TMGKev

Thanks to all for the replies. It's a fair point that VCF does not need more than the allowed accents in any single chart. However, I was keen to create a "one chart covers all" template, so that I don't have to select different templates depending on which family branch I'm working on, or so I don't have to colour manually. Since there's no work around to achieve my ideal, the best option seems to be to create several chart definitions with different accents, as suggested. Thanks again for your help. Kevin

I've followed some of the helpful suggestions in Terry Reigel's TMG Tips site and have just created TMG screen accents to show relationships to my direct line in different colours. I have split my tree into the 4 main branches (my parents and my wife's parents). For each branch I've created 4 accents, being direct line, siblings of the direct line, other blood relatives, and non-blood relatives. For each branch I've used a different primary colour, with different shades to show the 4 relationships. This gives a total of 16 different accent conditions (there are only 13 colours to represent these, as I've used pale grey for the non-blood relations for all 4 branches). This has worked really well (thanks Terry !). Now the problem - I did the above without considering VCF. When I go into VCF chart definition, I see there are only 10 available accent conditions. This means I cannot automatically replicate my screen accents when creating charts. I'm therefore wondering whether I've wasted my time! Please can someone advise if it's possible to increase the available accent conditions in VCF, or an alternative way of replicating my hard work in TMG when I create charts? Thanks Kevin

Thanks Virginia. Switching the "focus" of the flags is a very neat solution to the problem of limited characters. I don't see any reason why this wouldn't work, and would give good visibility of which chart(s) a person was assigned to. The problem I now have is deciding which solution to progress - yours or Jim's (above)! They both sound like good methods of doing what I want. Thanks for your help. Kevin

Thanks Jim. Sounds like this would do exactly what I want to achieve (and allows me to use focus groups, which I've only just "discovered", and strike me as a really neat tool). As you say, I saw the advantage of using Focus groups in that these can be easily modified and saved. I'll certainly give this a try. Thanks Kevin

I would not want to assume that, Kevin. You may want to set up your own custom flag in this case. Virginia Yes I will do. This is a straight forward work around that I'm sure will do the trick. Kevin

I currently use manually generated MS Excel descendant charts for different branches of my family tree. I update and re-print a chart whenever I add details to TMG about the individuals contained in this branch of my tree. I therefore have many charts (several dozen or so), one for each section/branch of my tree. Since I manually create these, it is easy to add/delete individuals as I want, but there is the possibility of transcription errors between TMG and Excel, plus it's doubling-up the data entry process. I would therefore now like to reproduce this sytem using VCF. I therefore need to be able to manage which individuals I include in a descendant chart. For example - I would like to create a chart showing 3 generations - parents, children and grandchildren, but would like to exclude certain individuals eg. the spouse of one of the children, and the children of this spouse (these would be included on a different chart). A standard descendant report would not do this, as it would print all the grandchildren. I know I could produce this chart and then go in and delete the individuals I don't want, but this would be a real drag to have to do this every time I want to print an updated version of each chart. Flags are an option I have tried. ie. use a flag to capture which chart an individual should be included on, but I would be limited to ~ 26 conditions/charts (A-Z) which may not be enough. Furthermore, some individuals may be included on more than one chart, and I don't think use of a single flag could make this work. Focus groups are a more useful way of selecting a defined set of individuals, but I don't know how, or if, it's possible to create a chart based on individuals in a focus group. This is my preferred solution if this is possible. Has anyone done something similar and can offer any advice or suggestions? Many thanks Kevin

Thanks Virginia. I suspected it may have been a bug, but didn't want to be too presumptious only to be "hacked down" for something I was doing wrong! I assume this bug will be rectified in TMG8, as and when this eventually is released? I'll have a look at the work-around. Thanks for moving my post to the correct forum. Kevin

I am experiencing inconsistencies in chart box colours when I set Accents to "on" in VCF. As an example - if I set the "Sex" accent, the box colours are displayed as I have set them. However, when I set the "Ancestor Interest" accent, the boxes remain transparent, and do not show the colour I set. I have Ancestor Interest listed in the Flags window and have set the flags, so I can't understand why the colours I set are not being displayed in VCF. As an additional problem, the selected colours do not appear to be displaying correctly if 2 flag conditions match the criteria. Please could someone provide a clue as to what I may be doing wrong? Thanks Kevin

Thanks Terry, I was clearly confusing sources and tags in my question (it was very late last night when I was working on my project, which clearly didn't help!). To hopefully clarify the method I used to add the UK source types to my v5 project - I created a new blank project and selected and exported a set of source types that I wanted in my main project. I then opened my main project and imported the source set I had exported from the blank project. These now appear in the source type list in my main project. I did not import a blank project so, if I understand things correctly, I still only have one data set, not two. I will double check this to be certain. If you think I've resolved my need to add UK sources incorrectly, please don't hesitate to correct me. I will also read up on your articles to improve my understanding further. Many thanks. Kevin

Thanks Jim. I do understand the difference between sources and tags, but you are correct in that I was clearly confusing the two when I wrote my question. My only defence is that it was late at night here in the UK which may be the reason! I'll certainly do more reading up though to improve my understanding.

I'm confused and am hoping someone can help me understand source types in relation to the Tag's displayed and available on the "create new Tag" dialog list. I imported my old project (created with the non-UK v5 and using Mills/Lackey source types) into my new v7 UK edition. All was well. On opening the master tag list and source types list, I could not see the UK source types. I therefore imported a set of UK source types from a new "blank" project created using custom source types. This went well and I can now see the new UK source types in the Source Type list. However, when I try and create a new tag, I cannot see the new imported source types in the tag list. I've tried reading through the help file for source types etc, but admit to being rather confused by how they work. Is it possible for me to access the UK source types that I can see in the source type list? Many thanks for any help. Kevin

Thanks Virginia. Your suggestion is a neat work around, which I hadn't considered. However, sadly, the size of my project would make this a very onerous task to change the memo's for all my tag's, but I thank you for your suggestion. Based on a similar idea from another forum, I've played with modifying the source title/abbrev title and also the Output forms of footnotes. This has given me a few more possible options, but has raised another question - Is there a Source Element for the Abbreviated Title of a source? I could then include this in the Output form, instead of the full [TITLE]. I can't find one in the list of source elements, but is it possible to create one? I've tried adding a custom source element, but I can't see the point of this since any new element has to based on an existing (similar) source element and doesn't seem to allow you to modify the actual data it references (so I'm uncertain as to the point of these). Thanks Kevin

Thanks Terry. Unfortunately I use a 64-bit Win7 machine and cannot export to a WP as yet. I believe this is going to be fixed in the next release (hopefully a free upgrade to v 7.04 since I have only just bought this!), so using embedded unique footnotes may provide a work around. Kevin

I would like to be able to embed references to sources in Individual Detail reports. I already embed the source title in my reports, but, in my opinion, this makes the reports look cluttered, with often much repetition of long source titles (even when abbreviated). I am aware that I can embed end-notes (as unique reference numbers for each source), but this then requires me to print a separate end-note report for every individual, which wastes paper and folder space. What I want to be able to do is embed the actual source number (as listed in the Master Source List), so that I can simply look up the reference in a single Master Source List report print-out. Is this possible? Many thanks for any help.