Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 11: Making an Ancestral Family Book - Part 2

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In Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 10: Making an Ancestral Family Book - Part 1 yesterday, I started creating a book in FTM 2012, getting as far as creating the title page, a four generation pedigree chart, and a four generation ancestral families report ("Ahnentafel Report" in FTM terminology). 

In this post, I will demonstrate how to add an Index, a Table of Contents, a Media Item, and then I'll save the finished product as a PDF file.

I wanted to add a Name Index to the book, so in the "Publish" workspace for the book, I clicked on the "Plus" sign in the left-hand panel, then the "Other" item in the list of publication types:


The items in this "Other" list include "Calendar Report," "Smart Story (Text Item)," "Table of contents," "Index" and "Place Holder." 

I chose Index, and in about 10 seconds a one-page name index appeared (for names in the items in the book - the pedigree chart and the ancestor report):


When there is more than one person with the same name, the date of birth of the person is included.  There appear to be no "Items to Include" or "Index Setup" menus for the Index - you get what FTM wants to give you.  There is no Place Index option.

I wanted a "Table of Contents" for the book, so I clicked on the "Plus" sign in the left-hand panel, selected "Other" and "Table of contents," and the Table of Contents appeared:


As you can see, I edited the title to make it Bold and Red color.  As you can see, the only items listed are the Pedigree Chart, the Ancestor Report, and the Index.  I don't understand why the Ancestor Report line is indented relative to the other two items - that looks like a detail problem to me.  The Ancestor Report stands alone, and is not subordinate to the Pedigree Chart.

I wanted to try to add some Pictures to the report.  After clicking on the "Plus" button in the left-hand panel, I clicked on the "Media Reports" item and there were three items to select from:  "Media Item," "Photo album," and "Media Usage Report:" 


I chose the "Media Item" and a blank "Media Item" page opened.  It took me awhile to figure out that I should click on the "Media" icon in the right-hand panel next to the "Media item" line.  When I clicked the icon, the "Find Media Item" window opened, showing all of the items in the Media file:


I clicked on the wedding picture of my grandparents, clicked OK, and the picture appeared, with a caption below (not shown):


I saw no way to edit the Caption data (which means that information needs to be perfected in the "Media" workspace before creating the book).  I could move the Media item up or down in the list of Book Items in the left-hand panel using the up and down arrows in the menu icon line. 

I haven't explored the "Photo Album" Media Item, and I'm not sure of the value of the "Media Usage Report" in a Book.

I could delete any Book Item using the "X" icon on the menu icon line.

I'm finished creating my book, so I went in and edited some of the headings in each Book Item, making the headings bold and red. 

Here is the Title Page of the book.  I want to now Save this book to my computer files, so I click on the "Share" button in the top right-hand corner:


The "Share" options include "Send as PDF," "Send as RTF," "Export to PDF," and "Export to RTF." I chose "Export to PDF" and saved it to my Family Tree Maker file.


I paged through the PDF file and when I got to the end of the Ancestral Families Report ("Ahnentafel Report") I noticed that the Sources were not included.  Here is the last page of the Report:



The next page is the Index. 

I went back and looked at the "Ahnentafel Report" in the Book in the "Publish" workspace, and the Sources are included (see last screen shot in Post 10).  However, they are not included when the Book is published as a PDF file or an RTF file.  I've done this process several times, and the sources are not included.  This is a major flaw in the FTM Book feature, in my humble opinion.  I hope that other "testers" will confirm my observation here.

Over the past few days, I have created three similar books - for four generations, seven generations and ten generations, all with the same Book Items.  I will compare page counts, time to create, and PDF file sizes in the next post.

See all posts in this series at Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 Compendium.

1 comment:

Cousin Russ said...

Randy,

In the Ahnentafel Report, Edit Chapter, did you see the Superscript Numbers AND the EndNotes at the end of the Chapter?

Did you see what you reported in the Preview or Printed version of the book?

I have a book with an Ahnentafel Report. Without EndNotes it's 18 pages long, WITH EndNotes its 26 pages.

Russ