Class: THE GENVIEWER
PROGRAM
©Copyright 2007 by Donald
R. Snow
Return to Don's
Class
Listings page or to the home page of Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group . This page was last
updated 13 Apr 2007.
WELCOME
AND INTRODUCTION TO CLASS
- Instructors are Donald R. and
Diane M. Snow, 801-225-7123 in Provo, Utah and
435-673-1932 in St. George, Utah (snowd@math.byu.edu, dms34@juno.com)
and Gerhard Ruf, Provo, Utah, 801-225-6106 (gruf@byu.edu)
- These
notes with active Internet links are posted on the
Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group website - http://uvtagg.org
under Class Outlines, Don's Listings.
ABOUT GENVIEWER
- GENViewer is a very fast and powerful genealogy
database viewer (not an
editor)
for PAF,
GEDCOM, and other types of genealogy databases.
- Searches
databases (GEDCOM's, PAF files, and other
formats) to analyze, examine, and sort the data in
several ways that other
programs
cannot
- Very helpful for finding individuals
matching prescribed
conditions in one or *all databases in a folder*
- Views
it has: General, Individual, Family, Pedigree, Descendants,
List, Highlighted, Islands, Sources, Internet
- Prints
some reports in formats not available in PAF or other programs
- Reads temple
submission (.sub) files -- special kinds of GEDCOM files with
a different extension
- Searchs several family history web sites, including http://www.familysearch.org and
http://www.rootsweb.com, for names you select
INSTALLING,
SETTING OPTIONS,
AND OPENING DATABASES IN GENVIEWER
- Commercial program from http://mudcreeksoftware.com/
-- current version (Apr 2007) is GENViewer1.21
- Costs $20, but you can use the full version free for 15 days
or use the "lite" version free forever, but that has many features
disabled
- FHC's
can contact the author at the URL above to get permission
to
install the FHC version free on all their computers
- See web site for versions that work on databases
produced by
other
programs, e.g. Legacy and Family Tree Maker
- Installation
file (2,200 MB) -- download it to the Desktop, for
example, and install it by clicking on the icon
- After
installation, click on Tools/Options and set the options
you
want; e.g. "Use LDS Information" and "After individual's name use RIN"
- Be sure that "Reload Last File Viewed" is unchecked, since
otherwise problem databases always reload and you can't get out of them
- To open a database,
click on File/Open, then select folder and
database -- it will remember the selected folder until changed later
- Help screens are available for most questions -- click on
Help
and go to User Manual
VIEWS
(TABS ACROSS THE
TOP)
- GENERAL VIEW
- Shows
information about the file -- origin, date, name and
address, how many individuals, families, notes, sources, and how long
it took to import the file -- super fast, usually in hundredths of a
second, even for large files
- INDIVIDUAL
VIEW
- Shows data for individuals including all
events, marriages,
and children of that marriage
- Columns
show N (for notes), S (for sources), type
of Event, Date, Information, and Age of
individual at time of that event -- can change the width of these
columns by using the mouse to drag the separators
between headings
- Events can be sorted in two ways:
- 1. "Logically" by event -- RIN, Name, Birth,
Christening, Death, Burial, Marriages with children of that marriage
- 2. Chronologically for
those events that have a
date -- put a check in the box to sort chronologically
- "Abt [year]" are sorted in order if you have them, but don't know the exact date yet
- Shows
the order of all children born, e.g. John Pack named his
children by polygamous wives 1853-1860 in alphabetical order
-- can't show this in many other programs, e.g. PAF
- Moving the scroll bar
near the top of the screen changes the individual
shown in whichever view you are looking at -- drag the scroll bar,
click on pick arrows, or click in gray area to jump several RIN's
- Notes and sources show in panels below -- can move the separator bar between notes and
sources to widen one or the other window
- Shows
date near top when data was last modified
- Can click on
the X (left panel next to Directory) to close
that frame so you see more columns
- Clicking on
father, mother, spouse, or child jumps you to that
person in the file
- FAMILY
VIEW
- Shows husband and wife, their parents,
and children (3
generations total)
- Dragging the scroll bar
across top changes family and details
instantly
- PEDIGREE
VIEW
- Pedigree view shows 5 generations or else 4
generations plus
siblings and children of "root" person
- Dragging
scroll bar across the top changes root person and
pedigree so you see at a glance the pedigrees (up to 5 generations) in the database
- DESCENDANTS VIEW
- Can set
how many levels of descendants you want to show and
the number of spaces to indent each generation
- Numbers in front of the entries indicate the generation
of that descendant
- Can change columns shown by
clicking on Columns button and
selecting whatever items you want, e.g. age at death, number of
descendants, or relationships
- Notation [2 of 5] indicates second
spouse of five; RIN's are in the square brackets [...]
- If the individual's birth or
death field has only the year in
it, the age shows as "~73" which means about 73
years old; if
birth year is not entered, there is no age shown; a
negative number in the parents row indicates how old they were when the
child was born
- LIST
VIEW
- Shows columns of data -- can
choose columns from 68 choices -- click on Columns button
- More data
items to select from than most genealogy programs
- Click on any column heading sorts data by that column -- second click there reverses the sort
- Can use
this to sort by date, place, age, relationship, etc. -- very helpful
- Put a check by "Move to Active
Individual in List" to
have it go to the currently active individual.
- Including columns of Common Ancestor and
Relationship allows
clicking on any individual and showing everyone's relationship to that
person and the common ancestor of those two individuals -- very
helpful to see who's related and how
- RIN column
gives
the RIN's from PAF or the GEDCOM -- Index
Numbers are consecutive numbers in GENViewer and won't be the same as
RIN's, if any RIN's are skipped
- Some GEDCOM's
contain a Reference number for each individual,
e.g. Ancestry.com -- these can also be shown in a column, if desired
- Quick Find ("hand" icon in upper left and also
up on tool
bar) -- opens Quick Find and Advanced Find menus which include seeing
the data sorted in several ways, even sorted by given names
- Square brackets in a birth date, death date, or death place
field, means the data was a christening, burial date, or
burial place, respectively
- Sorting on various columns is very helpful to find things that need correcting,
e.g. dates that don't make sense
- HIGHLIGHTED
VIEW
- Will discuss this View below in Searches
- ISLANDS VIEW
- Shows
how many "trees" or "islands" are in the database and
who is in each -- top part shows list of the islands, bottom part shows
who is in each
- "Root" person shown is lowest RIN
for that island --
click to move to him in database so views are for him
- Can
show whichever data columns you want for these
islands
- Can see how individuals in the island
are related to each
other by
showing
columns for Common Ancestor and Relationship and then moving down the
list until you see that everyone, or at least most,
have a relationship -- then you can tell if the island is a descendant
group from one person or ancestors of an individual, and you may be
able to see which individual you need to connect to the main database
- If you want to use data from just one island, click on
"Use
Island", and click on the island you want -- all views then are just
for that island
- When starting with a GEDCOM you can export any island or decompose the entire file into each of its islands without
disturbing the original GEDCOM
- SOURCES VIEW
- Lists all
sources used in the database
- Columns show
title, author, publication, info, etc., and the
information can be sorted by any column, but the columns can't be
changed
- Boxes show which sources have texts,
repositories, etc., with details in the panels below
- INTERNET
VIEW
- Does searching for selected name on
10-12 Internet
sites, including familysearch.org, Ancestry.com, Rootsweb.com, and
Google
- Puts the name you have highlighted into
the search engine and
shows the hits you got
- Very helpful for searching the Interent
SEARCHES IN A SINGLE
DATABASE OR ACROSS
SEVERAL
DATABASES
- Searching across all databases in a
folder is a very
powerful feature not in
other programs (as far as I know - DRS) -- can use this
feature to
search through your Master File and all your working files for a
particular condition or individual
- Find,
Quick Find, and Advanced Find allow finding an individual
by surname, given name, RIN, etc. -- click on arrow to go to next or
previous hit
- Click
on View/Highlighting Panel or View/File Panel -- both open
frame on left for
setting up combinations of up to 10 conditions,
e.g. born in XX and spouse is named YY, and Text in Notes Does Not
Contains ZZ -- easy to set up searches -- gives results like PAF's Focus/Filter
- Set
the conditions in left column with AND, or OR, or NOT --
select file or directory with the database, and click Find -- it goes
through that database, or all databases in the folder and/or
subfolders, and finds everyone matching that
combination of conditions
- When
searching through several databases, it shows the
databases and the names that match the conditions -- can click
on any one to open that database and see that individual
- Very
handy tool to find individuals satisfying given criteria
across several databases
- Names satisfying the conditions show in yellow in all views
(except Highlighted View, where they are white), so you can see
all
individuals satisfying that condition in any view.
- In
Highlighted View you only see those selected and can set
columns the way you want and
sort on any column to view, print, or save to CSV (comma separated
values) file -- helpful to
find
earliest occurrence of some event in the selected group, e.g. submission to some database
multiple times
PRINTING
AND EXPORTING
- Has various options for printing: preview, print to printer,
print to file, and save "to clipboard" to paste the list elsewhere
- Can set options
for the output such as show separation lines or shade
backgrounds
- Option in Copy to Clipboard icon to export any view to a CSV file for importing into a
spreadsheet or
elsewhere
- Can
use this to set up a spreadsheet of all your data to sort by
Soundex on Surname first, then Soundex on Given Name second -- this is a helpful
report to find duplicates in a large database
SETTING
UP A
SELF-RUNNING GEDCOM
- Sets up a GEDCOM so clicking on it
shows the data in GENViewer
format without having GENViewer installed on that machine -- the
program is free for anyone to use to make a self-viewing GEDCOM
on a CD
- Click on Tools/Make a Self-Viewing
GEDCOM -- can select which
name you want to come up first and can elect to have the GEDCOM
extractable or just viewable
CONCLUSIONS
- GENViewer is very fast and is a very
handy tool
for working with
FH
databases
- Has several other features
not discussed here
ASSIGNMENT
- Download and install the evaluation version of
GENViewer.
- For the List view, change
the columns to show the 5 places -
birth, christening, marriage, death, and burial, so you can see what cleaning up of place names
you need to do in your database. (Alphabetizing on any of
these
columns shows where some of the problems are.)
- Set
up a combination of conditions, e.g. given name is Edward and
they were
born in [some state] before 1900, and search through all files
in a folder for that combination of conditions.
Return to Don's
Class
Listings page or to the home page of Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group .