Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 10: Making an Ancestral Family Book - Part 1

...
After posting Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 9: The "Ahnentafel Report" yesterday, I had an extended discussion with FTM guru Russ Worthington (the Family Tree Maker User blogmaster) about putting photographs and an index into an "Ahnentafel Report."  Russ told me that he makes Books in Family Tree Maker that include a Title Page, a Table of Contents, charts, reports, photos, and an Index.  I appreciate his guidance!

I experimented a bit last night and again this morning trying to understand the process and created books to use as an example and to test the program capabilities.  This will be a multi-blog post effort because of the many steps required.

To start the Book building process, the user needs to start with a person.  I highlighted my grandfather, Frederick Walton Seaver (1876-1942) in the "People" workspace:


I clicked on the "Publish" workspace button, and then on the "Book" item in the "Collection list:"


In the "Book" item list, there are three options:

*  Genealogy Book (created within FTM 2012)
*  Create a Professionally Printed Book Online (using Ancestry.com's MyCanvas feature)
*  Go to Existing Online Book Projects (in MyCanvas).

I selected the "Genealogy Report" d was prompted to name the Book in the screen above.

After entering the name of my book, the Title Page appeared with the title.  I added a photograph of my grandfather (using Insert > Image from Media Collection) for the Title Page and added the author's name and the copyright information.  The Title Page is shown below:


If I wanted to add an Introduction or a Preface after the Ttitle Page, I could have added more pages of text or media.

For my book, I wanted to include a Pedigree Chart and an Ancestral Family Report for Four Generations of ancestors.  I clicked the "Plus" sign in the left panel of the screen above - that is to Add an item to the book.  The Collection list appears, and I selected "Charts" and then "Pedigree Chart:"


The four generation Pedigree Chart for Frederick Seaver appeared (using the settings I had saved previously - the user can change all of the settings from within the Book process):


Now I wanted to create the Ancestral Family Report (the "Ahnentafel Report" in FTM 2012 terminology), so I clicked on the "Plus" button again, selected "Genealogy Reports" from the collection list, and then highlighted the "Ahnentafel Report" in the list of reports:


I double-clicked on the "Ahnentafel Report" icon in the screen above, and after about 20 seconds, my report appeared on screen. 


For four generations of ancestors, there were 33 pages of text, including the sources.  Here is the last page of the report, showing the end of the sources:


I could have edited any of the functions (items to include, fonts, header/footer, page setup, etc.) and the report would be re-created. 

So far, this is pretty easy, although any limitations on the charts and reports when created individually are still in the book creation process.

In the next post, I'll add a Media Item, create a Table of Contents, and an Index, and save it to a computer file.

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

2 comments:

Cousin Russ said...

Randy,

Excellent. I guess I better get on the ball and do one of these. I have to do a new book next week, I'll just document at I go.

Great job.

Thank you,

Russ

mbm1311 said...

I find your posts on genealogy technology very helpful. Thank you for taking the time to do this. I too need to try this as it gives me more of what I want.

Thank you,
Mary BEth