Genealogy Chat

I posted this in the other room but now think it might be better in here.

Now I may not make myself completely clear here but bear with me.

I want to be able to create a file on my pc so that I can look up all the individuals with a certain OCCUPATION, or all the ones who lived in a certain PLACE or all the ones with a certain NAME etc etc.

I use Family Tree Maker but it does not do the things I would like it to do. I would also like to be able to print off lists with these things on e.g. all the women who lived in Yorkshire who worked in a mill, all the men from Wales who were miners

I know nothing of creating spreadsheets but I was wondering if any of you have done something like this and would share your knowledge with me. This would be so useful.

Pandora

Hi Christine,

Have found the Works Spreadsheet.

Ok so I'm dumb but I just switch off where Spreadhsheets are concerned.

How do I insert a title or make a column wider etc?

Wo, I have found column width so that is ONE thing you can cross off the list - now I need to do titles.

I take it that you put your titles in Row 1??

It's getting a bit too wide now. I must be going wider than landscape. What do I do now?

I want the following Name, YOB, DOB, Place of Birth, House No, Street, Town, Occupation, Schools, YOD, Date of Death, Place of Death

I am going to contact you both as you have both mentioned things that I have omitted. Yes, I want to be able to come back to them and alter things in the future.

I have no idea how to add colour either but that would be good for sorting into family groups.

I shall send you my email address if you don't mind.

I particularly want to have a Cause of Death column not that I will always be able to find this out of course but I need to see if I can trace something in both sides of my family.

I use Database formy tree information the longest part is setting it up but once youhave done so it is so easy to pull of reports of the information you want ie I could pull off a report of people who were born between a certain date who had the occupation of a watcmaker.

Did you know there is a family tree program that you can do this with? Family Historian allows you to ask it questions and it produces lists just as you are wanting. There is a set of standard queries and you can also make your own queries.

Anne

These have all been wonderful replies and I have now set up a spreadsheet and started filling it in.

One thing I noticed though. One chappie of mine was spread over four lines for different censuses. When I asked the spreadsheet to put the NAMES in alphabetical order, not all his rows went with him because the first boxin each row was empty. How can I group rows together I wonder!

hello everyone i have just read all your posts and the ideas for spreadsheets are fabulous. i am not very technical minded but if you could all email me a sample so i could work out wich is best for me that would be great. sorry if that sounds cheeky. but someone on here could be onto a good thing i suspect there is a great need for this out there
thanks linda
[email protected]

Pandora, if you want to sort rows you have to make sure information is in every cell. So if you have Fred Bloggs born 1861, you need to made sure his name and date are in every cell that refers to him

I don't envy you your task, I am great with spreadsheets, but I have given up on using them for family trees, cos you really need a database, and I can't fathom those out.

Margaret

Well, I'd really like everyone to email me their spreadsheets, cos I've been desperate to do this for ages. I can work with spreadsheets very well (being an accountant), but am useless at designing them. I am advised not to post my private email address on here, so how can I get everyone to let me look at their spreadsheets? Pity we haven't got a tab on the site for "tools" or similar.

Regards all

Margaret W

Only just logged in again so thanks for all the contributions. I have been playing around a little bit and I think I have managed to set up a reasonable list now.

You were right though about putting the name in every cell as I found to my cost when I first tried to sort.

I called them Fred Bloggs 1,2 and 3 so that they would be in chronological order of where they worked.

Nudging for later.
Thanks
Shiela

Christine

Your spreadsheet sounds very useful, and I do understand them as I too use them at work. I have been doing this for about a year now and have about 370 relatives, but lots of my info & research is on bits of paper.

Would it be cheeky of me to ask if you could pm me the basic outline obviously without your tree info.

St least it would be somewher for me to start.

Regards

Sue

Nudge

so I can find later

Frances

Two things. When making a favourite do you mean Bookmarks or Favourites in the toolbar or is there a Genes way or keeping favourites?

What is "nudge" for later?