Creating an Ancestor List ("Ahnentafel") in RootsMagic 5

In response to my Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, I received an email question from a reader who asked "How do I make an Ahnentafel using my genealogy software?"  It struck me that perhaps some readers do not know what an "ahnentafel" is...so I'll show how my three genealogy software programs create one.

Each program does this differently, with somewhat different results, so I'll go through Legacy Family Tree 7.5, Family Tree Maker 2012 and RootsMagic 5 in a series of posts.   The Legacy Family Tree 7.5 example is here    and the Family Tree Maker 2012 example is here.

Note that I like to use the term "Ancestor List" rather than "Ahnentafel" for this list, since it is really not a "Name Table."  For this "Ancestor List," I want ONLY the ancestor name, birth date and place, death date and place, and marriage date and place.  For me, a printed "Ancestor List" is much easier to use than a series of linked and printed pedigree charts. 

Here is the process I used to create an Ancestor List ("Ahnentafel") in RootsMagic 5:

1)  With myself highlighted, I clicked on the "Reports" menu item and selected the "Lists" item from the dropdown menu:

2)  From the "Lists" window, I selected the "Ahnentafel" item:

3)  The "Report Settings" window opened, and I unclicked all of the check boxes.  I also increased the number of generations to 12:

4)  I clicked on the "Generate Report" and a 12-generation "Ahnentafel Report for Randall Jeffrey "Randy" Seaver was created:

The Ancestor List ("Ahnentafel") report has 97 pages.  It provides only names, birth date/place, marriage date/place and death date/place for each of my ancestors.  It does not list the parents, does not list any other Events, and provides no sources.  


If I want an Ancestor List with all Events, and with Sources, I can create a "Narrative Report" for Ancestors (no children), which looks like this (187 pages):

I can suppress the non-birth, marriage, death Events by going into the Lists > Fact Type List > select each Fact and Edit it so that it does not print out in a narrative report.  


I would like to see RootsMagic add the capability to have baptisms, burials, and sources on this Ahnentafel Report.    

RootsMagic 5 does a great job of creating a classical Ancestor Report, and it does it quickly, but with no flexibility in the information to be included.  The user can save the list as an HTML, RTF, text or PDF file to their computer (using the "Save" button on the "Report viewer" window), or can Print the whole file or a range of pages (using the "Print" button the "Report Viewer" window). 

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/05/creating-ancestor-list-ahnentafel-in_30.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver