Genealogy Chat

I hope this is as easy to understand as I want it to be..... I understand that it is called a tree because of the way it works. If I do a tree from me, I get my parents, their parents and so on, getting more and more parents as you go. If I do a tree from the oldest ancestor in my tree, I get their children, their childrens children etc etc. What I want in my tree is for it to go up from my son to me and my wife, our parents with their brothers and sisters, their parents with their brothers and sisters etc etc, and then at the same time, come back down again showing the children of everyone else too. That is, the children of my aunts and uncles, great aunts and uncles etc. I basically want a pictoral tree where I can have every single one of my names, linked up to everyone else in one great big mess of 'branches'. These normal types of trees are easy to do with gedcom files and a family tree program, but i'm looking for a program that will do it all for me without me having to do it myself on a spreadsheet or something similar, does anyone know of an easier way?

Do you have a family history software programme e.g. Family Tree Maker? If not, that is what you need.

Yes, Family Tree Maker for Windows is what you need - they call it an 'all-in-one' tree. You can control what info to show in the individual boxes, and even add photos. When you come to print it out, it will print on several sheets of paper which you then need to tape together to form a single chart. Be warned though, if you have a lot of names in your tree, the resultant chart will be huge! I just had a look at my data, which has nearly 3000 names, and to print it out as an all-in-one tree would take 442 pages!

Christopher, If you ever wanted the all in one tree printing out nicely all on one huge piece of paper I would rocommend genealogyprinters(.)com remove (). They can do it from almost any file type, lots of options on what you'd like it to look like and the info to be included etc. From £25 for an all in one tree of up to 500 people. Just received mine yesterday and I'm over the moon with it. Em

I bought Family Tree Maker specifically for that purpose, and in theory is a brilliant idea. But as Richard said, practically, not good, as I don't have a room in the house big enough to spread all the pages out!!! Kim

A common problem. It is the same with PAF. If I want to send a relly a copy of their family tree I can do an ancestral chart, but then I have to do a descendancy chart for each of the earliest ancestors to include the cousins.