Family Historian User Group

I tried to do a search, but I didn't find exactly what I was looking for, so I apologize in advance if I've overlooked the answer to my question.

I was watching a few of the AS tutorial videos on YouTube (A1, A3, etc.) and I noticed that the census grid for entering information from the census record was rather abbreviated compared to what I am used to seeing in AS. In addition, there were a number of columns in the grid seemed to be missing.

When I've used AS in the past (I just now learned how to use the FH source templates in AS) it seems that if I filled in all the columns in the grid the last half of the grid, when opened in FH and a family group sheet printed spilled out off the screen/page.

I was wondering if there was a way to remove certain columns in the grid so the information doesn't fall off the side of the screen/printed page when viewing and/or printing in FH ?

ADHoeschen wrote: ↑

05 Nov 2022 00:42

I was watching a few of the AS tutorial videos on YouTube (A1, A3, etc.) and I noticed that the census grid for entering information from the census record was rather abbreviated compared to what I am used to seeing in AS. In addition, there were a number of columns in the grid seemed to be missing.

There aren't any columns missing in the two tutorials which illustrate adding census entries. The ones I used to illustrate the conversion may have had columns missing but I was illustrating how old census entries I created long ago (before Ancestral Sources) can easily be converted to rich-text. I didn't always bother to include things like Gender or Disability when I transcribed census entries before AS.

When I've used AS in the past (I just now learned how to use the FH source templates in AS) it seems that if I filled in all the columns in the grid the last half of the grid, when opened in FH and a family group sheet printed spilled out off the screen/page.

Yes currently the reports don't make a great job of displaying very wide tables. There is a new option in recent FH7 updates to compress wide tables which may well resolve this for you but that isn't entirely satisfactory for very wide tables (e.g. for USA census records). The reporting isn't very important to me and I'd much rather record the data in a way that looks correct when using FH and I'll assume that eventually FH will provide a more satisfactory solution.

I was wondering if there was a way to remove certain columns in the grid so the information doesn't fall off the side of the screen/printed page when viewing and/or printing in FH ?

AS has a feature that can be used to not include blank columns in auto-text. See Options->General Settings - Source Text->Autotext census empty columns. You could set it to 'Always Hide'. By default it is set to 'Controlled by Template'. Specific columns can be set to hide if empty in the Census Template Editor. So, for example, you may feel you always want to see the Occupation column even if empty (because it is unusual for that to be the case), but not show the disability column (which is usually empty for most census entries). Beyond that you could edit the templates yourself to remove particular columns but personally I'd much rather record all the data and wait for a better solution to displaying wider tables in reports.

Hi Nick,

Thanks for the quick response. You make a lot of sense when you say you'd rather have the complete set of information rather than shortening the census grid for printing. When I first started doing genealogy (feels like) hundreds of years ago I focused more on the reports (I had a number of large binders that took up several feet of shelf space, but are now gone) than on the sourcing and preservation of data. I'm starting to come around to your way of thinking. I like the idea of less paper.

I took a quick look at the options you mentioned and think I can do something there, like suppress empty columns.

Thank you so much for AS and thanks for your quick reply.

Alan