grandfather, Benjamin Seaver (1791-1825) and you can see that both he and his wife have Tag #2 in Red, which means that a group has been created and that the person is part of that group.

I also checked Benjamin's siblings and their Tag #2 was clear, not Red because they were not part of the group of "Direct Line Ancestors" that I selected.

While this seems very complicated when written down in a step-by-step sequence as above, it is really pretty easy to accomplish.

These genealogy software programs are so powerful, and have so many options to learn, that using the "Help" function is really useful when you don't know how to do something. The "Help" function is your friend! Use it!

By the way, have you Legacy Family Tree 7 users updated to the latest version, 7.4.0.6? You should just to keep up to date. The features of the latest version is on the Legacy Family Tree home page. To download the latest version, open your Legacy program, go to your "Legacy Home" view, and over on the right is a box for "Updates" and if you don't have the latest version it will tell you, and you can click on "Download" right there. It installs quickly and you're back in business with the updated version. Read the latest news about Legacy Family Tree on the Legacy News blog.

4 comments:

Randy said...

Did you try View|Focus Group?

Darlene said...

Randy your directions were great. Because you went to Help first, I was able to see that tagging is not required to be on as I might have assumed it was on as default. That said, I see a slightly shorter explanation. At the step where you got to the Advanced tagging screen and saw yourself tagged as #2 (red) you could have chosen tag 3 instead, then do the same process. Using tag 3 would have not required you to untag Benjamin. Or you could have untagged #2 first then do all the steps as you did. You still would not have had to untag Benjamin at the end.

Elizabeth Thomas said...

Hi Randy,
I find all your instructions very helpful. I have a Randy Folder to keep these all together, so I can refer back to them, if needed. You provide a great service to us technology challenged folks.

Elizabeth

Gwynn said...

Thanks Randy, The instructions were very useful. I will try them when I get a chance and let you know what happens!