Tuesday's Tips provide brief how-to's to help you learn to use the Legacy Family Tree software with new tricks and techniques.
Options: View (Beginner)
Previous articles in this series:
Customize Legacy
Options: General Settings
Options: Data Entry
Options: Data Format
Options: Date Defaults
Options: Dates
Options: Locations
Options: Sources
The next section in the Customize Legacy menu is Options > Customize > 8. View
8.1 Birth and Death Years on Names (ff)
This simple puts a life range (1855-1902) next to the person's name in these lists. I always have this turned on to make it easier to tell people with the same name apart.
8.2 Display Numbers on Names (ff)
This works like the life range in the previous option but in this case it you are appending the name with any of the possible numbers you have entered into Legacy. The first section governs whether you see this on the Family, Pedigree, and Descendant Views and the second section covers RINs specifically on Name Lists.
8.3 Ancestor Color Coding (ff)
This one is explained in Ancestor Colors. You can also get to the settings screens by going to Tools > Set Ancestor Colors.
8.4 Short Location Names on Screens (ff)
On the Master Location List you can enter long and short location names. For example, in my file you will see:
Long – Purvis, Lamar, Mississippi, United States
Short – Purvis, Lamar County, Mississippi
How you format this is totally up to you. This option will display your short locations on screens. This does not affect reports. Reports have their own option to use short locations.
8.5 Child Columns on Family View (ff)
This is one you need to play with. Different people like their Children's List to be formatted in different ways. The Grid List option puts the information in columns (which you can edit) similar to the Index View. 1, 2, 3, or Best Fit columns only displays the minimum amount of info (name, RIN if selected, Life Span if selected, and symbols for marriage and children if selected).
Include half-siblings will show you ALL of the children from all of the marriages from that couple being displayed. If the child comes from another marriage they will have 1/2 before their name and after their name it will have the name of their other biological parent. Some people like to see all of the children like this and some people don't. I am a don't. I like to think in terms of nuclear families which is easier for my pea brain to process.
8.6 User Interface Style (gbl)
This one allows you to show elements on the screen as Flat or 3-dimensional. If you have a really slow computer you will want to set this as Flat as it takes more RAM to draw the 3-D elements.
8.7 Default Family View Labels and Report Wording (ff)
To see these options you need to click the Edit Default Marriage Wording button and now you will see this:
These are global settings that will affect your entire file. You can also change these on an individual basis by opening the couple's marriage screen and selecting the Wording Options tab.
8.8 Master Location List Style (ff)
As of the time this article was published, mapping is currently not available.
8.9 Picture of Main Person (ff)
These are "mug shot" photos that you see on the Family View and Pedigree View. Normally the photos you have in the Individual category in the person's Media Center are pictures of the person themselves. All other photos should be attached to the event that they pertain to. If you don't have an Individual photo you can opt to use any photo that is in the Media Gallery or you can opt to have a blue or pink silhouette display.
8.10 Show Status on Family View (ff)
If you have given someone a Marriage Status, usually divorced, this option will allow you to see this status in parentheses after the marriage date. Normally, if you want to show the marriage status you want to exclude showing the status of "married" because then you will have a status on everyone in your file that has been married.
On Children will show the child's status in parentheses such as (twin). Legacy comes with default statuses but you can always add your own custom ones. You can do this in a couple of places but the easiest is View > Master Lists > Marriage Status (and Child Status).
8.11 Monitor Potential Problems (ff)
How to use Potential Problems is an entire blog post in itself. Suffice to says that this screen simply allows you chose to see the Potential Problems icons on the various screens in Legacy and you can edit the settings by clicking the Change Potential Problem Settings. You can get to this same settings screen by going to Tools > Potential Problems.
8.12 Aunt, Uncle, Niece, Nephew Terms (gbl)
This is a simple wording choice between seeing Great-Aunt vs. Grand-Aunt on relationships.
8.13 Perform Background Legacy Hints (ff)
You can choose to show the Hints icons on the various screens in Legacy and you can change the settings by clicking Select Background Hints. When you do, the following screen appears:
You will have to use the scroll bar to see all four of the hint options, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, Find My Past, and GenealogyBank. The options are pretty self-explanatory but you can consult the Help File if needed.
8.14 Prompt Style (gbl)
This options changes the wording on all screens. For example, if you choose the Gender-Neutral option, instead of seeing Add Husband and Add Wife you will see Add Spouse.
Next time we will look at Options > Customize > Colors.
Find tech tips every day in the Facebook Legacy User Group. The group is free and is available to anyone with a Facebook account.
For video tech tips check out the Legacy Quick Tips page. These short videos will make it easy for you to learn all sort of fun and interesting ways to look at your genealogy research.
Michele Simmons Lewis, CG® is part of the Legacy Family Tree team at MyHeritage. She handles the enhancement suggestions that come in from our users as well as writing for Legacy News. You can usually find her hanging out on the Legacy User Group Facebook page answering questions and posting tips.
Comments (0)