Welcome to Monterey Peninsula College at Genealogy Research Associates

Once you have entered the individuals in your direct line into a genealogy computer software program including their spouses and children, and started your documentation, you will want to print your materials. In this way you can determine if your notes are printing the way you like, you can correct your information, and you can assemble your notebook.

The next lesson will focus on compiling information into a Family History Notebook organization systems. If you don't use a genealogy software program, you can start the process of filing by filling in the information by hand. But it won't be long before you will love entering in a program since updating and correcting information is so easy.

One of the real wonders of keeping your family records and genealogical information in a good genealogy computer software program is the many kinds of reports that can be printed.

Before You Print

Before you print, you should realize that reports are more than ink on paper. Today you can print: Printer Options

To your computer screen to see if you like the results before wasting paper and ink.
To a rich text file .rtf so the document can be opened in a word processing program.
To a .pdf format so the form remains exactly as you expect it to look no matter what kind of printer or computer the receiver may have if sent electronically.
To an html format so the information is readily available to upload to your website.
And of course to a piece of paper.

After studying various options in your textbooks, the presentation in this online lesson will focus on print options in the PAF and therefore, Ancestral Quest, programs. But the pages 22 and 23 in these presentations will cover Reunion for Mac, and page 24 will introduce you to Family Tree Maker 2011, and page 25 will guide you to excellent online video and CD training for Ancestral Quest, Family Tree Maker, Legacy, and RootsMagic. Having seen how the programs set up their preferences, and produce reports should give you sufficient insights into which program will work best for your individual needs.

If at the end of the semester, you want to try another program, it will be an easy task to transfer the data to the other program if you follow the instructions provided in this course. Right now let's focus on basic questions to consider before printing any report.