Family Book Creator – Manual Edits

As previously mentioned in a couple of my prior posts, I have been working on a family book for my sister-in-law’s family. I want to cover some of the manual edits that I did for this book. These modifications were done using a Windows PC and Word. 

Family book creator is a very powerful program; however, the author of this program can’t anticipate every user’s desires when it comes to publishing a book. The book has the ability to print enhanced Pedigree Charts which displays the graphic representation of their direct-line ancestors and the children of the couple. This option is basically an all or nothing type of feature. Either you have it for every married couple, or you don’t have any at all. Since, I want something different; then, I must do some manual edits to remove the ones I don’t want.  

I can also include Portraits for people. Again, it’s sort of an all or nothing type of situation. If I attached a photo to the person, it will print. I could have unattached the portraits for individuals in FTM that I don't want to print in the book, however, I found doing it in the book was easier for me. I am printing a descendant book to include 6 generations of the family, this is the entire family. Before any of my edits, it was 593 pages long, my finished product is 441 pages long. This may not seem like a lot, however not printing 152 pages, can make a big difference in the price of a book. Keep in mind that when generating a book with two sided printing, the book will start every generation on it's own page, and it's an odd number page, so that the new generation will appear on the top side of the page. Thus you may end up with some blank even pages before a new generation is started. This is okay.

My goal: To have the enhanced Pedigree chart for the family of the starting person and Generation 1 (their children) only. To have portraits for the starting person, generations 1 and generation 2 only. I don't need the rest, because I don't have a picture for every individual and I don't want to offend anyone by including or excluding their picture. Your goal may be different than mine.

Therefore, starting at the end of the book, with the last person in the book, I will remove the enhanced pedigree charts I don’t want, along with an extra line. 

I click anywhere on the last person’s pedigree chart. In the left upper corner of the chart an enhanced plus should appear. Right click on the enhanced plus to bring up a drop-down menu. Then select “Delete Table”. This will place your cursor on the line above the person’s reference number, press the [delete] key on your keyboard to delete this line. This is an extra line, that really isn’t needed, there is still spacing between the two family sections.

I continue in this manner moving up the report, deleting the enhanced pedigree charts. You may notice that you don’t always have to click to bring up the enhance plus. This is because you haven't click out of the active screen. Just continue deleting the table and then delete the blank line. You may also notice that you can't always see the reference number of the person you are working on, don’t worry, just press the delete key once to delete the blank line and then move onto the next pedigree chart. 

If you goof up, don’t forget to select the undo button in word to undo your last action. You will find it above the main menu, it's the backwards circle arrow shown next tot he floppy disk.

As I continued to work my way up the book, I came across some portraits I wanted to delete. If you click near the portrait, an enhanced plus should appear. Right click on the enhanced plus bring up the drop-down menu and select “Delete Table” to remove the portrait and the name below the portrait.

However, you will notice that the photo is gone, however the words didn’t move over and fill in the space. This is because there is another table creating this paragraph that needs to be adjusted. Thus, click in the paragraph next to the blank space and you will see an enhanced plus located slightly above and to the left of the reference number of this person. Left click on it to highlight the entire paragraph, where you can easily see the empty space. Next, gently hover your mouse over the spot where the left white space touches the gray space, you will see a double arrow, then click, hold, and drag the gray space to all the way to the right. The words should move with the gray space. If you make an error, you can always undo and then try again. 

I had to use a slightly different method if multiple children had pictures associated with them. I could delete each individual picture using my method. However, the table for the words, was a bigger table and included multiple children. Thus, I had to delete all their individual pictures first and then I was able to modify the table containing the words, by sliding the gray space to the right. This fixed all the children's verbiage at the same time.

One final challenge. If the last child or children of the previous family had individual photos, the table might include both their individual verbiage and the enhanced pedigree chart of the next family unit. Thus, you are unable delete the table for the enhanced pedigree chart by itself without deleting everything, because it’s part of the verbiage table. You will need to delete the rows of this enhanced pedigree chart. Then you can delete the individual photos and finally move the gray box to the right to expand the words. 

Thus, you will need to highlight the rows that make up the enhanced pedigree chart.  Left Click on the space right above the reference number. Click your mouse and hold, drag, and highlight moving your mouse up the page, slowly. If you highlight the words for the person above the chart, you went to far, bring it down until only the chart is highlighted. Release the mouse button.  Then right click, select “Delete Rows”, then select “delete entire rows”. Then press Delete if there appears to be an extra blank line remaining. 

This might seem like a big undertaking; however, you are basically repeating your steps over and over again. Thus, take your time.  You can always save your work as you finish deleting a table and before moving to a new table. You may want to make a copy of your file before you start. If you goof up too big, you can always go back to the beginning. Also, the undo button is your friend, just press it until you get back to a point where you can start over. Save your work, especially if you are going to take a break. Even if it only a short bathroom break, save your work!

One final step needs to be done when you have completely, removed all the enhanced pedigree charts and portraits you don’t want, you will need to have the document, reindexed and the table of contents needs to be updated. 

Press, Ctrl + A to highlight the entire document. Then you need to press F9. I was given a popup box to either select “Update Page #’s Only” or “Update Entire Table”. I chose to update the entire table. 

My biggest advice, is practice these skills. Try running a small practice book. Practice your deleting skills and then update the entire table. Verify that the page numbers are now index properly and the table of contents are correct. 

Don't be afraid to run test reports by experimenting by selecting and deselecting features. Even though I suggest making as many changes within your FTM file before creating a book, you still may need to make some modifications once the book generates. In my opinion, this is why FBC is such a wonderful tool, I can customize it to what I want.

Good luck in your book project!