Author: Bruce Buzbee

RootsMagic has always been heads and shoulders above the competition when it comes to custom reports, but we have found ways to make them even better in RootsMagic 4.

Easier Design Screen

Anyone who has designed a custom report in RootsMagic knows that it takes special concentration and good hand-eye coordination to get fields to line up the way you want.  RootsMagic 4’s new custom report designer makes it easy for anyone to create professional looking custom reports.

For simple custom lists, just add the number of columns you want, and enter the header text and fields into the cells.  The report will automatically size to fit the width of whatever page you print to, so just size the columns proportionally.  If you want multiple rows, just add them and tell RootsMagic 4 what to print in them.

Including multiple facts of the same kind

Have you ever included a field like “Occupation” in a custom report and discovered that your report only included the first occurrence of that fact type?  That’s because RootsMagic custom reports limited a field to only a single line on the page.  We have zapped that limitation and now your custom reports will include all instances of a fact type in the report.

Including notes

Zapping that single line limitation also let us add support for one of the most commonly requested custom report features… including notes in a custom report.

More layout options

What if you wanted to mix and match simple fields with notes in a custom report?  RootsMagic 4 lets you join fields in your custom report to get the layout you actually want.  For example, you can join a row of fields into a single field to allow your note to print under multiple rows of simple fields, like this:

This is the report which created the note entry above.  You can see that I merged the two cells which hold the note so it could span both the date and place columns.  The 3 columns in row 1 have also been merged so that the name can span the full width of the report if necessary.  You can also merge a column of fields in case you want the note to print to the side of several rows of fields.

So that’s a quick overview of some of the new custom report capabilities.  The layout of your new RootsMagic 4 custom reports is limited only by your imagination.

And we’re still not finished with the sneak previews.

WebSearch.

And why is it that every time a tab is disclosed another blurred one (2) appears?

RootsMagic 4 makes it easier than ever to search online for information about your family.  Just switch to the WebSearch tab and RootsMagic will do an online search for the currently selected person.  And if you want to find someone else just click their name in the side list and RootsMagic will automatically search for them on the selected site.

Of course nobody wants to search just one site, so RootsMagic lets you select which site you want it to use.  Click the little drop arrow to the right of the search button and choose the site you want to search. If you want to add additional sites that we don’t include (or if you want to hide some of the built-in sites), choose “Manage Search Providers…”.

Here you can uncheck any sites you are boycotting or just don’t want appearing in the list.  Or you can select the “Custom Search Providers” tab to add new search engines.  I won’t go into gory details about adding a new search engine here, but it really is quite easy to do, even for a non-programmer.

Well, that’s one more new feature, with at least 10 more to go.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure that last new blurred tab above is the last one (for now).  I think we figured out what keeps causing them to appear and got it taken care of <g>.

RootsMagic has long had the ability to display an online map for places in your database (it was even a recent “tip of the month” in the RootsMagic newsletter).  We have expanded that capability in RootsMagic 4.

When you open the mapping feature in RootsMagic 4, you will have a list of (1) all the places in your database.  Click on a place in the list and RootsMagic will display a map of the place for you.  You can use all the Virtual Earth tools (zoom, aerial, birds-eye, etc).  You can even print your map or copy it to the clipboard to paste into other programs.

If you select the Aerial option, you can view the satellite image of your map.  You can view the satellite image either with or without the labels for towns, streets, etc.

The new RootsMagic 4 mapping makes it easy to see where the events in a person’s life happened.  Just switch (1) from “Places” to “People” and RootsMagic will display a list of the people in your database.  Click on anyone in the list and RootsMagic will display a map showing that person’s events.

You can move your mouse over any marker to see what events in that person’s life occurred there.  And of course you can see these markers on either the map or aerial view.

Stay tuned as we continue to map out the new features in RootsMagic 4 (my wife told me that was a dumb line, but I decided to run with it anyways).

Have you ever been entering a place and wished you knew what county, province, state or country the place was in?  RootsMagic 4 now provides a worldwide place database with 3.5 million places in it.  Just pop up the place search and enter what you know about the place and RootsMagic will display matching places.  Select a place and click OK and RootsMagic will paste the fully standardized place into the place field for you.

But what if you don’t want a full “standardized” place (like if you have an historical place name)?  When you edit a place from the master place list, you can enter the place 1) the way you want it normally displayed, 2) as a standardized place, and 3) as an abbreviated version of the place.  Of course the standardized and abbreviated places are both optional.

I’m guessing a lot of you noticed the “GeoCode” button on the Edit Place screen above.  Clicking that button in RootsMagic 4 will geocode your place for you.  Geocode just means that RootsMagic will check its 3.5 million place name database to find a match for your place, and insert the latitude, longitude, and standardized place name for you.  Now of course we won’t make you geocode your database one place at a time.  RootsMagic 4 can also geocode your entire database, and let you hand pick the places that are ambiguous.

And finally, RootsMagic 4 offers a gazetteer on the tools menu to look up any place in the world.

We know how much current RootsMagic users like the free PlaceFinder program we’ve included all these years.  Think of the Gazetteer as a world-wide PlaceFinder on steroids.  Like the Place Search above, just type in as much of the place as you know and click Search.  The Gazetteer will show you all matches, and will even let you view an online map of any of those matching places (you need to be online to view the online map of course).

Think we’re done with places?  You’ll need to check out my next blog entry to find out.

Have you ever wanted to tweak the sentence for a single fact without having to change the global sentence template for that fact type?  RootsMagic 4 now lets you customize the sentence for any fact in your database.  If you are happy with the default sentence for your fact, you don’t have to do anything.  Otherwise click “Customize sentence” and do your own thing.

Here’s the screen where you will customize your sentence.

Just modify the sentence template for this one instance, or just type a sentence directly.  It doesn’t matter whether you change the sentence to:

[person] was buried with full military honors [date] [place].

or

John Doe was buried with full military honors on January 15, 1943 in Avon, Iowa.

Using the fields like [person], [date], and [place] means that the sentence for that fact will still update if the person’s info changes.

And speaking of fields (this is where readers who don’t bother changing sentence templates might want to bail out <g>)…

We have completely rewritten the sentence template language.  While there isn’t nearly enough time or room in this blog to go into detail about all the enhancements available when creating sentence templates, let me just say you can now create sentences which contain:

1. conditional parts which can change based on various criteria (like sex, whether the data exists, etc)
2. modifiers for fields (like [date:year] or [place:reverse]
3. and something else I’ll talk about in a future entry (tease)

I just looked at the remaining sneak previews, and I guarantee you won’t want to miss any of them.  I’ve been having fun showing all these features so far, but like I said early on, I’ve been saving the best for last.  There are still at least a dozen major features coming (we weren’t kidding about this being the biggest upgrade in our 22 year history).  Keep sharing this blog with your family and friends, and I promise you won’t be disappointed.

I keep getting busy programming and forget to blog about all the great stuff coming in version 4, so I’m going to skip the rest of the little things and start sneak previewing the bigger stuff. I’ll leave the little stuff for you to find on your own when we release version 4 before the end of the year (there… there’s your first hint about the release date).

Back in a previous post, several people wondered what that button (1) on the left side of the screen was for. Of course I didn’t tell, which led to a lot of rampant guessing and speculation. So let’s put an end to the speculation. If you click on the image below you’ll see RootsMagic 4’s new collapsible side bar. Click the button to access the side bar, and again if you want it hidden. The side bar is available regardless of which main view you are using.

The side bar has four (count’em) 4 tabs. The Index tab shown above is a list of the people in your database. You have incremental search and alternate name support, and if you are using color coding it will show as well. Select a person from the index list and RootsMagic will select that person in the current view (pedigree, family, etc).

Tab 2 is the family tab which will show you all the immediate family members (spouses, kids, parents, and siblings) of the person selected on the main screen. You can select any of those family members and click the Go button to switch to that person.

Tab 3 is the bookmark tab. Just press Ctrl+B or click the “Add bookmark” button to add the current person to the bookmark list.

And tab 4 is the history tab. Every time you edit a person, RootsMagic will automatically add that person to the history tab. Need to get back to someone you edited half an hour ago? This is where you’ll find them.

Oh, and just to make sure you can’t stop speculating, I wanted to point out (if you hadn’t noticed already), that there is another blurred tab that has magically appeared on the main screen. Where do those things keep coming from? Guess you’ll just have to keep reading the blog.

OK, so here’s a feature we have gotten a lot of requests for, and in RootsMagic 4 we’re going to deliver it.

If you have ever added alternate names for people in your database, you can now have those alternate names appear in lists of people (like the RootsMagic Explorer). If you think you might get confused having a person appear under their multiple names in the lists, just unmark the “Show alternate names” checkbox and it will only list each person once under their primary name.

Clicking on an alternate name in the list will take you to the same place that clicking on the primary name would. It’s just that you can now find people by all those other names they may have been known as during their lifetime.

Stay tuned for more cool stuff. And thanks for telling your friends and families to check out what will be our biggest upgrade ever.

Today’s sneak preview is going to be short and sweet (and no screen shot on top of that).  But don’t worry, we still have plenty of new screen shots left to go.

While website creation in RootsMagic 4 is very similar to that in version 3, there is one big difference.  RootsMagic 4 uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) when creating a website.  If you don’t create websites, or don’t know what CSS is, you probably won’t find this very exciting.

However, if you have ever had to modify fonts, colors or other settings in a RootsMagic generated website, I can hear you saying “yes” all the way from here.  No more having to modify hundreds of individual html files.  Just edit the single .CSS file and all your pages will use the modified styles.

So for all you html’ers, this one’s for you.  For everyone else, we’ll be right back with more cool screenshots and features.