Split your research into multiple parts
If your tree is growing too many branches, follow Nick Peers’ instructions to…
Reader David Roberts got in touch with the following question: “I have a large number of people in my Family Tree Maker 2019 (FTM) tree and would like to section parts of it off into new trees. How do I detach people to make individual trees from them?”
The good news is that Family Tree Maker 2019 has a tool to make the process a straightforward one. It assumes you want to take a single individual and produce a tree containing their direct blood relations – basically themselves, their siblings and ancestors, plus all blood descendants. Spouses are also included, but spousal ancestral lines (your husband’s/wife’s parents, for example) are excluded.
Create a new standard tree
To create such a tree, open the Person menu and choose ‘Export Branch…’. A list of everyone in your tree will appear. Start typing your ancestor’s name to quickly locate them in the list. Use the syntax as shown in the screenshot above where I’m bringing up my great-grandfather Henry Hirons by typing hirons, h.
Select your person and click Next. Leave the ‘Output format’ dropdown menu set to ‘Family Tree Maker 2019’ if you’re creating the tree for your own use.
There are also options for the 2014 and 2017 versions of FTM, plus the GEDCOM format, if you’re sharing the tree with someone else.
The tree will be called something like ‘Henry Hirons Family Tree’, which you can change if you wish. Beneath the ‘filename’ field is a series of tickboxes – the defaults are fine when creating a tree for your own use but tick ‘Privatize living people’ if you’re producing a file to share outside your close family.
Click Next again and wait while the new tree is created. Once done, click Next for a third time to see three options: leave the first one ticked to open the file in FTM to review it, then click Finish to save the file before it opens in a separate window to your current tree. If you’re happy with the result, you can repeat for other people in your tree. If not, read on.
Limit the number of generations
For greater control over which people are included in your new tree, choose File, Export. Click ‘Selected individuals’ to view a list of all the people in your tree. Next, choose your ancestor and click the ‘Ancestors >’ button. Here you can limit the number of ancestral generations to include. So, for example, you could set the number to 2 to only include that person’s parents and grandparents, as shown in the screenshot below. Choose File, Export if you want to select specific people to include in a new tree.
Individuals matching the criteria you’ve set will appear in the right-hand pane, ready to be added to your new tree. You’ll see options for adding (and removing) individuals, letting you prune this tree precisely. Click the Help button for a detailed description of what each option does. Once you’re happy with your selection, click Apply followed by OK to complete the process and save a new file.