Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed – Automated Sorting

Geoff Rasmussen

09 Sep 2013

Long-time Legacy Family Tree users will think they have died and gone to heaven (myself included) after reading about this next Legacy 8 reveal: automated sorting!

Although in real life, children are born in birth order, and people who marry more than once get married in chronological order, as researchers we sometimes do not discover these children or marriages in order.

Marriages

For example, my ancestor, Lorenzo D. Brown, was married to five different women:

Clarinda Ann Williams
Ida Parker
Lottie Hentz
Rhoda
Sarah Nermire

Initially, because I did not know when each marriage occurred, I entered each relationship alphabetically. First I added Clarinda, then Ida, then Lottie, and so on. Later I discovered each of the marriage records and I added the new dates and places. Legacy kept the marriages displayed in the original order even though I now had the marriage dates:

In Legacy 7 and earlier, to sort the marriages I had to click on the Sort button.

In Legacy 8 (and beyond…) you will never have to manually sort these again! They are automatically sorted as you add them.

Children

The same is true with the births of children. After adding the 15 known children of Nathan and Anna Brown, if I were to discover a new child, who, according to their birth year fit in as the 9th child, Legacy 8 will automatically sort the child into the correct position.

I know…seems that this new automated sorting feature should have been around for a long time…but it's there now! Horray! You can't tell I'm excited, can you? And this is one of the smaller new Legacy 8 features.

Events

Let's say that I finally found Asa Brown in the 1830 census. Because you have read chapter 5 of my Legacy Family Tree – Unlocked! you understand that this census should be a part of his timeline, so you add the new census event. In the past, any newly-added event would sort to the bottom of the list of events.

In Legacy 8, it will automatically sort to fit in exactly where it belongs:

Did you also notice the age column in the enhanced Events/Facts section above? Great!

Global Sorting

Just in case you have some unsorted children, marriages, or events in your family file, we have also included a new Global Sorting tool in Legacy 8. This is found on the Tools ribbon, in the Tools section:

Clicking on this option brings up this screen:

Just click the "Sort the Selected Lists" button, and Legacy 8 will go through your entire family file and get everything correctly sorted. In those cases where you have a child, marriage, or event without a date, AND you want to keep them in their current order, just select the "Don't sort the…" option and Legacy will leave that family/person alone.

We've worked hard on this new feature and hope that you really like it! So what do you think?

Legacy Family Tree – Unlocked!

See Legacy 8 in action with the new Legacy Family Tree – Unlocked!book by Geoff Rasmussen (that's me)! Get the PDF edition free when you purchase the 236 page paperback. Click here for more information or to purchase.

What are the other new features of Legacy 8?

Here are links to the articles I've previously written:

Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed

Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed – Q/A, new Tagging options, and other surprises

Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed – Migration Mapping

Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed – Instant Duplicate Checking

Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed – Shared Events and Automated Sorting

Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed – Potential Problem Alerts and "Gaps of Unusual Size"

Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed – Sources

Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed - Origins and Migration Reports

Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed – New Wall Charts and options

Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed – Color Coding

When will Legacy 8 be released?

There's still more than one truthful answer to this:

I'm not really sure, but probably before the end of the year, and hopefully way before then
When it has been thoroughly tested by our development team and beta testers

But if you are considering downloading either the free or deluxe editions of Legacy, don't wait! Any purchases of Legacy 7.5 from May 8, 2013 forward will receive the new Legacy 8 at no charge. And as always, anyone who has purchased Legacy Deluxe previously will qualify for special discounted upgrade pricing. Get started today – you won't have to relearn everything when Legacy 8 is ready, but you'll get some really nice new features when it is.

Comments (16)

Doug – great idea, I’ll add this to the enhancement request database.

Hi Geoff, what about including the Media Gallery in the global sorting

all these tid-bits about the new version are great and as an already user of the program, am ready for the new version. Quite with the teasing and let us have it! Dragging the release date out is frustrating.
Linda Ludwig Irish

I like the new sorting feature. It will certainly be a time saver in regards to data entry.

Leif – you can get what you want right now when you click on the Chronology View. As it is now, your children display this way because it shows the children of the current couple first in the Family View. Then it displays the half-siblings if there are any.

Barbara – the sorting will not unlink and relink children from the wrong set of parents, you’d still need to do this manually.

Marie – end of the year is still within the realm of “End of the year…or sooner.”

You’ve been saying Legacy 8 will be “available by the Enid of the year … Or sooner” for months now. Any new updates on when? End of the year (“or sooner”) is quickly approaching!

This is a very exciting new feature. I and the people I am teaching to use Legacy Family Tree are definitely looking forward to using it soon. The list is getting longer for what we are looking forward to seeing.

I already have received and read the book. Follow with excitement revelation of all the new features. I can hardly wait. Please, hurry 🙂

this new sort will hopefully get children of multiple marriages connected to the correct parents by using dates. I find so many users don’t make their corrections, they just keep entering stuff.

I would like to see children from all marriages sorted by birth date instead of as it is now first from selected marriage and then from other. Maybe as an option. I have some siblings listed as 1946, 1947, 1949, ½ 1941, ½ 1949.
This would be even greater.

I’m more excited about the shared events! What kept me from switching from The Master Genealogist was the “witness” function!

M. La Nell: if the option to “Don’t sort the…if there are one or more blank dates” is NOT checked, then events/children/marriages with no dates will be sorted to the top of the list. This is why we added this option. If it is checked, it will leave that event/child/marriage alone and keep it how you manually sorted it.

So what happens to events or children with no dates? In the past, they were sorted to the top, therefore, I used the up/down arrows to place them into the order where they should be.

Wow, really excited to get the new Legacy 8 – eagerly awaiting for it! 🙂

GR
Geoff Rasmussen

11 years ago

Doug – great idea, I’ll add this to the enhancement request database.
DB
Doug Brown

11 years ago

Hi Geoff, what about including the Media Gallery in the global sorting
LL
Linda Ludwig Irish

11 years ago

all these tid-bits about the new version are great and as an already user of the program, am ready for the new version. Quite with the teasing and let us have it! Dragging the release date out is frustrating.
Linda Ludwig Irish
JC
John Calkins

11 years ago

I like the new sorting feature. It will certainly be a time saver in regards to data entry.
GR
Geoff Rasmussen

11 years ago

Leif – you can get what you want right now when you click on the Chronology View. As it is now, your children display this way because it shows the children of the current couple first in the Family View. Then it displays the half-siblings if there are any.
GR
Geoff Rasmussen

11 years ago

Barbara – the sorting will not unlink and relink children from the wrong set of parents, you’d still need to do this manually.
GR
Geoff Rasmussen

11 years ago

Marie – end of the year is still within the realm of “End of the year…or sooner.”
MG
Marie Gale

11 years ago

You’ve been saying Legacy 8 will be “available by the Enid of the year … Or sooner” for months now. Any new updates on when? End of the year (“or sooner”) is quickly approaching!
E
Eileen

11 years ago

This is a very exciting new feature. I and the people I am teaching to use Legacy Family Tree are definitely looking forward to using it soon. The list is getting longer for what we are looking forward to seeing.
JB
Jette Brix

11 years ago

I already have received and read the book. Follow with excitement revelation of all the new features. I can hardly wait. Please, hurry 🙂
BC
Barbara Curtindale

11 years ago

this new sort will hopefully get children of multiple marriages connected to the correct parents by using dates. I find so many users don’t make their corrections, they just keep entering stuff.
LB
Leif Baertelsen

11 years ago

I would like to see children from all marriages sorted by birth date instead of as it is now first from selected marriage and then from other. Maybe as an option. I have some siblings listed as 1946, 1947, 1949, ½ 1941, ½ 1949.
This would be even greater.
RP
Rebecca Pyle

11 years ago

I’m more excited about the shared events! What kept me from switching from The Master Genealogist was the “witness” function!
GR
Geoff Rasmussen

11 years ago

M. La Nell: if the option to “Don’t sort the…if there are one or more blank dates” is NOT checked, then events/children/marriages with no dates will be sorted to the top of the list. This is why we added this option. If it is checked, it will leave that event/child/marriage alone and keep it how you manually sorted it.
ML
M. La Nell Shores

11 years ago

So what happens to events or children with no dates? In the past, they were sorted to the top, therefore, I used the up/down arrows to place them into the order where they should be.
JB
Jemima Buoy

11 years ago

Wow, really excited to get the new Legacy 8 – eagerly awaiting for it! 🙂