Create and Edit a Book

Create and Edit a Book 150 150 Heredis Help Knowledgebase

Your family tree has grown and you wish to share your findings with your family. The Ancestors or Descendants books are perfect for getting the interest of cousins or other relatives, even if they know nothing about genealogy.

You can edit written books to tell your genealogy. From the information you have gathered in your file, Heredis generates a complete book in written form and automatically adapts the vocabulary to the data type. This book includes cover page, dedication, acknowledgments, preface and introduction.

The written books offered in Heredis are elaborated according to the recommendations of the author of the Filiatus software. The presentation and the writing are particularly careful. Written in the style of the genealogy dictionaries of olden times (Father Anselme or Dictionary of the nobility), their presentation is nevertheless friendly and comprehensible by all, even neophytes on the subject.

The ancestors of each character are analyzed in all seams, to detect possible cousinings and to create the branches and sub-branches corresponding to the family structure studied.

Heredis puts two types of book at your disposal, books written from the primary person and books of the type «dictionary» based on all your genealogy.

With Heredis 2022, the book Families from my village has appeared. See the article Families from my village for more details.

The books written from the primary person

  • Ancestors by generation
  • Descendants by branch
  • Clan: in this document, Heredis builds up the close family around the primary person: spouses, parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents, brothers and sisters, cousins, children, grandchildren …

Diagram of the individuals included in the Clan

The “dictionary” type books

  • Patronymic dictionary: Heredis searches all men at the beginning of branches, classifies them by surname and generates their patrony­mic descent (this dictionary is inspired by René Jetté’s «Genealogical Dictionary of Families»).
  • Genealogical dictionary: Heredis takes all individuals from your genealogy file, sorted alphabetically.
    You can attach to these books, genealogical tables and a complete index of individuals, professions and places mentioned.

(Mac) Books choices

(Windows) Books choices

Creating a Book

  1. Choose (Windows) Reports menu > Books; (Mac) Documents menu > Books; or click the Books button in the toolbar.
  2. Select the document type from the list on the left.
  3. Select the appropriate graphic theme in the viewer.
  4. Click on Detailed options button and view the different tabs to choose the appropriate construction parameters for your document.

The tabs and options are the same on Mac and Windows. The only difference is the color of the selections because the Mac system highlights in blue color what Windows puts in gray.

Detailed options

The presentation and content options can be selected from the various tabs. Changes made to a theme are memorized for future use of the same theme.
By default, the book construction screen opens in simplified mode. Only the most common options are displayed. To view all available options, click the Detailed Options button at the bottom of this screen.

Note: In detailed mode, the label of this button changes to Simplified Options, allowing you to return to simple mode at any time.

  • Click the Structure tab.
    • Check the information to be included: photo album, header and foo­ter data, private data.
    • Choose where to place notes, at the bottom of the page, at the end of the section or in the text.
    • Limit your document. Indicate the number of generations desired, limit to a surname, place, edit your document in several volumes.
    • Choose how to present sources: Quoting sources, Complete sources, or No Sources

Note: Depending on the type of document selected, some of the options mentioned above do not appear.

  • Click the Front Cover tab.
    • Check the boxes for the information to be included on the cover.
    • Modify the title, add a subtitle, indicate who is the author.
    • Insert a picture to customize the cover, click on + button at the bottom right to add a picture.

  • Click the Persons tab.
    • Choose the surname and given name formats.
    • Check the boxes to add Prefix, Suffix and Nickname if you entered these fields.
    • Check the boxes to include the following information: pictures, child status, signature, notessundry links, calculated data (ahnentafel number, duration of marriage, Stepfamilies, Consanguinity degree precise the maximum wantred degree).
    • Tick the corresponding boxes to include in the document the spouses of each child and whether or not they have descendants.

  • Click the Events/Facts tab
    • Choose the date format. Check the Use Gregorian Dates box to display all dates in this calendar, regardless of the calendar in which they were entered.
    • Choose the place style from the drop-down menu. Select which elements of the places you want to display in the document from the ones you have entered. Check the box Include subdivision to give more precision to the place.
    • Select which events to include: minor events (other than birth, death and marriage event), facts.
    • For each event, tick the corresponding boxes to specify witnesses, age at the event and notes.
    • Check the option Show Missing Data to have it completed by your family.

  • Click the Style tab
    • Tick the box to Divide text into Colums by page for your book.
    • Choose the formatting of the book: font, text size
    • Click on the colored button to choose colors for general data (Color), title, specific colors for men, women and numbers
    • Click on the colored button to choose the color of title background, color and thickness of borders of the document.

(Mac) Select the word processor with which you want to edit the docu­ment. Heredis offers you all programs that enable editing and ins­talled on your computer.

(Windows) Heredis will launch the software by default for .docx files. Make sure you have a word processor by default overwise the document won’t open. It will be saved in Documnets > BSD Concept > Heredis > Heredis Genealogical Reports but won’t open. You’ll be able to open it once you’ll have a word processor.

  • Click Edit to start the word processor.

Important: Once your book is created it becomes an independant document from Heredis. You can modify it in your word processor. If you encounter {XE} tags in your book, it is not due to Heredis, see {XE “xxxxxxxxxx Names” } tags in your documents, what to do? article.

Info • Indexes are not directly integrated with books because each word processor handles them in a specific way. However, index entries are marked so that you can generate an index after the docu­ment is created and opened in your word processor. Put the cursor where you want and generate the index:

  • in Word, menu Insert > Tables and Index or References> Insert Index
  • in LibreOffice, menu Insert > Indexes and Tables

Mac Note: The text editor Page doesn’t manage index.

Print or Export Books

Once the book is created, you can print it from your word processor. Generally, then click on the File menu > Print.

From your word processor, you can save in a format other than . docx, for example in .pdf. Click the File menu > Save As, change the format (the operation differs from one word processor to another), choose the save location and click Save or OK depending on the software.

For more details, refer to the user manual of your word processor or printer for printing configuration.

Note: Heredis is optimized for Microsoft Office (paid) or LibreOffice (free) word processing available for download. Heredis is compatible with Microsoft Office for Windows as from Office 2016 and for Mac as from Office 2019. As for LibreOffice, it is important that you have the latest version installed and not an older one.