Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Exploring RootsMagic 5 New Features - Post 5: The "On This Date" Report

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I'm exploring the new features in RootsMagic 5, which was released on 28 November.  Previous posts in this series can be found in Exploring RootsMagic 5 New Features Compendium.

An interesting, and useful, report was added to the large suite of reports and charts - the "On This Day" report.  The description of this report is:

"Lists all events from your database which occurred on a selected day. You can also choose to print famous births, deaths and events which occurred on that same day."

To obtain an "On This Day" report, go to Reports > Lists and double-click on the "On This Day List" icon on the list (or highlight it and click on the "Generate Report" button):


Double clicking on the "On This Day List," the "Report Settings window opens:


The user selects the month from a dropdown list, and a day of the month from another dropdown list.  The user can check boxes for categories of:

*  Family Events (i.e., dates from your database)
*  Famous Births
*  Famous Deaths
*  Historical Events

There are buttons on the right side of the "Report Settings" screen for "Reset," "Layout" and "Fonts" where the user can control the report output.

I clicked on the "Generate Report" button and saw a seven page report for October 23rd (my birthday):



The four different categories are listed in order.  I found that I had:

*  48 people in my database with my birth day, but none of them are my ancestors.
*  16 couples in my database have my anniversary day, but only one ancestral couple.

*  Queen Isabella of Spain was born on my birthday in 1503
*  Johnny Carson was born on my birthday in 1925
*  Wakashima Gonshiro, a Japanese Sumo wrestler, died the day I was born

*  The first Parliament of Great Britain met on my birthday in 1707
*  The New York stock market panic started on my birthday in 1929
*  Apple released the iPod in 2001 on my birthday.

What did you find out about your birth date or wedding date?

While this "On This Day" feature is very useful, I had to use the Calendar report to find the direct ancestors who were born or married on my special days. 

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