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« on: Monday 09 October 23 00:59 BST (UK) »
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.