Family Historian User Group

I have seen several discussions about formatting the output of reports to include many word processor type functions. In TMG I used formatting options and field names on many many of my facts. It worked great but when I needed to port my data to another application there were issues beyond belief. I'm still cleaning up for that. Until all vendors agree to a particular formatting function that would be transferable from one to the other I think the issues outweigh the benefits. Just my 2 cents.

My question is not related to that type of formatting. When I output a narrative report I get many facts that are lumped together in one paragraph. I have some that are going several pages. In other products there seems to be an option to specify a paragraph break after each fact with notes. This at least separates my facts into a readable format. I looked at the help, forum, and report options but have not found any ability to do this and make my output more readable. A paragraph break is needed to allow your word processor to recognize a paragraph. A carriage return line feed is not easily recognized in my word processor which is word 2010.

I am doing just a generic Individual Narrative report. If someone can't point out where I, as a new user, made a really dumb error I will then go back and try to create test cases to further test and then explain what the issue is.

Any suggestions?


Thanks to all on this forum, the best around.

Do you have any formatting in the Fact Definitions / Sentence Templates?. I use the Narrative reports most of the time and have found that if I include the Formatting Code for New Line (which shows as <br> in the template) at the start of virtually every Fact Definition / Sentence Template, then I get a more readable output.

TMG_refugee, perhaps you have not discovered the delights of Tools > Fact Types that I suspect are akin to TMG fact formatting.

Having opened the Events/Attributes List, select any fact, and click Edit.
There, among other things, you can change the default narrative Sentence Template.
The << Insert Code button offers two forms of layout option, and much more.
Click the Help button for further advice about the dialogue, and follow the links to Template Codes for details of the Sentence Template structure, codes, data refs, functions, etc.

When you get stumped, then ask again, because some options are technically challenging but very powerful.

Take note that I said "default narrative Sentence Template" because back in the Facts tab for each Fact, the Sentence box at the bottom can be customised with text & codes just for that specific Fact.

There are, I believe, a couple of gotchas with paragraph breaks in narrative reports. Some, at least, of these will be fixed with 6.1.2 (still in beta test) - but see http://www.family-historian.co.uk/downl ... ade-to-6.1 and in particular, see Enhancements and bug fixes for reports. I thought it best to warn you, because if you suddenly hit one of those issues, it would be nice to know it's not your fault.

As Mike says, if you use menu Tools / Fact Types... then edit the appropriate Event/Attribute, you can edit the (default) Sentence Template by using "<<Insert Code" and choosing one of the Formatting Codes. My personal preference is to have a <para> at the beginning of the sentence as then the short fact-sentence is immediately followed by my (extensive) notes, without an intervening new line. It also works better at delimiting this fact from the previous fact if that has not yet been converted to have a paragraph code.