Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Working in RootsMagic 4 - Post 5: Creating a Family Group Sheet

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I downloaded the free RootsMagic 4 beta release in early March, and easily uploaded my Family Tree Maker file to it. In this series, I'm looking at different features of RootsMagic 4. I'm not doing a comprehensive review, just looking at features important to me.

Previous posts in this series include:

* Working in RootsMagic 4 - Post 1: Navigation
* Working in RootsMagic 4 - Post 2: Editing Person Data
* Working in RootsMagic 4 - Post 3: Adding a Child to the Family
* Working in RootsMagic 4 - Post 4A: Creating a Pedigree Chart
* Working in RootsMagic 4 - Post 4B: Creating a Pedigree Chart

In this post, I'm going to create a Family Group Sheet for my second great-grandfather, Isaac Seaver (1823-1901). The Family Group Sheet is an item on the "Report" menu drop down list, as shown below:


Clicking on the "Family Group Sheet" item on the dropdown list results in the "Report Settings" menu opening:

I checked the boxes for "Other spouses of parents," "Spouses of each child," "Basic events even if blank," and "Notes." I could have clicked on the "Fonts" button to change the font type, size, bold, italics, etc. of the text. I could have clicked on the "Sources" and "Indexes" buttons to print them also. I clicked on the "Generate Report" button and saw the classical Family Group Sheet:


All spouses for the parents are listed, as are the parents of the parents. The spouses of the children are shown.

The next sheet is the start of the Notes section for the father, Isaac Seaver:


At the end of the father's notes are the mother's notes:



This is a standard genealogy report done well. I didn't see any way to add color to the chart, but most FGS's don't have color - they are just useful charts to convey family information.

I remembered that the free RootsMagic 4 trial ended on 31 March, and when I opened RootsMagic 4 this morning, the program asked me if I wanted to continue with the trial version (crippled), purchase RM 4 or use the registration key if I had already purchased the program. I clicked the latter, and easily used the Registration Key sent via email and registered my copy of RootsMagic 4.

In the next post, we'll look at a Narrative Report that could be used to document a portion or all of a person's genealogy research.

3 comments:

Family Curator said...

Thanks for doing this helpful review, Randy. I have heard so much about RootsMagic that I was interested to hear more... and you have done a real service introducing and testing the basics.

RootsMagic said...

Randy, like the pedigree chart, if you have your family color coded and turn on that option in the group sheet, you will get colors for the individuals in the group sheet.

Diane B said...

Funny, Randy! :) Thanks so much for recommending this program - I love it. It's got some things that are different or easier to use than FTM. Thanks for sharing all your hard work!