Accenting Your Ancestors in TMG 5

(for TMG4, see http://www.tmgtips.com/accent.htm)

This is a lesson on color coding your ancestors in TMG v5.x.    I'm choosing four ancestral lines:
    My father                   = Rhinehart, his ID# is 2
    My mother                 = Ash,         her ID# is 3
    My husband's father   = Bassett,    his ID# is 10002
    My husband's mother = Jones,      her ID# is 10003

I want to color code the ancestors of each of these lines.

First, I make a flags for each ancestral line.
    In Flags window, rightclick and choose Customize Flags from the menu.
    Click on the Add button.
    Label = Rhinehart
    Values = ?,N,Y      (this is the default, though you can leave out the N value)
Click on the OK button

Repeat for each ancestral line you want to accent (in my case, Ash, Bassett, and Jones)

Now set the flags for the ancestors in question.  This is done by generating a List of People report four times,
once for each line:
-- From the menu, select Report->List of->People
(I won't go into detail about HOW to set options, save filters, or save report names, but do give the following suggestions on WHAT to name them).
Suggested Name for this report: set accent for ancestral lines
Suggested Name for the filter: is an ancestor of - xxx

Filter contents: (screen shot)
Field - Is An Ancestor
Subfield - (blank)
Operator - Of ID#
Value - [?]

Still in the Report Definition Screen, on lower left, choose Options > Secondary Output
put checkmark in Change Flag
choose the flag (in this case Rhinehart) and choose the Y for yes
put checkmark in Suppress Output ...
(screen shot)

When you run your report, you will get asked for the ID of the person who's ancestors you want to change. For Rhinehart, my ID is 2. When finished, all of my father's ancestors will have the Rhinehart flag set to Y.

Note: You will then be asked if you want to change date last updated. I don't, but that's your choice. If it's changed, then you may wonder what changes you made to a person on that date. Some of my people haven't been updated for a couple years. I'd rather leave that old date so I know when I last worked on a person.

This completes the setting of the first ancestral line's Flag to Y  You now need to generate the report three more times, once for each of the other lines. For each successive run, you will need to change the Options > Secondary Output flag to the next surname you want to do.

After all four reports have been generated, it's time to turn on the accent colors.
    Select File->Accent from the menu.
Rather than type out the detail of choosing the colors, I'm only giving the screen shot. Notice that the above example surnames are only my parents and my husband's parents, but that in the screen shot, I now have it broken down further, for my four grandparents and his four granparents. I've also added a living=? in a color I dislike, so that I get reminded immediately when I add a new person, to change it to yes or no. That's a personal choice. I also have a couple groups of people who are no longer connected (I was following a wrong line), and rather than dump them, I've just color coded them as unconnected.

Obviously, when you turn this tutorial into your reality, the Flag names and the ID  numbers will need to
reflect your own family. The colors are also your choice, but my reasoning was the old stereotype blue for
male (my husband's side), pink for female (my side).  Then I just reversed the colors for the female line of
each.  Makes its real easy to see a color and know what line it represents. Naturally, when I went to 8 colors I had to broaden that a bit.

Submitted by:
Kathryn Rhinehart Bassett (Pasadena CA)
kathryn@bassett.net

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