Intro
Gramps is a software package designed for collecting, analyzing and publishing genealogical research. Gramps offers some unique and powerful features without the limits of commercial software or reliance on cloud connectivity.
Who makes Gramps?
Gramps is created by genealogists for genealogists, organized in the Gramps Project. Gramps is an Open Source Software package… which means everyone may openly make copies and legitimately distribute it to anyone they choose. Since 2004, Gramps has been developed and maintained by a worldwide team of volunteers whose goal is to make a free genealogy tool that is powerful and progressively easier to use. If you don’t like the way something works, you’re welcome to change it.
Getting Started
To create a new Family Tree (also called a ‘database’), select “Manage Family Trees…” from the “Family Trees” menu, press the “New” button and name your Family Tree. Click the “Load Family Tree” button (at the lower right) to make the empty tree active and ready to accept data.
Most of the features remain pointless until there is family data to be explored. So the next step is to manually enter your first family or import family data from another genealogy program. (Example importable data is available if you just want to explore the various features of Gramps.)
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These are clearly contrasting approaches. There are multiple ways of doing most things in Gramps. The flexibility allows you to choose what fits your workstyle. For more details, please skip to the section describing the approach to data entry that you prefer.
But first, click the icon that looks like a document with wrench at the top of this section to detach these instructions from the Dashboard. With the instructions floating as a window off to the side, you can move through the interface without losing track of the next step.
Manually enter your first Family
You will now want to start entering your first Family and the first Person as a building block. You could start with an Ancestor (filling in the Family progressively towards today) or with you (filling in the Family backwards into the past)
This introduction was started in the “Dashboard” view. Switch to the “People” view by clicking on the person shaped icon in the “Navigator” panel to the left. (Have you detached this tutorial as suggested above?)
Choose “Person” from the “Add” menu (or use the [+] icon on the toolbar below the menus) to bring up the window to create a container for information about a person. Entering their given name and surname is the minimum data. (Although not required, you could add biographical information by clicking the [+] icon under the Events tab. Gramps will guess the most likely basic life “Event type” on each successive add.) Clicking the “OK” button commits the creation of this starting point. Gramps will ask the Gender but will slowly learn to guess genders based on the given name.
Select this Person’s record and then switch to the “Relationships” view. With this first person established, you can now create the immediate family around them. Click the [+] icon in the Parents to open the framework for adding parents and siblings (under the Children tab) using the [+] icon in each section. Similarly, add a spouse and offspring by clicking the “Partner” icon on the toolbar below the menu.
Click on another person in the Relationship view to make them the Active Person. Now clicking the [+] icon adds that Person’s immediate family. So, selecting the Spouse allows In-Laws and stepchildren to be added. Selecting a Parent allows Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles to be added.
For each added item, you are also able to add Sources and Citations to provide proof for your entries.
Information can be entered in various Views within Gramps. However, those records have an unknown relationship to the People in the Tree framework until being attached manually. Retroactive attachment can be done with the Share icon or by dragging the object into one of the Edit windows.
Importing a Family Tree
To import a Family Tree from another program, first generate a GEDCOM (or other data format) file from the previous program. Do an initial test with a limited tree, no more than a few thousand people. Gramps has been tested for importing trees with millions of people. But imports that large could take days to process.
GEDCOM is the most common data exchange format for Genealogy software. On the other hand, Gramps can also import disjointed vCard data that has been exported from smartphone address-books as well as a multitude of other formats. For many of those formats, the linkage of the data items is undefined and has to be redefined after import. As an example, vCards import isolated Persons that have to be linked into Families.
Once you have created a new Gramps Tree (database) file, select the “Import” option from the “Family Trees” menu to pop up the file selection dialog. Find and select the data file to be imported.
Dashboard View
You are currently reading from the “Dashboard” view, where you can add your own selection of gramplets.
You can click the configuration icon in the toolbar to add additional columns, while right-click on the Dashboard background allows to add gramplets. You can also drag the Properties button to reposition the gramplet on this page, and detach the gramplet to float above Gramps.
You can also add gramplets to any view by showing a sidebar and/or bottombar via the “View” menu. Additional gramplets are added from the pop-up menu under the gadget at the right of the titlebar.
Addons and "Gramplets"
There many Addons or “Gramplets” designed to streamline data entry or provide different ways visualizing your family tree. Many of these tools are already built into the original installation. Many more are available to download and install.
Links
• Home Page
• Start with Genealogy and Gramps
• Gramps online manual
• Ask questions on gramps-users mailing list
• Addons and “Gramplets”
• YouTube TEST
