Legacy user, Khadija, wrote in asking for some tips on how to use Legacy to make their family reunion even more special for everyone.
We are having a family reunion of my mums family, next year in January. My grandparents have passed on, all the people under them will be there. This is what I want to do for the reunion:
1. Have a large family tree for all to see and a small one A4 to give to each family member.
For the large family tree I would do a Descendant Chart starting with your grandparents. All of your cousins will get a kick out of seeing how they fit into the family compared to everyone else. Legacy Charting has many options to customize the chart so you can make it really nice. Once you have it just like you want, you can order your custom chart through using our chart printing service available on the Publish tab. I have ordered charts this way and have been very pleased.
You could just make A4 copies of this chart to pass out to the attendees but if you have the time it would be more fun to personalize the chart to each guest. Instead of creating a descendant chart, create individual four-generation Ancestor Charts with each person as the anchor of their own chart. They will go home with a nice keepsake and hopefully a new-found interest in their family history.
2. A slide show with family pics, with a bit of family history of my grand parents, aunts and uncles.
There are two ways to do this. You can put together a slide show in Legacy using the Picture Scrapbook. You have complete control over which image files are used. Your family will be able to see the caption, date and any notes you have written about each picture. You can set the slide show to advance automatically and you can control the amount of delay between photos. This feature is very easy to work with. This is a great option if you can hook your computer up to a projector and show it on a screen so that everyone can see it.
You can also use the free add-on program Passage Express. Once you download it you can access the program from within Legacy. This program will create a CD (or DVD, or others) with a multimedia presentation on it. You can add text narrative as well as sound narrations to the photos. CDs are cheap and this would be a great surprise to pass out at the reunion. There is also a Deluxe edition of Passage Express available if you are interested in some more advanced options.
3. A family history book
Legacy’s Publishing Center will help you create a family history book. You have complete control over the contents and there are plenty of options so that you can personalize it just like you want. One thing I really like is being able to preview the book as you make changes until you get it just like you want. You can pull any of Legacy’s reports into the book, each report being its own chapter. You can edit each chapter and you also have options that will apply to the entire book as a whole. Legacy has options to include a Title Page, Copyright Notice Page, Dedication Page, Preface Page, Index and more. As with everything in Legacy, you can customize the book to make it your own. You can save the book as a pdf file and most publishing outlets can publish from a pdf file. There are many print on demand companies on the internet such as Lulu and Blurb. You could also just simply put the pdf file on a CD and pass them out at the reunion.
4. The family tree that can be viewed by others of the internet
You can create a gedcom file and upload it to a website such as WikiTree. If you have your own web space, Legacy will create the webpages for you and then you can upload them. There are five different styles of web pages you can create and you have complete control over what is and what isn’t included. Rootsweb offers free web space to genealogists.
5. How can I save the whole family tree on a cloud, my laptop was stolen once, and I lost a lot of info because of that. I do not want that to happen again.
Backing up your family file to cloud storage is a great idea. There are several free cloud storage servers available such as DropBox, OneDrive and GoogleDrive. I back up my files to OneDrive. I keep my ten most current backups and then delete anything older than that. If my computer crashes my backups will be safe. It is important to make regular backups and not wait too long in-between them. Since I work in my file every day I backup my file every day. There is an option to have Legacy remind you to backup your file if you are worried you might forget. Once you tell Legacy where you want to back up your file it will remember it and will continue to back up there until you tell it otherwise.
There are more things that Khadija can do to make the reunion a one-of-a-kind event. How about printing name tags for everyone. You can do that right in Legacy. How fun is this!
Legacy has a customizable Family Questionnaire you can pass out. If you have older attendees this might be your only opportunity to capture this information. Since you will be collecting information on persons still living make sure you have their permission to add the information to your file.
Legacy is much more than a just a genealogy database program.
Thanks to Legacy Support rep, Michele, for this article! She also writes the Ancestoring blog.
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