Class:  THE GENVIEWER PROGRAM

©Copyright 2007 by Donald R. Snow

• Welcome
• About GENViewer
• Installing, Setting Options, and Opening Databases in GENViewer
• Views (Tabs Across the Top)
• Searches in a Single Database or Across Several Databases
• Printing and Exporting
• Setting Up a Self-Running GEDCOM
• Conclusions
  
• Assignment

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.

• 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)

1. 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
2. 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
3. FAMILY VIEW
   • Shows husband and wife, their parents, and children (3 generations total)
   • Dragging the scroll bar across top changes family and details instantly
4. 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
5. 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
6. 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
     
7. HIGHLIGHTED VIEW
   • Will discuss this View below in Searches
8. 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
9. 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
     
10. 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

1. Download and install the evaluation version of GENViewer.
   
2. 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.)
3. 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 .