Family Tree Maker (TM)
FAQ 043
What
are FTM Books, and how do I make one?
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An FTM Book is a
way to collect a variety of reports into a named entity, called a book.
You might create a book with the intent of actually making a real printed
document, or you might just use the book structure as a convenient place
to "keep" reports with special formatting or content so you don't have
to reconfigure them every time you want to see one. Here are some salient
features of books:
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You can have a number of books in each file.
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Each book in a file must be uniquely named.
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Each book may contain a number of different reports, trees or text
items.
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Any sort of report or tree may be included in a book.
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Each instance of a particular kind of report can have its own attributes:
formatting, content, etc. So you can have one Custom Report that lists
everyone in the file, and another that lists only selected people, and
each report can contain different fields.
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There are a few special items that can appear only in books: Table of Contents,
Index, and Text Item.
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So how do I make one?
If your file has no books yet, you can just click on the book icon.
Otherwise, click Books | New Book. You will be prompted
to give the new book a title and name its author. Both of these can be
changed later. |
Book icon
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You will then be brought to the Books
View, where you can develop your book. There are two panes in
this window, left and right:
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The right pane represents your book. Each item, or element of your
book will be listed here. Initially, your book starts with just a title
page, which is an example of a text item.
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The left pane contains a menu of items which you may include in
your book.
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Between the two panes is a set of function buttons by which you
can manipulate the book contents.
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Books View
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If the kind of report that you want isn't among those in the left pane,
additional Custom Book Items can be created.
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Creating Custom Book Items |
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| To add a new book element, click on an item in the
left pane and drag it to the position in the right pane where you would
like it. Alternately, you can use the function buttons to Add the
items. You can then select items on the right and Move up
or
Move down to position them where you like.
Use the Properties button to change the title of a selected
item in the right pane.
Use the Edit button to change a selected item in the
right pane.
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If it is a Text Item, you will be placed into an edit session.
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Otherwise, the selected item will format and display. Then you will have
an opportunity to change formatting, page setup, selected individuals,
etc. for that report.
Opening Books
If you have a single book, you can just click the book icon. Otherwise,
click Books | Open Book and select the book you want to
open from the list that will be displayed. |
| Dragging items from the left
pane to the right pane is a copy operation. The item remains in
the left pane and may be copied multiple times. The Index is an exception.
When dragged to the right, it disappears from the left pane. You may only
have one Index in each book. |
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