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General => Technical Help => Family History Programs, Tree Organisation, Presentation => Topic started by: celia on Tuesday 28 November 06 18:05 GMT (UK)

Title: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: celia on Tuesday 28 November 06 18:05 GMT (UK)
I have tried many times to use Microsoft Excel and never get it to do what i want (it usually moves along and comes out all out of order).That is to make a page that looks like the burial page of the cemetery.Or Christening page of a Church.
When buried        name    age     abode  and so on
date

The christening i now have are,Bap date, Child's name ,Parents  c name fathers  s name and another four columns. I did try once making my own document but the lines cells keep moving ;D.Is there an easier way to make a document that i can add my finding to ???

Celia
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: julianb on Tuesday 28 November 06 18:44 GMT (UK)
sounds like you need to fix the size of the cells, and wrap the text - Format/Cells.  Give that a go

JULIAN
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: Nadine Moore on Tuesday 28 November 06 18:45 GMT (UK)
Hi Celia

Can you give a bit more info what you mean by
Quote
it usually moves along and comes out all out of order
Quote
but the lines cells keep moving

An alternative is using a table in Word like below. As you use the Tab key (above Caps Lock) to move through the cells, it creates a new line when you need one.

Dinie
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: Wendi on Tuesday 28 November 06 21:02 GMT (UK)
Hi Celia

Once you get to know Excel it'll be fine.

Golden role is "ask yourself what you want to do" - keep that in your head and go thro the menu until you find something that matches.

In this case from your question - and bear with me - it's "how can I make columns" so Line A make a row(1, 2 3 etc)  of: "When buried        name    age     abode  and so on date" each heading to a cell. 

Important : when the typing overlaps a cell ignore it 'till you've finished.

Then go back and click on the cell and select  "Format, Column, Autofit" and bingo it stretches to fill with the words you have typed.

If later on in say abode, you have to type say, Hamel Hempstead, and that's longer than abode, click  on Hemel Hempstead and same again"Format, Column, Autofit" it will widen the length of the column to accommodate the longer word.

Hope it makes some sense, the big "do" is if you are going to print off, make sure you preview first!

Wendi :)
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: Tony Payne on Tuesday 28 November 06 21:33 GMT (UK)
Clicking on a column will highlight that column, you can then select Format/Cells and click on the Alignement tab.  Check (tick) Word Wrap and when you type into a column the words will wrap around if the column is not big enough.

You can change the width of a column using Format/Column Width but also you can do this by dragging the column divider across to increase or decrease the size.

You also need to consider the page width, as any columns off the right of the page will be printed on a separate sheet.  Using File/Set Print Area having highlighted the columns to be printed will show you the last column to be printed, using a dotted line.

The F1 (Help) key does give you a lot of help in Excel, although it is often hard to try and find the topic that you want.  You can also go into Google, click on "More" at the top above the search box, and then "Groups".  This will take you to the Usenet Groups section, where you can search on just about anything to do with Excel.  There are a number of Excel newsgroups, and many many postings.  There are bound to be some that help solve most of your questions.  The newsgroups helped me to learn a lot, including a lot of trial and error of course...

And finally..........
Don't forget that in Excel you can do a Print Preview to see what the printed spreadsheet will look like.  You don't have to keep printing garbage - preview it first.
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: celia on Tuesday 28 November 06 23:39 GMT (UK)
Thank you all for your speedy replies,I will read all your suggestions till it sinks in,I recognize some of the words used ;D I did use Excel when i was on 6 month computer course but that was about 6/7 years ago. I did a flight path
as a test,flight and estimated time of arrival, speed and all that.I must have got it right cos i got 2 ticks ;D I also had to do the books at the end of the week for the greengrocer ;D ;D  So i will have a fiddle tomorrow you never know it might all come back. If it doesnt I will be Back ;D

Celia
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: trish251 on Wednesday 29 November 06 05:08 GMT (UK)
Hi Celia

If using excel for genealogy you have to remember that Microsoft thinks the world started in 1900. Unless things have changed in more recent versions - mine is v2002 - If you use the date format for columns it doesn't recognise pre 1900 dates as dates - hence any time you try and sort them into date order it doesn't work. When you enter the dates it converts 1900 and later dates into the default date format - but dates pre 1900 are left as text - VERY confusing.

I  input the dates as 3 numeric columns - viz year/month/day - and usually swear at microsoft while doing same. You can also input them as a single number yyyymmdd but I find that slightly more confusing when looking at the data onscreen or on paper.

I also put surname and given name into different colums so I can easily sort by one or the other - and it keeps individual colums to a reasonable width without using the wrap option.

Trish

PS   I would be interested to hear how anyone else handles the mix of early and late dates in excel
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: downside on Wednesday 29 November 06 12:36 GMT (UK)
Quote
I would be interested to hear how anyone else handles the mix of early and late dates in excel

I use the dd-mmm-yyyy format e.g. 06-Jun-1801.  I find it it easier to read dates with alphanumeric characters rather than all digit dates.  If you get any problems with dates then you can always divide them the into 3 columns so that the year is in its own column.

You can automatically adjust the column width by double clicking the area between the columns e.g. A | B | C

Put your cursor on the vertical line and then double click.

downside
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: celia on Wednesday 29 November 06 16:43 GMT (UK)
Dinie
Thank you for the form it's brilliant that looks like the one i used on my old computer.I am not into these things and couldn't find anything on the one i have now.I was about to ask you how do i make the  lines of squares (That were taking up to much space)narrower withway,because i only have at this time15 entries they took up a second page.Then i noticed the little red markers on the ruler on the left side.I found that by moving them i can bring the lines closer together.I also made the font size 10. So now all entries are on one page.It's all coming back now ;D As to the moving lines i mentioned it might have been when i tried to make this type of form on a blank page.I don't think i would be able to use Excel, this way is better.I have never been to Microsoft office,is the form from there.I love being able to use the drop down menue and put things where i want them ;D

Thank you;)Celia
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: Nadine Moore on Wednesday 29 November 06 19:07 GMT (UK)
Hi Celia

It is a simple table that I made up for you in word, not excel. You can . as a blank template and just change the headings in the boxes for any other data you need to input.

If there are too many columns hold your mouse above the column and it should be a black arrow, click on the column and either Edit, Cut or Right Click, Cut to remove it.

If you think of each box in the table as a cell in excel, that should help you to do the same in excel. As has been said in previous threads, it is possible to resize excel cells so your data fits. What version of excel are you using?

You'll get there i'm sure. Keep at it.

Dinie
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: celia on Wednesday 29 November 06 22:15 GMT (UK)
Hi dine
i never realized you made it especially for me,another big thank you ;) as i said it's brill ;D I will just keep making new pages out so i will allways have them handy.They are so much easer to use than excel

Best wishes Celia
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: Nadine Moore on Wednesday 29 November 06 22:36 GMT (UK)
Celia

If you use word you can make your own.

Along the top menu (File, Edit, View, etc) there should be a Table one.
Click this and (my preference) choose Insert, Table
You then choose how many columns you need, how many rows (my preference is usually just 1 as when you use the Tab key it automatically enters a new row as you need it), fixed column width (the column does not resize) or autofit to contents or window (to contents - my preference).

This then puts a table on the page that you can use as you need.

Don't forget you can change the layout of the page from portrait to landscape using the File, Page Set Up options. Also use Print Preview to check how it will look when printed.

Dinie
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: julianb on Wednesday 29 November 06 22:46 GMT (UK)
Not sure whether this will work, but here's an excel spreadsheet for recording family data.  The columns are:

Surname
Forenames
Born
Died
Where born 1(eg town)
Where born 2 (eg county)
Where died
My Blood no [Ahnentafel number – for direct ancestors]
Related to [My direct ancestor]
their blood  no [My Direct Ancestor’s ahnetafel number]
married  year
married  to
married where
census 1841
census 1851
census 1861
census 1871
census 1881
census 1891
census 1901
Surname
Forenames

If Auto Filter is set to on, you can, from the drop down menu, filter down to direct ancestors (on the my blood number column) or to descendants of a particular ancestor (on the Related to column).

If you ar not familiar with ahnentafel numbers , an explanation can be found here:

http://juliancbaker.rootschat.net/html/ahnentafel_numbers.html

And an example of a chart found here:

http://juliancbaker.rootschat.net/html/new_textual_summares_index_she.htm

Please note, you need to open this file in excel, and then set the column widths - rootschat messageboard will not accept attachments with the extension "xls"


JULIAN
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: Berlin-Bob on Tuesday 27 February 07 19:23 GMT (UK)
Just to add some more ideas to Julian's example, here's the spreadsheet I use:

Name Explanation   Example(s)
Name-Tag usually first two letters of surname, then first two letters of given name, then birth-year
This tag is used as a prefix for HTML-pages, image names, etc, and for filtering all events for one individual.
It works for me, but may need a re-think if you have thousands of names		maha1889 => maha1889.htm. maha1889-03.jpg
bege18xx, etc
old tagForget this one, I started off with a different schema, but I prefer the one I am now using                 
First name(s)                 
Surname        e.g. Hardy, (Hardy) = married Hardy, maiden name unknown
Sort-Surname   Used for sortinge.g (Hardy) gets sorted as Hardy
Also useful to put any variant surname in "Surname" but the 'standard' one here to sort on
Event         Birth, Marrige, Death, Census, Directory entry               
Year                                        
Private      p = private (CD only), w=web (public)                
Cf.            "Confirmed"      Y, N, ?(= don't know)
Rel.         Relationship    dm = direct maternal line
dp = direct paternal line
R = otherwise related,
'blank' = not known whether related or not
Date         freestyle (anything I know about the date)      1900, August 1901, 3.10.1773, etc
Sort date       YYYY-MM-DD, used for sorting 1780-11-26, 1900-00-00 (month and day unknown)
Age             as given by that source                    
Address                                     
Place                                        
Comments:                                     
Source                                      

I find that one row/line per "event" makes more lines, but you can add more details about each event.

For instance, sometimes it's interesting to look at the ages given on various census or marriage certs or baptisms etc

Or the addresses at different times,
or ...  etc.

For an example, I have filtered all entries for Fanny Hardy (hafa1835).
Interesting how her age varies between census and baptism records

Bob

Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: Sherwood on Tuesday 28 August 07 00:49 BST (UK)
Hi,

As an example of what you can do in Excel, here are some BMD certificates where I copied the layout from originals so that I could make my own soft copies.


I read that we can't attach xls files so I've changed the file extension to txt.  Hopefully if you change it back to xls it should open in Excel.

Sherwood.
Title: Re: Not realy a tec problem,but about excel
Post by: PurpleOwl333 on Saturday 17 March 18 00:46 GMT (UK)
Quote from: Sherwood on Tuesday 28 August 07 00:49 BST (UK)
Hi,

As an example of what you can do in Excel, here are some BMD certificates where I copied the layout from originals so that I could make my own soft copies.


I read that we can't attach xls files so I've changed the file extension to txt.  Hopefully if you change it back to xls it should open in Excel.

Sherwood.

It does indeed open in Excel. Thanks for this  ;D