Thursday, December 29, 2011

FTM2012 Calendar Feature

Its that time of the year, when you might want to generate a calendar for important dates to remember. Like Birthdays and Anniversary Dates.

The Calendar features is in the Publish Workspace, Other Collection.










There are choices on who to include in the Calendar, the Immediate Family, All Individuals, or Selected Individuals. For the purpose of this calendar, I want everyone who is still living. It's beyond the immediate family, because I want to include cousin's, aunt's, uncle's, or a broader group of people.

Here is the Calendar with All Individuals:















Pretty full, and I am guessing, that there are many dates that have more people in the file then show up in this Calendar. There are OTHER options, that I will show later. But, this is beyond what I am looking for. So, I need to do some Filtering (Selected Individuals)











Clicking on the bottom button (Selected Individuals), where I selected FILTER IN ==>, which will bring up a window, the  Birth DATE, That is After 1900. (you can choose any date you wish, but I chose this for a start with). This will move everyone from the Left side of the window to the Right window who was born after 1900.

Because this calendar will be used to sent Birthday and Anniversary Cards, I will Filter Out anyone who has passed away. Those are also important anniversary dates to remember, so at this point, you can Generate the Calendar.

To reduce the list to those living, the Filter OUT <== button will be used.













Filter Out, Death Dates that are NOT Blank. This reduce my 600 names down to 431.



















Now I have a calendar for each month.

There are other options available to use, on the Calendar Options menu (first ICON in the Right Panel, just to the right of the Calendar.




















The Events & Anniversaries to Include allow you to change the Color of the Event, OR if you want to include the event at all.

In the example above, not to Filter Out anyone, The "include births & marriages only if ntill living" option could be chosen.

IF you only want Birthdays, for Everyone in your file, the Filter In option would not be required.

Lesson Learned (when using the Calendar feature): Check the Calendar Options, as well as the Filter In and Filter Out feature.





Copyright © 2011 by H R Worthington

4 comments:

  1. I used this feature to make a calendar as a Christmas gift this year. One thing i found (and it's in your screenshots) is that the days are abbreviated (Mond..., Tuesd..., etc.). Don't know why, there's plenty of space. Since I was making a calendar for my family, I had to save to .pdf and use the Text tool to fill in the missing letters. Other than that, it came out nice.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dave,

    I am not sure what that is, but thanks for reminttha t. about that.

    Russ

    ReplyDelete
  3. That last screenshot, where you get 'After death of one spouse' option to exclude doesn't work for me. Also divorced relationships are also still showing on my calendar report. Any ideas?

    Tim

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tim,

      What Version of Family Tree Maker are you using? (Help, about)?

      Russ

      Delete

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