Genealogy Chat

hi all, i recently decided to do a tree to put in frame on the wall lol,now here's the thing ,i want to do my own in my own design using the lovely olde lettering available on my comp,trouble is how can i get it to fit on screen and still be able to see it,i have made a couple of attempts and in part it works ,the names look great but i can only see one or two at a time,not being a very computer literate person i just wondered if anyone else had tried doing their own and had any advice....Thanks Barry

I would advise that you don't try and create a tree from scratch (e.g. by using a drawing package such as PhotoShop or CorelDraw). That would be a heck of a lot of work and it would be very difficult to update as you got more data. What you are better off doing is using a good family tree software program such as Family Tree Maker. With this, you can view, customise and print just about any tree. You can change text fonts, text size & colour, box shapes, background colours, etc etc - even add photos. Once you've created a customised view you can save the settings so that if in the future you add or modify the underlying data, you can then recall your customised tree at a couple of clicks. Family Tree Maker is very cheap these days - around £10. Money well spent as it is much more flexible and easier to use than the GR tree, as well as giving you the tree views. Richard

I was recently sent a tree 'drawn' on the computer. the sender used Microsoft Visio. Yes, it looks lovely but you can only see so much on one page, really very little more than one family at a time. Very nice for when you have finished your tree, but I wouldnt think it very practical as a working tree. OC

hi richard and olde crone,thanks for the tips ,i will look into both and see how it goes,yours Barry

I have put my family tree on Excel, one page for each surname and print it out. I use it purely for my own reference and I keep it in my lever arch files, It saves having to trawl though my family tree on here and elsewhere seeing who belongs to who as so many of the Christian names are repeated in each generation.. It's a bit tedius to do but well worth it, I find. I also use the sheets when I want to search for any relatives that I haven't yet found as being married or deceased. Having them on view in front of me whilst I searching is so much better. It's a good way of seeing the whole line of a family from to-day back to the 1700's. Teresa

One of my most useful pieces of paper is my fanchart of my direct ancestors. I downloaded the one from this site but added a couple of extra generations to it and printed it out A3 size. I've done one for me and one for my husband. This doesn't have siblings, aunts, uncles or cousins but you can immediately see which bits of the tree need more work doing on them. I pencil in names until I am sure of them and if I can go further back than the chart allows I stick a + sign next to the appropriate bit of the outer ring. I have some of the smaller A3 sized charts for ancestors for whom I already know a lot of generations back. Otherwise I can't print out my tree really. I've got individual trees for my various names and some of those need a dozen or more sheets of paper to print. If you have been doing family history enthusiastically then it won't be long before it's likely to be impossible to print out a tree with all your ancestors on it. Sue