Family Reports

Post by **Pandabean** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 12:34 pm

Just wondering what you people do when making up reports for other members of your family?

I was thinking of typing up a short biography of some people with photos and giving the report to them to read. But then that takes time so is it worth using a computer generated report from a family history software package?

LesleyB · Post by **LesleyB** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 12:47 pm

Hi Pandabean
I think if you have been entering lots of info into some family tree software as you've been going along, its daft to have to retype all that so that can serve as a good starting point - just copy & paste what you already have and edit as necessary!

The reports generated by the software I use, Legacy, are OK, but can come out with some pretty odd turns of phrase sometimes - it is good to have a bit more control over the output I think and as you have suggested, you can always add more images and personalise the thing more, which I think makes for a much better & more interesting report in the end.

Best wishes
Lesley

Post by **Pandabean** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 12:51 pm

Thanks Lesley.

I didnt think to add data to the final document and add photos. When I have produced reprots they are more structured ie Name: Date of Birth: and I dont think Family Historian can produce a narrative. I also noticed it takes out the photos of people when I save as a word document.

My brain isnt working much today

LesleyB · Post by **LesleyB** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 1:04 pm

Hi Pandabean
I see there is a Family Historian user group here, which might be of help at some point:
http://www.fhug.org.uk/

Also here; http://www.family-historian.co.uk/tour/index.htm
it mentions:

Family Historian's reports are highly configurable. You have fine-grained control over not only the content of each report, but also the style and layout. And you can make your changes 'on the fly' while viewing the report in the Report Window. This style of working makes it much easier to see what you are doing and get the results you want.

All reports (except reports based on queries which are handled separately) can be saved in HTML format, Rich Text Format (RTF) or text format.

With a selection of sample reports to view too, so that might give you come ideas of what the program can produce.

Best wishes
Lesley

StewL · Post by **StewL** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:30 am

Like Lesley I use Legacy too. It has a good range of reports you can print out, but I dont bother about any pictures (still havent loaded any

) But I confess I am a bit lazy and generally leave it up to the programme to print out the information. I have learned how to add or delete sections of information that I dont really need to send. I have used the programme to send hard copies to my cousins with their lines as start people.