Excluding a line in a journal report

[teschek 0]

I want to create a journal descendancy report for a particular family, but there are a few lines that I do not want to follow. I want the program to exclude the descendants of three people in family. I know there is a way to do this and I've done it before, but now I've forgotten now. I think it has something to do with the Descendant Interest flag.

[Terry Reigel 0]

There are two ways (at least) to do this. One is to temporarily make the Relationship Tags that connect the lines you want to exclude non-primary. To do that, go to the Person View of the first person in a line you want to exclude, click on the Mother or Father tag at the top (whichever of those connects him or her to the line) and press the * key, or click the [ * ] toolbar button. That makes that Relationship tag non-primary, which means that so far as reports are concerned, this person is no longer a child of that parent. You would need to do this for each line you want to disconnect, then remember to go back and make those Relationship Tags primary again after you make the report (as non-primary Relationship Tags, they will be in the main tag box, not at the top under the name).

 

This works well if there are only a few. But if you have lots of lines to exclude it can be a pain.

 

The other method is to make a temporary Data Set or Project that does not include the people you want to exclude from the report. (Actually, you only need to exclude the one person in each line that connects that line to the rest of the people in the report.)

 

You make that temporary Data Set or Project by using the Secondary Output of the List of People Report. But you need to define in that List of People who is to be included and who is not, which you can do with a Filter or with the Focus Group. I'd suggest this method:

 

1. Open the Focus Group, and delete anyone who might be in it. Add the ancestor who will be the starting person for the report.

2. Using the Add Others feature, add his or her descendants for the number of generations that will include the oldest generation that you want to exclude from the three lines.

3. Manually remove from the Focus Group each of the children of those three people. This will cut off those lines for the next step.

4. Use the Select All button to select everyone who is still there, and use the Add Others button to add Descendants for enough generations to include everyone you want in the report.

5. Select All again, and use Add Others to add Spouses.

6. Select All again, and use Add Others to add Ancestors for one generation to get the parents of the spouses.

 

Then use the List of People report, with Subjects set to Focus Group, and the Secondary Output set to Create New Project to make a temporary Project. Open that Project and run your report from it.

 

Caution - this method will not include Witnesses who are not descendants, spouses, or their parents. If you have such Witnesses whose name should appear in the report, you need to either add them to the Focus Group manually, or use a different method.

[teschek 0]

Thanks, Terry, for your lengthy reply. However, as I said, I've done this before and didn't use either of those two methods. I'm very sure that I used the Descendant Interest flag somehow, as the person whose descendants I want to ignore has a zero for that particular flag, while all the others are unmarked (with a ?). To complicate this particular situation, I need to explain a little further. The person whom I don't want to follow is a woman named Jean, and she had a brother named William whom I DO want to follow. One of Jean's daughters married the grandson of William, and that is one of the main lines I DO want to follow. I just don't want the reports to go down through Jean. I want them to follow the descent from her younger brother William. I hope I explained that clearly.

[Terry Reigel 0]

The only way you can use a flag to exclude people from a descendants or ancestor report is to use it to control who is included in a temporary Data Set or Project you make with the List of People report. If you have the Descendant Interest flag preset to identify those you want to include, or exclude, you can use it for that purpose instead of using the Focus Group as I described above.