Family Book Creator - Formatting Notes in FTM

Another helpful hint when using Family Book Creator (FBC). This is a continuation of my learning the Family Book Creator software and how I input the data into my Family Tree Maker (FTM) tree.

I have started a new book project and decided I wanted to include some notes fields. FBC allows you to include or exclude notes and you can select which facts notes to include or exclude. Please note that there are four separate tabs controlling notes. The Primary person, this is the main person of a family section, the Partner who is the partner/spouse of the primary person. The child in the list of the children in the family section who have a main section (family section) later in the book and the child in the list of children who have no main section or will not have their own family section.

A little background about the project I am working on. I started by exporting a branch from my sister-in-law’s tree for her cousin. Then her cousin stated that she has been doing her tree using FamilySearch. For those of you who don’t know, FamilySearch is a collaborative tree, where once you get to the deceased members of your family, FS will look for a match in the collaborative tree and will want you to match your person up to an existing person in their collaborative tree (if it finds a match).  I informed the cousin, that I can download a branch of the tree, however none of the living people will be loaded into my tree.

Thus, when this happened, I got all kinds of notes and sources that really weren’t part of my research. . After I download that branch into a new tree with FTM, I merged that tree to the exported branch that I created for that cousin. Then I had to fix lots of stuff, such as place names, for consistency, and even merged a few people that the original merging of the two trees missed. Then I printed out an outline descendant report, starting at the first person, I am slowing working my way through the tree, verifying information, entering new information and so forth.

I started entering obituaries into the Death Notes field. Before I got to far with the tree, I decided to run a test book. I noticed that the death notes just blend into the previous sentence when I wanted this to print separately. Plus, I started to see notes from the tree that I merged from Family Search. Notes that I didn’t realize where there.

Thus, I decided to run the Notes Report within Family Tree maker. I saved the report as a PDF and brought it up on one monitor and FTM on the other monitor. Starting at the beginning of the report, I brought up each person. I noticed some person notes being printed in the book that I didn’t want; however, I already knew I had typed some person notes that I wanted in the book. The solution, privatize the notes that I didn’t want to be printed. To Privatize a note, click the lock icon.

FBC has controls for Person Notes and Research notes. Plus, Relationship notes for a spouse. Currently the defaults do not have the private notes printing, I would have to check the circle for that option. Research notes are typically private and thus they are excluded. I could have copied the person note to the research notes, because personally they seemed more like research notes, however, it was just easier to click on the lock and privatize the person notes to exclude them from the book.

Also, facts, such as name, birth, death have their own notes control and you can include, exclude, or include private notes. You will need to go into every fact and change each note preference (FBC) if you want to exclude any. However, I found it was easier to run my note report in FTM and click the private lock icon to privatize any note I want to exclude, rather than go into all the fact notes preferences in FBC and select exclude.

Anyway, back to my obituary note that I typed into FTM death note field. I decided to bold the first line or name for the obituary and then add a blank line before the bold text, so that it didn’t wrap into the previous sentence in the FBC book.  I italicized  the source and then added a blank line at the end of the obituary so that it left a blank line and allowed the proper formatting in the book.

Thus, I learned several lessons. Run a sample book, and see what it looks like. Then, stop and think about what you want in your book. Think about the easiest way to include or exclude that information in the book. Plus, proofing smaller sample sections of the book, is easier than trying to proof the entire book.

I decided by leaving the FBC defaults to print notes, then on future books, I won’t be missing any needed note, since my goal is to have FBC setup the same for all my books. I do print my sample test books without the graphical trees and without any pictures, so that I can concentrate on spelling errors, and formatting issues. Then when I am ready for my final proof of the book, I add the graphical tree and any picture option I might want. As in previous posts, I still might need to do some manual edit, but ultimately, you will want to enter the data into FTM in a way that requires the least number of manual edit after you generate your book with FBC.

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!