* Reports - Guidance please

[E Wilcock]

I am a new user and was delighted with the fh Individual narrative report which enabled me to send someone full details of a particular individual in which they were interested.

But when I try to send roughly the same information in detail (not narrative form but for someone to check event by event against an academic database), I am in trouble. The segregation of individual and family facts in fh is driving me mad.

In TMG and other programs I have used there was a report called (mystifyingly) a Journal Report. One could click on a person, usually near the top of the tree and get his parents and spouses plus all their descendants. With events listed one by one and all the sources.

Does fh have a report like this?

I want to send a full, detail report on John Brown. Differentiating him from another John Brown born in the same year and with the same occupation, with whom he gets conflated.

The new information I have and wish to send includes the names of his two parents. Two wives. His children with his second wife.

I not only have problems with finding a fh report to do this, but with the ordering of the wives both in the report and on screen as well. fh will not place the first wife above the second wife -and in the report I would like the two wives to come out in chronological order.

My experience with fh is that most things can be done, it is just that I dont know how to do them. And yes, I have searched the knowledge base and been through the fh list of reports.

[tatewise]

Evelyn, you are no longer a 'new user'.

To get Spouses, Children, or anything else into chronological order use Tools > Re-order Out-of-Sequence Data.

I suspect the Publish > Outline Reports > Ancestor/Descendant Outline reports are close to a TMG Journal Report.
They may need a little customising to mimic them more closely.

In Report > Options > Main tab there are several settings to change :-
Increase Generations as necessary.
Tick Spouses' Events/Attrs to include those.
Set Numbering to None probably.
Set Layout Events and Attributes to on separate lines probably.
Set Individual Events/Attributes and Marriage Events/Attributes both to All or whatever facts you want.

In Report > Options > Sources tab ensure Show Source Citations is ticked and review the other settings.

Review the settings in all the other tabs until it closely mimics a TMG Journal Report.

Then MOST IMPORTANTLY use Save Report As > Custom Report Type > Custom Report Name: Journal Report so you can use those settings again via Publish > Custom Reports > Journal Report.
Finally, reset the standard Ancestor/Descendant Outline report to Installation Settings on each tab.

[E Wilcock]

I am still an new user when it comes to reports!

"To get Spouses, Children, or anything else into chronological order use Tools > Re-order Out-of-Sequence Data."

I highlighted the man with two wives (focus) and asked it to order data and it said it was all fine. I then tinkers with the suggested b md dates (I dont have marriaqe dates nor dates for the first wife.

Nothing I invented helped. The first wife was entered later as she only showed up recently on his first world war records. I am tied up with other things now so will follow your report suggestions later. Many thanks.

[Valkrider]

Evelyn

As to the first wife you may not know exact dates for her but you can use before dates. So, for example, if you know he married as the result of his first wife's death / divorce then enter her date of death / divorce as bef. the date of the second marriage. That will help to place it in chronological order and show in the correct order in your report.

[tatewise]

Colin's advice is a good solution, but if there are insufficient Dates for Re-order Out-of-Sequence Data to use then the manual method must be used.

In the Property Box for the husband, look at the Spouse tabs halfway down.
I suspect they are in the wrong chronological order left to right.
So click on the black arrow(s) to the right of those tabs to alter the order of those Spouses.

If you have the Focus Window displayed then it will change too.

[E Wilcock]

Thank you Mike. Yes - that is what I needed to do. My entering a before death date had had no effect. And I hadnt realised it was a possibility to change the order manually.

About having to design and customise a Journal report. I remain puzzled as I thought this type of descendants report listing (non narrative) generation by generation everything known for each person was a standard used by professional genealogists presenting their work and a feature of all family history software.

No, corrected to say, I am wrong. The descendants reports appear to be narrative - which means I shall have to pay attention to my sentences. It may also explain why the foreign language website I am checking for errors, now uses narrative paragraphs. Prose paragraphs may be attractive for private clients who commission a family tree but it is harder for people to read a narrative in a foreign language than it is to glance down a list of GEDCOM events in the same foreign language.

[ColeValleyGirl]

You should look at the Individual Summary Report, which sounds closer to what you want -- it's not a narrative.

[E Wilcock]

Cole Valley girl - thank you - I did , but limited.

Mike, my computer screen still hides the editing panel by reports so this was my first try at editing one.

I went step by step through your instructions and saved a custom report "Journal Descendants Detail" (with numbering!) and it is absolutely what I wanted.

I have learned a number of foreign languages but don't have a gift for them. And my overseas recipient will be grateful to you for this custom report with minimal English and and each event starting on a new line. It is beautiful.

And I could not have done it without you. Thank you yet again.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Out of interest, what do you find missing from the Individual Summary Report? I use it (with the options suitably set) to display everyting about individuals in my file.

[Valkrider]

My entering a before death date had had no effect.

Evelyn

I suspect you may have not entered the date as I expected as this always works for me.

If manually reordering works for you that is fine though.

[tatewise]

A few points.

@Colin, I suspect the Marriage Date of 1st Spouse needs to be entered using Before ... in order to get the Spouse tabs sorted.

@Helen, the OP said in 1st posting, does not like the Individual and Marriage facts listed separately, and would prefer time-line merging as in the Facts tab. Other users have requested that style too.

@Helen, the Publish > Outline Reports are NOT narrative, but are in time-line style as requested, and only one root Individual need be selected to get full tree. If the on separate lines option is chosen they are somewhat similar to ISR.

@E Wilcock, do you mean the panel shown below to the right of every Report window is hidden?
Have you tried dragging the Report window to the left?
Have you tried opening the main FH window to Maximise full screen size.
BTW: You can use command Report > Report Options to get at the Report Option settings.

Report Control Panel

ReportOptionsPanel.png (8.66 KiB) Viewed 9874 times

[E Wilcock]

Thank you to everyone - As Mike says, I am not exactly new to fh as have done massive data entry since moving from TMG.
But I am not experienced yet with many aspects of fh - for instance the difference between Reports (especially given the opportunity to customise which is impressive)

The absense of the panel Mike is just my forgetting it is there, no fault of fh. It happens because I have a nice wide screen and when working from the web may have records open to the left and fh pushed over to the right. Dont worry - I never got reports properly mastered in any previous program. fh is much easier.

[jimlad68]

Firstly, the simplest and best way I have found to display all the detail of an individual in simple text format is to upload your tree (or part of) to Rootsweb: e.g.
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin ... es-orrell3
Although I am not sure if you can privately view living people here.

I too wanted a similar report with everything about an individual, and I found both TMG and FH Individual and family group reports lacking in detail and flexibility. However with the power of sentences in narrative reports I found in both TMG and FH I could produce very comprehensive detail of an individual in a list/fact by fact format, often including details of the spouses family.

It requires rewriting most of the sentences and adding lots of CF/LF (i.e. new lines), but I am very happy with the result. Extra manipulation in a word processor (e.g. Macros) can also make it easier to read, but not required. In order to help with the word macros I added certain text sequences to the sentences to make global changes easier.

This works for both Individial narrative and descendants by generation reports. If you wish to retain the old narrative sentences I think you would need to copy them away and copy back when required, not a problem for me as I find normal narrative reports very repetitive and boring and make seeing the actual data more difficult, but I know many love them.

Some sentence examples I use:

- Note1 some of the extra characters are to help manipulation in a word processor. Also the Word processor can break pages at convenient points, add colour, bold etc, the usual stuff.
- Note2 as with other data systems, you have to design your data structure to best fit your required results.

Birth
[][]____ {individual} ____[][] ::Parents= {%CUR_PRIN.~FATH[1]>NAME[1]%}({=LifeDates2(%CUR_PRIN.~FATH[1]>%,STD)}), {%CUR_PRIN.~MOTH[1]>NAME[1]%}({=LifeDates2(%CUR_PRIN.~MOTH[1]>%,STD)})<br> [] BIRTH: <{date:COMPACT}><: {_place}> < <br> {note}> <<br> [] ASSOCIATION: {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[1]%}> <~~ {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[1].RELA%}> <<br> [] ASSOCIATION: {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[2]%}> <~~ {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[2].RELA%}> <<br> [] ASSOCIATION: {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[3]%}> <~~ {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[3].RELA%}> <<br> [] ASSOCIATION: {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[4]%}> <~~ {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[4].RELA%}> <<br> [] ASSOCIATION: {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[5]%}> <~~ {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[5].RELA%}> <<br> [] ASSOCIATION: {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[6]%}> <~~ {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[6].RELA%}> <<br> [] ASSOCIATION: {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[7]%}> <~~ {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[7].RELA%}> <<br> [] ASSOCIATION: {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[8]%}> <~~ {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[8].RELA%}> <<br> [] ASSOCIATION: {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[9]%}> <~~ {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[9].RELA%}> <<br> [] ASSOCIATION: {%CUR_PRIN.ASSO[10]%}>

Death
<br>[] DEATH: <{date:COMPACT}><(age {%FACT.AGE%})><: {_place}> <<br> {note}>

Marriage
<br>[][]__ MARRIAGE__: {%CUR_PRIN.NAME[1]:GIVEN%}<({%FACT.HUSB.AGE%})>+ ___{spouse/her/him}___ <({%FACT.WIFE.AGE%})> <{date:COMPACT}> <:{_place}.> <Best man = {role(single)=Best man}. ><{role(single)=bridesmaid} was a bridesmaid. ><{role(plural)=bridesmaid} were bridesmaids. ><The marriage was witnessed by {role=witness}. ><The ceremony was conducted by {role=minister}. ><The ceremony was conducted by {role=priest}. ><The ceremony was conducted by {role=rabbi}. > <<br> {note}>

Residence
<br>[] RESIDENCE: {date:Compact}, {_place} <with {other=resident}> <<br> {note}>

Attached are 2 sets of example results (2nd pair in next post), rtf direct from FH then after Word Processor macro updates.

[jimlad68]

2nd pair of attachments

[tatewise]

The best way to preserve both the standard and customised Sentence Templates is to clone a Fact Set.

So in Tools > Fact Types > Fact Sets, select the Fact Set such as Standard that you wish to customise.
Click Clone and give it Name such as Standard List.
Then use the Move Up/Down buttons to position Standard List above Standard to eclipse the Standard Fact Set.

You can now customise the Sentence Templates in the Standard List Fact Set and they will be applied to Narrative Reports.

Later you can use those Move Up/Down buttons to position Standard above Standard List and then the default Sentence Templates in the Standard Fact Set will apply.

[E Wilcock]

I dont need to do that, but this thread shows that fh can do what could be done in TMG by creating a new "language". One could create a set of sentences designed for a particular purpose. I dont need it but it is interesting as I havent seen that mentioned before when people make comparisons.
Yet again thank you Mike.