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General => Technical Help => Family History Programs, Tree Organisation, Presentation => Topic started by: GerryS on Thursday 24 December 09 13:53 GMT (UK)
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Hi
Can anyone help me - I want to print my family tree either descendants or ancestors or the whole thing (!) from Family Tree Maker 2009 just as a rough copy (for checking and seeing what I need to do). But I want to print it all on one sheet - A1 or A0 sheets. I believe I can download as a PDF to a memory stick and take to a print shop and they should be able to print it for minimal cost. The problem is the maximum page size FTM seems to do is A2 - and that results in several A2 pages which I don't want to do.
So the question is can I from FTM 2009 (or copy to some other on-line software) set up to an A1 or A2 sheet?
I don't want to use a professional genealogy printing company as its a work in progress (!!!) and I think there maybe 1 or 2 linkages which are currently incorrect but it is hard to see on the screen.
Thanks for your help
Gerry
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This is so frustrating Gerry I have exactly the same problem . All told I am not very enamoured of Family Tree Maker 2009. There are so many things which are difficult to put right once you have made a mistake.
Irene
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Hi all,
I managed to figure it out!!!
If you sent up you chart in the normal way (do not worry about page overlaps). Then go to 'Share' on the top right and that gives you a drop down, choose 'Export to one page PDF' and its done!!! You can then load it to a memory stick or whatever and take for printing!
Hope this is useful
Gerry
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Once again, rootschatterers come to the rescue!
My frustration has ended
cocksie
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If you sent up you chart in the normal way (do not worry about page overlaps). Then go to 'Share' on the top right and that gives you a drop down, choose 'Export to one page PDF' and its done!!! You can then load it to a memory stick or whatever and take for printing!
Hope this is useful
Gerry
You may find that if your FTM print is quite large then the 'Export to one page PDF' fails. One solution is to install [for free] CutePDF as a printer on your computer. Then you can 'Print' your tree directly to PDF after choosing one of the custom page sizes in the Printer Properties menu - the largest is 3ft x 8ft.
If your chart is larger than that then I think you would have print directly from the FTM program. So, if was to be printed commercially, you would have to install the printer onto a laptop, prepare your print in FTM then connect your laptop to the printer at the shop. Alternatively install FTM at the printshop and copy your file into the Family Tree Maker directory.
Do not allow a printshop to charge you 'by the foot' - remember, a chart is 99% blank space.
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I'm having a similar situation, as well. My tree is really big (almost 70k people), but I want to make a poster only with my son's ancestors, "just" 700 people. The kind of circular tree FTM has is perfect, but it crashes and / or gives an error message if you go over 13 generations, and I have like 30. Charting Companion (a FTM plug-in that is not cheap, around 50 USD), can go so far as 200 generations, but they don't have that kind of circular tree, the one they have modifies font size the further you go, so over 13-14 generations it gets smaller. Other kind of designs would make a veeeeery long poster and that's not what I need. I need a square poster, no matter the size. Any suggestions?
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Aaah wanted to know a lot of this. About printing from family tree maker, so thanks for that.
I do want to know how you save your tree with a new name. I need to split mine into at least 2 sections but I don't want to delete everyone on it, but have two versions so I can delete the appropriate people on the two versions.
Hope that is understandable.
Nga mihi
Bronwen
Aotearoa
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"I need to split mine into at least 2 sections but I don't want to delete everyone on it, but have two versions so I can delete the appropriate people on the two versions."
I think the best way to do this is to disconnect the two spouses forming the roots of your new trees. Then generate an Extended Family Chart for each one of them in turn, ensuring "Include all individuals" is OFF and you have sufficient generations of ancestors and descendants to include everyone. Click on on of the boxes, then Right-click-->Select All. Then File-->Export-->Selected Individuals. Tidy up by adding the disconnected spouse to each tree.
The Extended Chart with "Include all individuals" ticked is also a good tool to spot errors in your tree -unconnected groups of individuals will show up below the main body.
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Many thanks Stuart.
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GENERATING AN EXTENDED FAMILY CHART FROM FTM - SOME TIPS AND TRICKS
The first thing I would suggest is to create a copy of your tree which will be used solely for charting. This allows you to edit facts and text which looks 'clunky' on the chart but is useful when comparing for DNA.
When you first generate a chart you will see that the default fields are Name and Lifespan, and the default font is 6pt Arial. I change the font defaults to 8pt for Facts and 9pt Bold for Name. Chart Title to 26pt Times New Roman. Untick 'Center tree on page'.
In the Box and Line Style dialogue, I change box sizes to 3.2cm wide, with different colour borders for males/females. Duplicate these colour schemes for 'Marked boxes' 1 & 2 but with a suitable fill co;our. Change the Chart Border to 'None'. Untick 'All boxes same size'.
In the Facts to Include dialogue I remove lifespan and put in Birth, Marriage and Death, plus other facts as desired. Untick 'Include private facts' and 'Include blank facts'. In all facts I go into the Fact Options and untick 'Include "in" before place'.
Traditionally you want your tree to have the paternal line on the left, maternal to the right - you can set the home person as someone 2 or 3 generations up on the paternal line to achieve this, always generating the chart from this person.
Global editing: Lets say you have 100 people born in "---, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK". This takes up a lot of space and looks inelegant on the chart. You can go to the 'Edit' tab at top left of the screen - Find & replace ', Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK' with 'Aberdeenshire', or 'ABD' (Google Chapman Codes for UK counties). Check through the chart for mis-spellings and other edits you want.
Page setup: Assuming you don't have a large format printer set up on your computer, it's best to define page size as A4 landscape if the final pdf is going to be printed on 24" paper roll, A4 portrait if it's going to 36". In either case you want to limit your chart to 3 pages high.
The tricky stuff: When you first generate a chart you will see a main body of connected people, but separate little sub-trees which the program has been unable to fit into that main body. Typically, a female spouse may occur twice on the chart - once with her husband and once with her parents and siblings. It is possible to move groups of people on the chart so that the duplicate overlays on the original. A problem is that the two duplicate boxes are not the same size because her marriage is not listed in the wife's family group. To fix this, double-click on the wife to edit her details. Change her shared marriage fact to 'Private'. Create a new unshared fact called 'Marr' and copy the information from 'Marriage". While you are there, also add a new fact called 'Text' - defined as an Individual fact, Text Only; this may come in useful later. Go to the 'Items to include' dialogue and add 'Marr' and 'Text' to the list - unclick the 'Include fact label' in 'Manage Options' for the Text
fact. Make the labels for the 'Marr' fact the same as for 'Marriage' Add 'Marr' and privatise 'Marriage' facts to all the women who are duplicates.
Save the chart, and KEEP SAVING it regularly as you go through subsequent steps. An annoying feature of FTM is that is very easy to accidentally go into an edit mode which results in the chart being re-drawn. If this happens, click the 'Collection' tab top left and select 'Saved charts'.
Click on anyone's box then right-click-->Select All. Use Shift+Right Arrow to move the entire chart creating space to insert all the sub-trees into the appropriate place. Then use Ctrl-leftclick to select the family group which will end up on the left side of the chart and move them there. Starting with highest generations, move the husband and wife to the right side of the man's siblings. Then select the family of the woman, move her to the left of her siblings, then move all of them as a group so that the duplicate entries overlay each other. Continue this process down the generations.
Use of the 'Text' fact: This can be used to add some piece of information which may have been put in Notes. Also, for example there may be a spouse, with parents named, of an ancestor's sibling. It may be there is no way to generate the chart including these parents in one tree. You can delete them from the chart but put in a Text fact saying 'daur. of John Smith & Mary Brown'.
Understanding Saved Charts: Saving a chart locks in the layout of boxes and settings, not the information. When a chart is initially generated, the gap between generations is defined by the tallest box in each generation. This means that if you were to make edits that increased a box height to greater than the height of the biggest box in the generation it is impossible for the Saved Chart to be applied - you would revert back to the initial chart layout. It's a good idea to increase the vertical gaps - right-click on any box-->Select generation and all descendant generations, Use the keyboard down arrow to create more space. There is no way to change other settings without losing all the box moves you have done.
Create your chart: try to make sure that the chart lies within the confines of the 3-page A4 height. Centre the tree on the page. Click on 'Share-->Export to one page pdf.
Hope this was useful.
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Marvellous Stuart. My family tree which goes back to about 900 will have the exact line not all the siblings etc.
I have a 500 page document that you can then look up to find out all the other information you want.
It will never be going on Ancestry or any other site. It will be printed out along with the tree or possible more than one tree and this is just one quarter of my family tree. The others will be much smaller.
It is half of my maternal grandmother's line.
Many thanks for all the info you have sent - it will be extremely helpful.
Bronwen
Aotearoa
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Kia ora
I tried the help function as I don't know how to get rid of 'add father' 'add mother' where I want to cut them off?
thanks
Bronwen
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CREATE A USEFUL HOURGLASS CHART IN FTM
It's easy to produce an hourglass chart based on one individual, showing all ancestors, descendants, siblings and spouses. However you cannot create a chart based on a married couple showing all of their ancestors and all of their descendants. Here is a way to do this.
Let's say the couple, A & B, have 4 children. Add a 5th child and name it '.' [yes just a full stop]. This child has no gender. Take the 4 real children and disconnect them from their parents using the 'Person' menu. Re-attach them as children of '.'. Now you can create an hourglass chart centred on '.' . In the 'Box & line styles' menu change the border style for Unknown gender to 'None'. Now you have a family tree with all the ancestors and descendants of both A&B, but not their siblings. There is a gap in the descendants line from AB to the 4 children which can be filled in with a little white image file containing a vertical black line. Or, you can draw it in by hand.
Rename the chart to something appropriate. Now you have a lovely Christmas gift for your kids!
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Stuart P, your answers have been very helpful. I do have one more query, you advised to ensure that the tree is not more than 3 A4 pages deep, do you know how many wide it cam be. My tree is currently only 1 page deep, however it's currently cutting off the right had end so assume it's too wide.