Children of Second Spouses

[John K 0]

Almost exactly a year ago I asked if I could design a Journal Report (for ancestors) that would show the children of second spouses, and Terry responded that there were no settings in TMG that would produce this result.

 

I am therefore trying to create tags that will include information about these step-siblings. (I generate a report for a child of one of the step-siblings, and then cut and paste into the memo box the language "The six children of [father] and [step-mother] were as follows ...." )

 

I am having several problems. First, the only way I can think of to include citations is to individually embed them, which is very time consuming.

 

Even more troubling (since I assume missing something) is that I cannot get the format that is printed to match the format of the lists of children that are automatically generated by TMG (which is: [tab] [tab] [tab] [roman numeral] [hard left indent] ... followed by the name and information).

 

Whether I rely on the formatting of the list I cut and paste, or insert my own [:TAB:]s in the memo box, the result that is output to my word processing program is a series of periods, and does not come close to matching the format of TMG's list of children.

 

Any ideas?

[wunner 0]

Hi John. I was waiting to see if anyone else answered your question because I too have struggled with the issue of step-children in Journal reports (my preferred report format). But since no one else has replied, let me tell you what I do.

 

Rather than trying to make TMG do what it isn't designed to do (by creating those special tags you mentioned), I simply do a cut & paste of two separate reports after I export them into Word. The first report is my primary multi-generational ancestor Journal, which of course doesn't include any non-related second spouses, nor any step-siblings. Then, since I (and I assume you) already have all of the data about the second spouse and his/her children entered in TMG, I just run a one-generation ancestor Journal report from one of the step-siblings. Then, in Word, I do a cut & paste of the information about the second spouse and step-siblings, merging that data into my "real" ancestor Journal report. If you have other ancestors with step-children, just run additional one-generation reports and paste away.

 

You will have to do some minor editing of the pasted data insofar as numbering is concerned, but at least the basic format of the pasted data (the indents and tabs) is consistent with what I think you're trying to accomplish. As for citations...well that could get a bit messy because of automatic source-numbering. Maybe someone else might have an idea for handling that.

 

John

[John K 0]

Thank you John,

 

Your approach is exactly what I did the last time I put together a large Journal Report in the ancestor direction. The problem (as I know you understand) is that when I came back to the project a few months later and wanted to generate a new report with the various updates I had made to my data base, this required a significant expenditure of time redoing all of the cutting and pasting, even for portions of the family as to which nothing had changed.

 

There are clearly also problems with my special tag. If I make a change to the database relating to the the children of second spouses, I must remember to also make changes to the appropriate special tag - and this can be quite time consuming when there are many citations. Also, as I mentioned in my original posting, since TMG apparently cannot put tab or intent codes into the memo box, I have had to come up with a fix for this that involves inserting into the memo box an unusual set of characters (I use @I#) for a tab, and then using the global replace function in the word processing program to turn this unto a tab.

 

My system does ultimately work for citations, but I need to spend the time to insert appropriate embedded citations into my custom step-children tab.

 

My fear is that you are correct and your system will ultimately require less time and effort than mine - but the ultimate calculation will depend on how many times I want to update the report, and I will not know the answer to this for many years.

 

I do, however, find it depressing that all this effort must be expended (under either your approach or mine) to accomplish what I assume would be a relatively easy, one-time upgrade for TMG. (However, since I know nothing about programming, I am probably underestimating the issues involved.)

 

Thank you for your thoughts.