Book Manager

[dragon2lady 0]

I am a new user of the latest Gold Edition of TMG. I switched to TMG hoping to find a program that could help me compile a printed book complete with pictures and copies of supporting documents. I have had the program for about a month and a half and found out that I needed to take a look at Book Manager under the Reports menu.

 

I have created some of the reports (FGS, Descendant Chart, Individual Narrative, etc.) by saving them as Word files and by just viewing them on my computer. What I do not know is how to get them into a book using Book Manager. I want to be able to create the book in one file with a table of contents, index of surnames, bibliography and all of the types of reports mentioned before, as well as some that I might choose to create in narrative with pictures. Can I do this in the Book Manager? If so how? Or do I have to use Word and cut and past into a single document?

 

HELP!!!

 

Esther

[Jim Byram 0]

Book Manager is misnamed. It is really a device to run a selected series of reports. For example... Those reports might be the reports that you are going to use for a book or a series of List of... reports that you are using to change a flag in your data set.

 

If you want a series of Word documents in one document with one index, you should create the TMG reports with consistent index selections enabled. The TMG documents will contain the index codes.

 

Then you should either 1) Combine those documents into one document and create the index in Word or 2) Use the Word master document feature to combine those reports into a single document and create the index in Word.

 

(No matter what you do, to get an index in Word, you always need to create the index in Word after generating a Word document from TMG containing index codes.)

 

You should get other replies with more ideas.

[dragon2lady 0]

Book Manager is misnamed. It is really a device to run a selected series of reports. For example... Those reports might be the reports that you are going to use for a book or a series of List of... reports that you are using to change a flag in your data set.

 

If you want a series of Word documents in one document with one index, you should create the TMG reports with consistent index selections enabled. The TMG documents will contain the index codes.

 

Then you should either 1) Combine those documents into one document and create the index in Word or 2) Use the Word master document feature to combine those reports into a single document and create the index in Word.

 

(No matter what you do, to get an index in Word, you always need to create the index in Word after generating a Word document from TMG containing index codes.)

 

You should get other replies with more ideas.

[dragon2lady 0]

Jim,

Thanks for your reply. I am somewhat familiar with the Master Document feature of Word. However, I am not familiar with where to select the indes selections in a TMG report. Could you explain that briefly?

[Jim Byram 0]

Thanks for your reply. I am somewhat familiar with the Master Document feature of Word. However, I am not familiar with where to select the indes selections in a TMG report. Could you explain that briefly?

Report Definition Screen for the selected report / Options / Indexes tab

 

Click the [Help] button in that context and select the 'Indexes' link for more information.

[Pierce.Reid 0]

Jim,

Thanks for your reply. I am somewhat familiar with the Master Document feature of Word. However, I am not familiar with where to select the indes selections in a TMG report. Could you explain that briefly?

 

If you are planning a fairly extensive book for one family or a group of related families, you are likely to have a number of names that were each used by a group of individuals. Some groups may have individuals with the same name that are not related at all (e.g. Smiths).

 

To create separate index entries for each individual, you should include birth and death dates (just years usually do) by selecting the appropriate TMG report index options. As Jim suggested, you should use the same options for all TMG reports you will combine.

 

If you want to include index entries for references to individuals mentioned within memo text, you have to include an Index entry near each name. e.g. [index:]Person: Last, Given (dates)[:Index]. (See "Report Options: Indexes" in TMG Help). To have a unique index entry for each individual, you have to make sure that the "dates" you enter as part of the memo "Index" entries match exactly the format and values in your data base. And if you change an individual's birth or death years, or the individual's name, you have to find and correct the index entries you have inserted into any memo text that references the individual. Once you have started to enter index entries in memos, it can be a lot of work if you want to change the TMG options for index entries.

 

A good index is a sign of a good book. Lack of an index makes a genealogy book much less useful as a reference tool.

 

Pierce