Thursday, May 24, 2012

Timeline Report in RootsMagic 5

I posted about creating a Chronology Report in Legacy Family Tree 7.5 on Tuesday and creating a Timeline Report in Family Tree Maker 2012 on Wednesday, so I want to look at a similar report in RootsMagic 5. 

I'm going to use my grandfather, Frederick Walton Seaver (1876-1942) again to demonstrate using this Timeline feature.  The "Family" View tab in RootsMagic 5 for him looks like this: 




I clicked on the "Timeline" tab on the screen above, and the Facts/Events for Frederick Seaver were listed (columns are Age, Event, Date, Note, Source, Details and Place) as shown below (top of the list):


Person Events have a red square on the Timeline "map" at the top of the Timeline, and Family Events have a blue circle.  The Events for the family members (spouse, children, siblings, parents) births, marriages and deaths are included (I found no obvious way to modify this).

At the bottom of the list:


As you can see, this Timeline view ends with his burial.

What I really wanted was a Timeline Report, and I found it in Reports > Lists > Timeline (Chronology) List. The Timeline List Report Settings permits me to choose an Individual Timeline (only the person of interest) or to select a group of persons in the database.  I chose the latter, and selected my grandfather, his family as a child of his parents, and his family with his spouse.  I clicked on the Source button on the Report Settings menu and selected Endnotes.

A ten-page report was created - here is the top of the first page:


Here is the bottom of the Timeline Report (which shows the deaths of the children, so it extends well past Frederick's burial in 1942 - all the way to 2007):


The top of the Sources page looks like this:


I was able to change the page orientation, and the font type, size and bold/italicize/underscore/strikeout for the List text and List header.  This Timeline Report seems to have no way to add color to the fonts.  

The Timeline View and the Timeline Report seem to have no Historical Event capability.  They also seem to have no Notes capability.

I really like the inclusion of all of the Family Events in the Timeline View and Report.  

Disclosure:  I bought my copy of RootsMagic 5 in 2011.  However, I have received free copies of RootsMagic software in the past, and other gratuities from the company over the past four years.  These gifts have not influenced my opinion of this product. 

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/05/timeline-report-in-rootsmagic-5.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

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