GenealogyTools

Genealogy Software Tutorials for Mac & PC

Ben Sayer

How to Add Perspective to Reunion for Mac Timelines

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Reunion for Mac can generate timelines and enables you to easily add historical events to your charts. In Reunion for Mac, these are called perspective events.

Timeline charts are a great way to learn about your ancestors. They help you visualize people’s lives in the context of the other people whom you include. Choosing who to include in a timeline is easy. You can display a timeline for the couple displayed on a family card and their descendants, marked people, or your entire family file.

Including perspective events in your timelines enables you to see your ancestors set against a backdrop of historical events. This will help you connect with them and perhaps provide clues to their motivations and fate. For example, observing that a person died during the time of the 1918 flu pandemic could be a helpful clue if you haven’t determined their cause of death.

You can add individual events to your timelines or apply them in sets. You can download a set of perspective events from the Reunion website or create your own set of perspective events for reuse or sharing.1

In this video I’ll walk you through installing a free set of perspective events and applying one to a timeline chart.

Before starting the video please download the file, EventSet.zip, from the Leister Pro website so you can follow along.

  1. Covered in the video, Creating a Perspective Event Set for Reunion for Mac

What Every MacGenealogist Ought to Know About New FamilySearch

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What Is New FamilySearch?

The LDS Church has developed a web application to enable people to contribute to and work with interconnected databases of genealogical information. The most significant features of this new system are:

  • multiple people can make assertions of facts
  • records can include source citations
  • temple ordinance features
  • a single, linked, pedigree
  • the ability to annotate records
  • mapping
  • synchronization with external genealogy database applications

Is New FamilySearch Compatible with the Mac?

There is a certification program for third-party programs that allows degrees of support. There are currently two Macintosh applications in the certification process: FamilyInsight and GetMyAncestors. Both of these are from Ohana Software. The first is in beta test and allows users to access, update, and synchronize with New FamilySearch. The beta version is available for download for $25 USD. The second is a free, access only product.

Who Can Access New FamilySearch?

Access is limited to LDS members until after all temple districts are online. Once that is achieved, work will begin on making the system available to the general public.

How to See More Information About Children and Parents in Reunion 9

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The family card in Reunion 9 can display children and parents as buttons or lists. The list mode displays more information about parents and children. The fields displayed can also be configured. For example, the birth and death places can be added to the view.

This video from the MacGenealogist Archives demonstrates the child and parent list mode and will walk you step-by-step through the preferences.

Genealogy File and Folder Organization System for Mac, Part 8

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Once you’ve used the GenealogyTools Genealogy File and Folder Organization System for a while you may wonder: “Is there a way to see a list of all the alias files or folders that point to an original?” The answer is, yes!

Aliases are powerful enough in their ability to save space and organize your genealogy files and folders without multiple versions to get out of sync. Seeing where the original or aliases are is where even more power comes into play.
[Read more…] about Genealogy File and Folder Organization System for Mac, Part 8

The Quickest Way to Move from One Person to Another in Reunion 9

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There is a little known way to move from one research subject to another in Reunion for Mac 9. It takes only one mouse click and it doesn’t involve the index. Do you know what it is?

It’s called the Quickbar. Once configured, it is a strip of buttons above the family card. It works much like favorites in your web browser, except instead of websites it contains links to people or families in your family file. The quickbar will hold as many as 50 people and or families. This video from the MacGenealogist Archives will show you:

  • what and where the quickbar is
  • how to add and remove people and families
  • how to edit the quickbar contents
  • how to change the appearance of the quickbar

Open Reunion 9 and follow along with this screencast. In no time you’ll be moving more efficiently through your genealogy data.