Individual View

The Individual View is a great way to make sure all the information you've entered about a person in your family is there. It also allows you to see how they fit into the family, view the notes and sources altogether providing a snapshot of that individual.

The first section in the Individual View show a picture if you've put one there and all of there basic information along with any additional items you may have placed in "Other Events". Here is a sample from my grandfather:

The next section shows him as a child: 

Then here he is with his spouse and children:

The next section covers the Notes you've entered:

The last section is for the sources:

When you put this altogether you have a nice summary of the individual. It also provides an opportunity to see if you need to add an additional sources or documentation to the family member to have a more complete picture. For instance, you could add stories or have a link to blog stories or add additional pictures. 

You can also print up the whole summary with the pictures and all you have on this individual. Click here to view the summary in PDF format.

Either viewing it on the tab marked "Individual" in Ancestral Quest or creating a document to share,it is a nice way to provide a summary of information on a person in your family file! You also could add this kind of summary in various other places where you may have shared your family file.

Enjoy this great feature in Ancestral Quest!

Remember Ancestral Quest is fully FamilySearch Certified!

Comments and questions are always welcome!

Happy Ancestraling...Claire ;)

AQ Cues & Clues Blog:http://ancquest.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AncQuest

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ancquest

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/inclinesoftware

(c) 1994-2016 Incline Software, All Rights Reserved
 gfindlay@ancquest.com

Creating Timelines

Regardless of where you are in your research, timelines can prove to be very helpful in many ways.

When one combines an individual life with history, it is even better. Adding the historical content often helps a researcher to understand their ancestors actions better.

Why people moved as often as they did or stayed in one place as long as they did is often confusing to a descendant researching their family history.

To add to this dilemma is the need to add local events also. By doing this, one gets a clearer view of what was going on at the time one's ancestors were there in a particular place.

It is usually easy to locate the world wide events but sometimes finding the local events is a bit more difficult. The local public library is usually helpful as well as local newspapers and histories of the area. 

With all this information you will be able to use the "Timelines" feature in Ancestral Quest to put your ancestor in focus for their time period.

The feature comes preloaded with some world events and you can add what you need to in order to provide a better picture of what could affect all that happened during their life timetime. To access the Timelines feature, simply click on the tab called "Timeline".

This is a simple view of the top section. Note where it says "Options" in the upper left hand corner? This is where you are able to do multiple things regarding your timeline.

Here is where you are able to change colors, fonts, etc. as well as add "Historical Items" to the timeline. To add new historical events or modify existing one, click on the button that says "Edit Historical Items".

Notice the "Add" button is there to add additional historical events. You can choose between a genealogical or historical event or even a historical person.

Once your addition is filled in, you'll click on "Save" and it will be added to timeline. Creating timelines can assist you in locating individuals by shedding light on what was going on around them.

Take advantage of this feature and many more in Ancestral Quest.

Remember Ancestral Quest is fully FamilySearch Certified!

Comments and questions are always welcome!

Happy Ancestraling...Claire ;)

AQ Cues & Clues Blog:http://ancquest.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AncQuest

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ancquest

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/inclinesoftware

(c) 1994-2016 Incline Software, All Rights Reserved
 gfindlay@ancquest.com

Never Married or No Children

Image from "http://awordywoman.com/

As we know, in life, not everyone get married, Ancestral Quest has a place to indicate when an individual does not marry. To access this, click on an individual to open up "Edit Individual" which is also accessed from the Edit menu or by using the keys for control and I together.

Note there are 3 tabs at the top, "Individual", which is the screen shown, "More", which is highlighted and "Contact". Click on the "More" tab.

We've highlighted where you can indicate if an individual "Never Married" by putting a check mark in the box. This is great for reports and for when doing research. You can forget if an individual was ever married and do research looking for a spouse only to come to the conclusion you already knew but had not marked at that time.

There are also times when a couple have no children and there is a place to indicate this also. Putting the couple in the main location on the 'Family' tab, click on the button marked "Marriage".

With the couple in this location on the "Family" tab, click the button marked "Marriage".

Note again, there is a box highlight where you can put a check in the box next to "no children".

This is also helpful on reports and such so you are not looking for children more than once.

Each of the features are available on both Ancestral Quest and Ancestral Quest Basics. These are good features to use to help prevent unnecessary research.

Enjoy this and all the features of Ancestral Quest!

Remember Ancestral Quest is fully FamilySearch Certified!

Comments and questions are always welcome!

Happy Ancestraling...Claire ;)

AQ Cues & Clues Blog:http://ancquest.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AncQuest

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ancquest

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/inclinesoftware

(c) 1994-2016 Incline Software, All Rights Reserved

 gfindlay@ancquest.com

Merging Duplicates

Sign image from the Manual of Traffic Signs http://ww/trafficsign.us/

This sign image copyright Richard C. Moeur. All Rights Reserved.

For various reasons we often end up with duplicates of people in our family files and databases. This feature is often used after adding other gedcom files or additional files from a 3rd party to your own files. Other times this occurs is when you accidentally add a family in twice at different times or you are working together with others in a collaborative file and didn't see the original entries, duplicates due happen and need to be merged.

Ancestral Quest has a merge function to help you remove these duplicates.

Note that it is always a good idea to make a "backup" of your file before beginning to merge in case along the way you start making some errors in your merges.

There are a couple of ways to access the "Merge" function, one is by clicking on the ICON that looks like the one above and the other is to go to "Tools", scroll down and click on "Merge", either way it will bring up the following screen:

Note this is where you bring up the two individuals to merge. 

At the bottom of this screen you'll want to turn on "Enable Intelligent Matching" if you want the software to help you with these duplications. You also can set your own parameters concerning what constitutes matches when using this feature. This is where you'll adjust various parameters:

Note that you can adjust a large variety of things to help the software with finding your duplicates. Once you have either adjusted them or left the default settings in place, click "OK" to close this box.

Once you are back at the earlier screen click on the button that says "Next" and it will bring up the first set of matches the software finds according to the values in the Options box we were just in. They will be brought in alphabetically. Here is a sample:

Notice the different colors to help you decide if this is going to be a match you merge. The Green represents the first person or the one with the lowest RIN number, the Red represents the duplicate and the Black shows what this individual will look like when the merge is complete. 

If you are not sure you want to do that particular merge, click the "Next Match" until you find one you will merge. In the case above I was not sure so clicked the next one and that was worth merging.

Another way to merge when you know ahead of time who the duplicates are and you have written down their RIN numbers, you can click on the "Search" button under each section, the primary and the duplicate and enter those RIN numbers in. Once they are up and you are looking at them, you simply click on the "Merge" button. 

While it is common to keep the primary one as the lower RIN number, it is your choice as to which way you do your merges. Once you are finished, simply click the "Close" button and you are back at the main screen of Ancestral Quest.

Enjoy this and all the features of Ancestral Quest!

Remember Ancestral Quest is fully FamilySearch Certified!

Comments and questions are always welcome!

Happy Ancestraling...Claire ;)

AQ Cues & Clues Blog:http://ancquest.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AncQuest

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ancquest

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/inclinesoftware

(c) 1994-2016 Incline Software, All Rights Reserved
 gfindlay@ancquest.com

Helpful Tips

When you first open Ancestral Quest there is using a "Tip of the Day" to aid you in your research. There are hundreds of tips in this group to aid you the researcher.

You can access them at any point by simply clicking on "Help" scrolling and clicking on "Tip of the Day", when you do this it will display a tip for you as well as a button to scroll through some of them, one never knows when its the right tip for you.

Note the button for "Next Tip" is right there making it easy to slowly work through  these. Often they are simple tips to help researches work quicker and better.

With so many tips available with a few clicks you may find some that help you with your research and with getting around in Ancestral Quest. Check it out and enjoy these great features in Ancestral Quest!

Remember Ancestral Quest is fully FamilySearch Certified!

Comments and questions are always welcome!

Happy Ancestraling...Claire ;)

AQ Cues & Clues Blog:http://ancquest.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AncQuest

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ancquest

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/inclinesoftware

(c) 1994-2016 Incline Software, All Rights Reserved
 gfindlay@ancquest.com

Setting Parent-Child Relationships

Families come in all sizes, shapes and types, sometimes the relationships need to be adjusted for various reasons. 

Ancestral Quest allows you to adust the relationship to both the father and the mother separately as needed depending on the individual situations.

To do this put the child in the main position in the "Family View" with the parents to the right of the child like this:

Click on the button that says "Other Parents/Rels" to fix the relationship of each parent to this child:

By changing the relationship here, it shows up in the family view listing here:

Note that if they are biological children there will be no relationship shown. It is that simple to show the relationships between children and their parents.

Take advantage of the many features of Ancestral Quest, you can always learn more about the features from the many tutorials available from our Learning Center.

Remember Ancestral Quest is fully FamilySearch Certified!

Comments and questions are always welcome!

Happy Ancestraling...Claire ;)

AQ Cues & Clues Blog:http://ancquest.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AncQuest

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ancquest

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/inclinesoftware

(c) 1994-2016 Incline Software, All Rights Reserved
 gfindlay@ancquest.com

Creating a Birthday Calendar in AQ

When it comes to remembering birthdays and anniversaries, Ancestral Quest can help you create one by month or by specific months or a full year. This can be very helpful so as to not forget someones special day or a couple's anniversary.

To begin click on the 'Printer' icon at the top of the program to open up "Print Reports and Charts" and then click on the tab that says "Calendar":

From this menu box follow these steps:

1. Select the Start Year, then Month and the End Year and Month
2. Click the Select button to select the individuals to include, you can choose "All" or just "Descendants" and of course "family"
3. Repeat process if you want to include a spouses relations too
4. Click on the button that says "Select" once you make your choice and when done click "OK"
5. Under Options, check "Living Only", "Include Birthdays" and anything else you wish to have on this calendar
6. If you want colorful borders you can choose those too as well as the border style for the calendar and name options
7. You can also change the color and font of the title of the month under the buttons labeled "Titles" and "Fonts"
8. Once done, click on the "Preview" button to see if this is how you like it
9. If not, go back and change your colors and anything else to fine tune it
10. Once completed, you can send it to your printer and enjoy

One of the nice things about this is you can create a colorful calender page for each month, just adjust the colors, etc. and print that new month. Either way, it is a nice feature that helps you remember all the important people in your life!

Here is a sample of the top half of January to give you an idea of how color they can be:

Enjoy this and all of the features that Ancestral Quest offers each one who uses this program.

Remember Ancestral Quest is fully FamilySearch Certified!

Comments and questions are always welcome!

Happy Ancestraling...Claire ;)

AQ Cues & Clues Blog:http://ancquest.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AncQuest

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ancquest

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/inclinesoftware

(c) 1994-2016 Incline Software, All Rights Reserved
 gfindlay@ancquest.com