Windows. AIO-64.5.2.3
I’m new. I’m confused. And I am hoping for help. I have a tree created which goes back about 10 generations. I can see the chart and most of the time can remember how to bring up the chart on the screen - though sometimes it is missing people depending on how I select to view it. Likely a matter of getting more experience with Gramps. My challenges at this point are:
Sharing the tree view with family members who have very little understanding of computers (this happens when you turn 80 haha). I can send them a .pdf and they understand that. What I can’t figure out is how to show the date two people were married. Yes I know this is supposed to be checked by default but it simply doesn’t seem to work. Another thing that is missing is additional data. I have some ancestors with occupations that are important and many with birth names before married names. None of these show in any of the views that I have been able to figure out so far. Any help is very much appreciated so thanks in advance.
A Quick question. Exactly which “chart” are you using? It can get confusing. If it is a report, clicking of the report option’s help button will take you wiki’s help page. This will tell you the proper name of the report/chart but more importantly, you can copy the url here so everyone knows which report.
The issue of names is easier to deal with. Charts and other reports work off of the person’s name in the Preferred name slot. For married women, it is usually best to leave their Birth Name as the public name seen in reports. Married Names are usually added as an Alternative name.How much of the name to display is set in Preferences. But Charts space is often limited so instead of using Given to display the first and any middle names, Common will use any Nickname entry if it exist, the Call name as the second option and finally just the first of the Given names as the last reort. Many report allow the user to override the default option. If not, setting to an alternative name display while running a report is always and option.
Welcome!
Appended is a Pedigree view from the Charts category. (It has used the View-Configure.. to choose the “Compact” treestyle.
You’ll notice that some of the relationships have a marriage dates. These “Family” containers have a dated Marriage event saved in the Family events. (Not “Person” events for the bride or groom.) Note that the Relationship type in the Family container is recommended but does not effect the date display.
For additional data, is can be extensive and highly variable. The alternative names is almost unlimited. A report is better for that kind of wide-ranging content. The Complete Individual Report takes 7 pages to list all the content about the home person in our example.gramps tree. Here’s page 1 :
Yes, married entered under family works. Thank you.
As long as your non-techy people can save a file attached to an email and click on a link in an email to open their web browser then consider this idea.
First install the ‘Interactive Family Tree’ addon in Gramps:
Then try it out for yourself.
If you like what it does then:
- Export your tree from Gramps in GEDCOM format
- Attach the ‘.ged’ file created by the export to an email to your family members
- In the email message, tell your recipients to:
a) save the .ged file to a folder
b) click on this link Topola Genealogy Viewer
c) on the page that opens, use the ‘Open file’ option in the blue bar at the top to open the file they’ve just saved
d) have fun clicking on different people in the tree
I’ve successfully share my tree this way with a 74 year old.
I REALLY like it. Thank you ever so much. I haven’t shared it with my non-tech viewers yet but me-I like it a lot.
Be sure to investigate all the ‘View’ options in the Topola Viewer. The ‘All relatives’ view can be harder to follow but it does what it says and show you all relatives 
If birth name is the name entered as the public name then for one there is perhaps a great deal more work to do when entering and many more surnames in the tree. It makes sense alright but I did not know that this is how genealogy works. No surprise here - I’m self taught just like most. So then the married name will be entered in the Alternate names section. And is there a way to display Alternate names in the Topola report?
The help I’m getting here is unexpected and outstanding. Thank you all so much.
Kim.
If a person has a married name entered as an Alternate Name in Gramps then it will be shown in the info panel for that person in the Toploa Viewer.
Alternative names are a complex subject… with many ways of handling.
The “Complete Individual Report” could use some expansion of its Alternative Names section. It does not have the Date or Origin detail. And the Grouping information could be interesting but is difficult to summarize.
@kku recently shared an experimental addon to parenthetically append alternative Surname to the Preferred display name. (To make Married surname more visible onscreen in a simple fashion.)
I have never used the Interactive Family Tree / Topola. Graph reports do not tend to utilize alternative names.
My go to report for cousins is to send them a Narrative Web website on a thumb drive. They can run the site off of the thumb drive or copy it to their hard drive. I add a footer to each page: “This Family Genealogy Must NOT be Published to the Internet. The Information is for Family Use Only!” They can create a shortcut on the desktop so it is just like navigating the web, just that all the information is on their computer.
The beauty of the NarrWeb is that it can display everything including alternative names.
Indeed but I suspect at @KimMik’s current stage of learning all that needs to be understood is that Gramps defaults to using ‘birth name’ as the ‘preferred name’ and that ‘married name’ should be entered as an ‘alternate name’. ‘Adopted name’ is probably the other most common ‘alternate name’ that is important to enter.
It is also critical to understand that it is possible to set date ranges for each Alternative name (such as: the adolescent years for a childhood name; the dates of relationship for a married name) and the Preferred Name.
And that once you set a date for one of those, unexpected things will happen if you don’t also set a date range for the Preferred Name
Did I mention that gramps is incredibly complicated? haha
It is admittedly absolutely wonderful. Thank you to all contributors.
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