Family Historian User Group

I've been sent a report file containing some of my ancestors, in this sort of format:

   1 Gabriel Greenman
....  2 Hester Greenman1637 - b: 1637 in Chippenham
....  2 Gabriel Greenman1638 - 1721 b: 1638 in Chippenham
.........+Cecile Unknown - 1672 d: 14 November 1672
.......….3 Marie Greenman1671 - b: 1671 in Grittleton
.........*2nd Wife of Gabriel Greenman:
.........+Jane Tucker b abt 1640 - 1680 f: m 19 January 1672, Grittleton
.......….3 Daniel Greenman 1672- 1762 b between 1672 and 1680
.......... …+Mary
..........……4 Mary Greenman1716 - b: 1716 in Grittleton
……………+ John Woodward c about 1710 m 30 September 1739
……………...5 Daniel Woodward c 14 Jul 1740 Sherston Magna
………………..+ Elizabeth “Betty” Taylor b abt 1744
………………….6 William Woodward c 17 November 1769
………………….6 Mary Woodward c: 25 August 1772 Castle Combe
……….…………..+ James Brewer b: 1757, c: 9 Oct 1757, Castle Combe
………..……………7 Richard Brewer b 1799 c: 24 March 1799 Castle Combe

(I've truncated the lines when pasting into here).

This report goes to 13 levels of indentation and is 157 pages long! The person who produced it started with a 20 page report someone had sent them 10 years ago, and has just built up their 'tree' using the same format, in a Word document (gulp).

I'm trying to find a way of making it easier to use when comparing with my FH data. Something like being able to make each indent level a heading so that I can just use the outline view in Word to see each generation or family at a time. There may be a better alternative.

The 'leaders' in each line appear to be full stops, but when I try and select them with the mouse, sometimes I can select just one, in other places (even on the same line) I can only select a group of 3. It seems pretty random, so I think these may not just be full stops. Tried looking with paragraphs marks turned on in Word, but it still shows them as ....

There are also some free text comments scattered around the report, though not a huge number.

Can anyone suggest a way of turning this into something more usable?

I've seen these sort or reports before (though never this big), is there a name for this style of presentation?

Thanks, David


ID:3600

Its similar to the Family Historian Outline Descendant Report but with the Generation Level numbering system turned on and with less events selected to be viewed. I'm sure you could make a descendant outline report look very similar to that format by tweaking the options. I don't know whether viewing your own data in this format would make it easier to compare to what you've been sent?

Best wishes

Nick

The programmer in me thinks that it should be possible to write a script to then might be possible to use the csv -> gedcom converter on.

The bit of me with only 24 hours in the day, says I won't have time to code it at the moment.

The groups of three full stops will be an ellipsis - I would import the whole thing to word and change all the full stops to another character, likewise change the ellipses to the same character. You can probably do the same in textpad and make them all be the same character. This may make it simpler to do something clever

Hi David,
If you are not in an immediate hurry, and dont mind sending me the file i might be able to knock something up that can reformat the report into a GEDCOM file for you.

Richard

Thanks for all the replies, I've played about with the Word find/replace function, and set bookmarks at strategic places, so have managed to make it a bit easier to use. As a background task I'll now just work through it comparing and extracting info as needed.

Richard - thanks for your kind offer, but I don't want you to go to that trouble for me, as I don't really need to get the whole thing into GED format.

Cheers everyone.
David