Is there a way to get a chart where there are empty boxes for the ancestors who are missing?
When I create a Box Chart or a Ancestor Chart only the already found ancestors are printed in a box.
I would need empty boxes for missing persons as a check list for who I’m going to look for and where I can sketch my findings
A Fan Chart with increased Ancestor Generations ?
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Dear Ben,
yes I’ve found these - but I prefer box charts.
Thanks
Manfred
Unfortunately, the general purpose for genealogy software is to obviate the need for filling in boxes on a piece of paper. As to the concept of research, RootsMagic offers the concept of Tasks seen in the vertical left hand tabs menu. That, too, is a “programmed” approach for to-do’s.
…
A hard-copy approach, involving some work, would be to:
-start a separate fresh new database with File > Create a New RootsMagic file
-open a current working database alongside it with target individual selected
-drag ‘n’ drop target individual (with mouse) to the new scratchpad database and choose “Ancestors of …” from the options dialog.
-now you have an Ancestorage for target person and can add “dummy” persons with some scheme of your choosing. For example, 3 males and 3 females named son1, daughter1, son2, daughter2, etc. -or- just numbers or letters ~ as siblings to ancestors. Subsequent chart “printing” will have those added boxes, though you could just visualize and fill in the “dummy” placeholders right in the scratch database in the course of digging. But, as you can see, the program’s explicit purpose is 180 degrees contrary to filling out blank sheets (which can be downloaded and printed out from all over the internet). Sorry that this isn’t as easy as you’d hoped.
Dear Ben,
maybe that is your kind of doing your research. Unfortunately that’s not the way I prefer. I’m a software engineer / system administrator myself but I prefer printing out the sheets and writing my findings manually into the empty boxes. Of course I enter everything into Roots Magic and export it to FamilySearch - but I do not want to bother with tasks.
Then you understand you need to look elsewhere!
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Well, as a customer I want that the software supports my way of working.
And as a software engineer I know that adding an option like ‘print empty boxes for missing persons’ would be easy to implement.
And I doubt that I’m the only one who wishes this option.
This started out as a question. We’re all just users here. I attempted to answer. I suspect the programmers, perhaps, see very limited use and ROI (return on coding investment). It can’t hurt to post another thread with such as a feature-request. There are a subset of users here who utilize numerous genealogy software programs/features and might possibly chime in. I don’t know of a comparatively good program to suggest as an alternative.
…and as a software engineer that has never seen the code in question, you also should know that it might not be so easy, depending on how the existing code was kludged together.
Other than a few people that were distraught when they found out the RM7 was the last version to print certain blank forms, I haven’t ever seen anyone asking for empty boxes…so I would venture that there are not nearly as many as you might think. Hence as kbens0n pointed out, there is perhaps not a great ROI in the programmers opinion.