TMG-L Archives
Archiver > TMG > 2006-10 > 1159937737
From: "DeAnna Burghart" <>
Subject: RE: [TMG] How do you print narrative report of ancestors with all spouses AND all of their children?
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 21:55:37 -0700
In-Reply-To: <005001c6e75d$c7cf6370$640fa8c0@Villandra2>
>>can you all please stop trying to rewrite what is a family, and tell me
how to do what I want to do.<<
From a genealogical standpoint, there is a significant difference between
family and pedigree. Most reports in TMG are designed to report on pedigree.
The results I *think* you desire are unlikely with a pedigree report, since
step children are NOT part of the pedigree, whether or not they're part of
the family. I am fond of my step-brothers and adore my father (actually my
step-father), but they don't print out on my reports!
I think that the output closest to what you are looking for is where someone
pointed you to it already, i.e. in the Journal reports. From the Report
menu, choose Journal. Click the Options... button at the bottom left of the
Report Definition Screen, and you'll see another screen for Report Options.
On the first tab, General, you'll begin to get an idea of how flexible the
Journal report structure is.
I suspect that your friend who's talking about an Ancestor report meant a
Journal report that is set to Ancestor direction. But her statement confuses
me because, by definition, a Reverse Register report starts with an ancestor
and moves down the line instead of vice-versa. At least, that's what it
means in my twisted little world; I can't find my standards manual right now
to confirm it.
I'm not yet very familiar with all of the different report types, but you
can review them online using Wholly Genes' sample reports:
http://www.whollygenes.com/samplereports.php?type=AHNENTAFEL. Try browsing
through the options in the Journal reports to see if some of those come
close. Another option is just to try a few settings and see what happens. I
can get a report that I think is similar to what you want for one of my
frequently re-married ancestors with the following options:
Journal report, Register format, Descendants, 2 generations (all of these
options are on the General tab)
However I cannot get a similar report in a trial or two running it in an
Ancestor direction. This makes sense given that my much-married
g-g-g-grandfather only provided me with *one* grandmother. Biologically
speaking -- which is what an ancestor/pedigree report covers -- anything
else is impossible (or at least it was in 1850). It's also important to
note that the children included are all full siblings or half-siblings to my
main line. None of the step-siblings are included in the report, neither are
the previous spouses of his 2nd, 3rd, and 4th wives. If those ancillary
relationships are important to your report output, I'm not sure I can think
of a way to easily produce them.
I strongly suspect that the result you want will come from a descendants
report, however even more strongly I suspect you will not find a result you
like on the first try, and especially not with a fresh PAF import. With
great power comes great responsibility, as it were <g>; TMG provides its
users a surfeit of power and flexibility, and demands a lot of its users in
return. I think you're going to have to spend some time massaging your data
import -- perhaps even repeating it a couple of times to get the results you
want -- and then spend some time exploring the report interface.
In short (too late!), you're probably going to have to experiment with it a
little bit. You may find my little report cheat sheets (see sig) helpful for
keeping notes as you do that. Then again, you may not, as I do not claim
that they're the most organized forms out there.
We really, truly are trying to help you the best we can, but there may not
be a simple A-B-C answer for the exact report you desire, since the
inclusion of step-families in pedigree reports is not a usual course of
action.
Regards,
DeAnna
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DeAnna Burghart
TMG Shortcuts, Variables and Report Cheat Sheets (Word and PDF)
http://members.cox.net/danieleb765/genealogy/
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