Legacy Charting Pre-Release Edition Now Available For Free Download

Comments (53)

• Great charting tool. Biggest improvement I am still waiting for (compared with Legacy Charting companion), add: the left-to-right Descendancy chart!!!!!

• I don´t believe it will ever come (short location)!

• So what about the short location function in legacy charting? When will it come?

• Tried to customize the look of a chart by using the drag tools. I like to organize the family members into groups for easy identification. First thing I notice is that you need to add a working background grid and a snap to grid function to the drag tool. Also when printing a multiple page chart you need to add a little overlap to the image on each page ( about .1 in ) so that it makes it easier to trim and tape the pages together. Another useful printing option would be ‘prevent boxes from crossing page boundaries’.

• Geoff, Luc, and helpful user group —
  I echo all the others in the congratulations on a well-made product!
  All of the following were previously suggested, but in case you’re counting votes to prioritize future enhancements, then in no particular order:
  — ability to delete individuals or branches on the fly would be much faster than marking (then later unmarking) unwanted individuals as private. An alternative (or another option) would be the ability to chart a Focus Group.
  — ability to add free-form comments in a box
  — automatically sliding a split box to the next page, though this can be done manually
  — ability to format selected lines and boxes to highlight particular relationships (more than just direct line)
  — ability for all-in-one charting, inclusion of siblings in ancestor/other charts (Susie, you could then fake your couple hourglass by selecting one of your children.)
  — ability to resize to fit selected number of pages
  I think I just summarized 80% of the recommendations – laugh! Really, fine job, folks.

• Would it be possible to have an hourglass chart centred around a couple instead of an individual.
  I’d like to have a chart with myself, my husband, our children and BOTH of our ancestors, not just mine.

• Can you create charts of A3 size? I can’t on my test version, but I am not sure if this is because of my printer or the software.

• Gary, good idea. We’ll add it to our list.

• Wanda, currently it only supports pre-FTM 2008 files. You could, however, create a GEDCOM from it and it would work just fine.

• Any support for the new Family Tree Maker 2008?

• Don’t know if this has been asked yet:
  Would it be possible to have the relationship field (from the Set Relationships tool) for each individual included in the chart?

• Please add a “print preview” capability

• Legacy charting deluxe looks to be excellent and a major improvement. Three inclusions I would like to see are (1) Chart all persons in the database (2) Add siblings and/or family of siblings to any person in the chart (3) Choose a different marriage line type for a particular couple. e.g when de facto.

• This is the first time I have used any charting program,it is so wonderful to see how it comes together in the family.

• 1) Line formatting
  On the Descendant Chart, a single line for a child of parents connects to their marriage double line. But in my case of a husband with children by two wives, the lines connects to the mother. I’d like to see the lines connect to the marrige double line as it does with the other marriages.
  2) Bow tie charts
  I’d like to see a bow tie version combining Ancestor and Descendant charts, so that the subject person is centered, with # generations of ancestors above and then # generations of descendants below.
  3) TreeDraw allows you to delete an individual from a chart. I’d like this option in Legacy Charting, including the one step deletion (with confirmation popup) of a branch connected to the individual being deleted.

• Prue, this option is yet-to-come. We’ve had many requests for it, so it’s high on the list….

• Very good made. Will be good if in the Box items we could add somethings more. For example OCCUPATION. Sincerely yours V. Hristic

• Tom, the name prefixes and suffixes are not yet in there. They will be included in a near-future update.

• I welcome the addition of the charting program to Legacy and will upgrade when version 7 comes out. However…..when I tried to chart my family tree, the displayed chart did not display name prefixes (like Gen., Pres, etc) and suffixes (like Jr., II, etc). Am I doing something wrong, or is there a glitch in the program? I had the same problem in uploading gedcom files to ancestry.com and could never solve that.

• Sorry my last message got sent before I had finished it. I would like to display Legacy “short Location” names. This would be useful to get more information onto a chart. It would also be very useful to have another way of excluding indivduals from a chart, other than marking them as “private”. Perhaps you should be able to delete individuals, or if that is not possible then be able to include “tagged” individuals. Thanks a lot. David Crisp

• Thanks for new charting program. So it looks good. Have only been playing with it for a very short while but have an idea/question. How do I stop boxes from splitting over 2 pages? Where can I adjust the chart to fit the page cleanly? Looking forward to Legacy 7. Thanks.

• I’ve started comparing charts made in Legacy Charting and the same chart made in Charting Companion.
  Further thoughts on the Birth/Christening and Death/Burial issue.
  When I make a ‘mugshot’ chart (and others) in LC the lifespan dates are not picking up the info for the people who only have christenings and burial.
  Charting Companion has a box to tick under Preferences/Options. It says ‘substitute Christening and burial’.
  I then get a very nice chart with b + date for birth
  or c + date for christening etc
  I have tried other programmes, none of which had this option so I’ve always stayed with Charting Companion because it can cope with the different kinds of data we have in different centuries.
  Tricia

• Is there a way in the charets to only have your direct lines rather than the full chart will all ancestors and or descendants?

• Actually it is me, Tricia, who asked for Births or Christenings etc, not Carole! The name of the sender does look as though it belongs to the next e-mail doesn’t it.
  Under the name you have a list of facts to display. I can’t think what the default is but they include birth, death etc.
  Click on that list and you should get customize. Go to help and it will tell you what to do. I have Aka, Birth/Christening, Death/burial, Age at death and Occupation (From your Event List)
  I think the default included Cause of death which is something I don’t want to see every time, too morbid.
  You can then save your settings. If you want you can have several different combinations and load them as you need them.
  Hope this helps
  Tricia

• Carole asks for birth or Christening, death or burial which I second. However she says you can do this on the front screens in legacy now something I have not found and very much wish to use. Where is it please?

• A great result and definitely makes Legacy 7 a “must”.
  You are already getting lots of suggestions so here are another 2 for possible future inclusion.
  The first is the cousin smart issue. While not always a solution, it is possible to rearrange the chart so that the double entries can be overlaid, one over the other. However this is a little messy so would it be possible to manually rearrange the chart (as can already be done) draw in the necessary linking lines and delete the doubled up individuals. This is currently possible with another associated Legacy application, Tree Draw.
  The second suggestion is to allow the double line marriage link to be moved up to be level with the names. If boxes are used the appearance is OK but if a “no-box” option is implemented and there is little detail available, the marriage link appears well below the names and looks lost.

• I just began to play with your new charting program and I like what I see. However, please consider a future enhancement that would shift boxes which are split over two pages to the next page. This would eliminate having to trim the left or right edge from each page. This is a real program when I print my family chart for our annual reunion. It usually 100+ pages.

• With all my ancestry being in Germany, I also would like to use short place names on the charts. I’m very pleased with my cursory look at this new charting device. Kudos for Legacy!

• Job well done Geoff and the team …. I have been eagerly awaiting the release of Legacy 7 for what seems like an age, and with the pre-release of this charting facility with an end date of June it would seem that the wait is close to being over. And if functionality of Legacy Charting is anything to go by, Legacy 7 is going to be an absolute cracker, and well worth the wait.

• Gwen – yes, you can change the page orientation by using the Page Setup. It is found by clicking on the round charting button in the far upper left of Legacy Charting.

• At last we have some charting options worthy of Legacy!
  I have been using Progeny’s Charting Companion for Legacy and although it has some very good features it does have some bugs. If the new Legacy Charting could have all the good features of Charting Companion and some extra that would be marvellous.
  Here is my list of suggestions:
  1) Cousin smart as in Charting Companion. If a person has descendants in more than one line their box is hatched rather than solid and their ancestors are included only once.
  2) Name of person who generated the chart and date so that we know which version is which. I suppose we could put this in a box but it would be a nice feature especially on working charts.
  3) Occupation of each person
  4) The ability to use the short Location name for each place. There isn’t enough room on most charts for the full place name and the short location feature is already present in Legacy.
  5) For more recent people I have exact dates of birth and death but for generations further back we only have christenings and burials. Burials are usually near death dates but christenings aren’t necessarily so. I would like a feature similar to the BIRTH OR CHRISTENING and DEATH OR BURIAL slot which we have already in ‘customize’ for the front screen for each person. The chart will then extract birth & death if we have them but christening and burial if we don’t. All four dates are too much for the majority of charts.
  6) The ability to scale the charts as in Charting Companion. Already mentioned above
  7) The ability to not have a box split over two pages as mentioned above.

• Very well done! They are great hour glass and mother/father charts.

• I love your Legacy charting. I am wondering however if it is possible to change the orientation of the page, before printing, so I can fit more on a landscape page than portrait? Thanks for that – Gwen

• I’ve been playing with this today and have a few suggestions:
  1. I would like to be able to see which file I’m charting. I choose a file on the first screen then have no way to keep track of which one I’m working with.
  2. I want to be able to include thumbnail photos in a privatized chart.
  3. I would like some way to indicate out of wedlock, step, or adopted relationships on the charts (e.g. dotted or dashed lines).
  4. Are there any plans to include a combination bowtie/descendancy chart — a family hourglass?
  5. In Progeny’s Charting Companion, I can resize the chart and keep trying until it will fit in specific dimensions. This is very handy; most people will prefer 90% on one page rather than having to deal with 100% on 2 pages and I’d like to see that here too.
  6. “Continued” charts. As someone else mentioned, the book layout in FTM allows you to create a chart with built-in “continuation” points. I wouldn’t know where to begin to modify the 32 page Legacy chart to accomplish the same thing.

• Excellent! Thank you very much for making this available to everyone. Is there an “all-in-one” option? I am unable to find it. That feauture would allow me to finally let go of my ancient version of FTM…

• Jeannine,
  There is no “update” button yet. To update a chart with changed information, please do the following:
  1) Click on the Box Items button in the Appearance tab
  2) Don’t change anything -> just click the OK button
  This will update the chart information.

• I would like to see an “update” button. Say I like the way I have a certain chart, but I have added or updated pictures or information, that I want it to bring into the the existing chart without starting over. Am anxiously waiting the 7.0 release.

• I am new to Legacy trying to migrate from family tree maker. In FTM you can create a descendant chart that is in notebook rather that wallpaper format. Have been searching the 6.0 deluxe version for this option w/o any luck. Was in hopes that a notebook version was in Legacy Charting but I don’t think it is present. A feature that would be nice is to have the ability to place a wedding portrait between the husband and wife on the chart and be able to place child pictures of that family and then place Adult pictures for the children when their family appears (along with the their wedding portrait). Please let me know if I can get any notebook chart format out of legacy.

• The charts are overall quite wonderful, but there’s a problem with the Y DNA chart because of adoptions. My grandson, who’s adopted, does not carry the same Y chromosome that my son and I carry. There should be a way to indicate that there is no biological relationship on the chart. Legacy lets you set a child’s adoptive status and I think Legacy Charting should pick up on that.

• So far what a great program I am considering updating to Legacy 7 just for this. I have the same question as Julie. Cousins married in several generations and I finish up with my oldest ancestor appearing 5 times across the top. Can this be changed or suppressed? Is there any way of selecting individuals to be included which the program does not include. For instance second wives in the upward ancestor chart?

• John Willis – this can already be done. Click on the Appearance tab. Click on Box Items. Add Birth date/location to the Items to Display and then in the Item Options, choose “Date only”.

• Brilliant program which seems to have nearly everything needed. One change I would like to see is to be able to display BMD dates both with and without place names. Any chance or have I missed something?

• Een perfect stukje software, precies waarop ik zat te wachten. Bravo Legacy
  [Translation from Google: A perfect piece of software, exactly where I was waiting. Bravo Legacy]

• Lyn, there will be in a future update.

• Alastair, click on the round chart button in the far upper left. This is where the Page Setup is located. I’ll look into the help file to see if it needs to be updated for this.

• Brilliant program well done. Can it be embedded in Legacy? why are not all individuals displayed chronologically? Again a almost 100%

• I’ve so far been using a combination of Genelines Universal edition (for its Fan chars and Timelines), Legacy Charting Companion (for its ancestor view) and FTM (for its ‘Upward Ancestor’ view). I’ve really been waiting for one comprehensive charting package, and this has the potential do do it all! One or two points however. I cannot as the help file suggests go to the home tab and find there a ‘page setup’ – which, since I use an A3 printer – I need. Is it just well disguised? And now a suggestion for improvement. ‘Upward ancestor’ is our standard display; however it is much more efficient if once one has gone back about 3 generations, the boxes can be turned vertical – otherwise far too much space is used horizontally. How about it, developers? However, well, done – a great product!

• My chart has duplicate family members because cousins married each other. Is there a way to prevent the duplicates being charted?

• FANTASTIC!!! Great, still looking and printing and looking and printing ALL the family trees and they LOOK GREAT!!

• Fantastic piece of software… I am using allready some time Legacy 6 Deluxe and if this is a preview of the future (Legacy 7) then surely we will buy the next version. Well done and hopefully the new version will be on the market very soon.

• The charting program is very good. Features I would like to see for descendent and hourglass charts include: 1) the use of custom facts, 2) different colors and fonts for different facts, 3) and the ability to have boxes not split onto two pages. I am new to using this software, so I may have missed finding these features.

• I am looking forward to being able to do a all in one family tree for my family! This great

• Fantastic…..we have waited a long time for this.My printer will be working overtime. The scan has found trees on my PC that I had long forgot!