* Multimedia not appearing in report

[Gogargirl]

I am trying to get documents which are linked as multimedia to an individual, to show in an Individual Narrative Report and have followed all the recommendations here CD with linked multimedia (9506).

However, I don’t particularly want them to show at the bottom with all the source references and it seems nothing shows, other than in picture format. Does this mean that any pdfs or Word documents will not show in a report?

My aim is to create an INR which includes the ‘life story’ of the individual. Some of these stories might be quite long, and I’d like to include pictures in the narrative. I thought the easiest way might be to include the story in a separate document linked as above. As it didn’t work, I’ve also tried inserting the text of the story as an Individual Note – but then I cannot add pictures other than linked to a source, which means they would all be at the bottom of the report where the source references are. Can pictures not be added to an Individual Note?

I’ve also tried creating an event – ‘Life Story’ and placing the text in it as a note. In this way at least pictures appear by the text. But then I cannot work out how to create a heading that looks appropriate to set the life story apart as an event in the report.

Assuming I have made myself clear here, any ideas please?!

[tatewise]

I will try and answer your questions in order.

Yes, only image format Media (.jpg,.png,.gif,etc) appear in Reports, not PDF, Word Docs, Text fies, Audio clips, or Video clips.

Apart from the Media tab, and via Sources, the only other way of adding pictures to a Report is to add them to each Fact via the Facts tab.

Then in the Report Options on the Pictures tab I suggest the following settings.

• Increase all the Max Pics values to 100 to include all Media.
• Set Root/Relative to In Rows Above Text so Individual Media tab pictures appear across the top, and likewise for Spouse(s).
• Set Other to To the Right of the Text so Fact Media pictures appear down the right margin against the narrative, but don't expect the pictures to be aligned with their associated Fact Sentence.

With FH V6 there is much more scope to customise the Narrative Sentences via Tools > Fact Types > Edit > Sentence Template, and you can customise any specific Sentence at the bottom of each Fact to say almost anything you want.

[Gogargirl]

Mike -
Thank you so much for your very swift response.

I have to say that I think your solution is quite clunky and doesn't really do what I want to do. Please don’t misunderstand me - I'm very grateful for your response and suggestions. However, I want to create a family history with much more information than just the events and facts of my ancestors’ lives. To have to create numerous facts in the narrative – and then not to be able to have the pictures aligned to the facts – is a bit weird if I’m telling someone’s life story. This, I think, is a publishing issue, as I ultimately will want to create a CD with many INRs including ‘life stories’.

Every time I attend events at the Society of Genealogists, most people are tending towards writing their family history, rather than just recording the genealogy and the bare bones. Is there no way to put in a custom 'section’ in the report?

Or maybe I've asked the wrong question of FH? Is there another programme that integrates with FH that I could accomplish this with?

I absolutely think that FH is the best genealogy programme out there, but I know that there are people like me who want to publish from it and these hiccups are a real problem. If what I’m after is beyond the scope of this forum and the excellent help it offers, please let me know where to address my requests.

[tatewise]

It is fair to say that FH focusses on recording genealogical history rather than 'life story' report writing.

The only way I can think of to include custom sections is to create a Custom Fact with little or no Sentence Template. Then insert that Custom Fact where you want custom narrative to appear amonst Standard Facts. Whatever text you put in the Sentence box at the bottom of the Custom Fact will appear in the Narrative Report in that position.

The Fact Pictures could have suitable Captions that link them with their associated Fact text.

Have you looked at the Publish > Books feature in which several Reports can be combined and blank pages left for post-procesing. Some users save Reports in Word-processor (RTF) and post-edit them in MS Office Word with varying degrees of success.

Other users may be able to recommend better report writing software that will accept your exported GEDCOM.

[AdrianBruce]

... Does this mean that any pdfs or Word documents will not show in a report?...

This inability to show "linked" PDFs or Word files as text bugged me until I started thinking about it. The summary is that even MS Word won't "embed" a PDF (and I've forgotten whether "embed" is the correct term) and show the text. I just did a simple drag and drop of a PDF into a Word 2010 document and all it does is show the first page of the PDF in the Word document. (If there's a more sophisticated option I've not found it - but that might not be surprising given I don't use Word 2010 to anything like the same level I did 2003 at work.)

This is actually not surprising (this is where the thinking bit comes in, so I hope I've got it right). Essentially, "embedded" files are handed over to their own program when it comes to opening them. If you try to print the Word file with the PDF text getting printed in the middle, how is Word going to know how many pages Acrobat printed? Or how is Acrobat going to know anything about what Word did to set up the print file?

Printing an image is simple because the size and shape of it is defined by a container that stays on one page. It's not possible to define a container for a PDF file inside Word because Word can't read the PDF to see how big it is. (I'm sure I'm over-simplifying).

So, fundamentally, if Word can't print embedded document-type files as part of the print, it's unlikely any simpler program (like FH) can do so.

I suspect that if you want more sophistication with your documents (and why not?), you may need to use a proper word processor or desktop publisher. And then, of course, bang goes any link to your GEDCOM for the latest data. So far I have seen no GEDCOM related software more sophisticated than FH in creating reports - but they are, in effect, reports, not books.

[tatewise]

That is a pretty good explanation, Adrian.
From a human perspective, PDF & Word Docs are just text & pictures, so why can't FH embed them in Reports?
The answer is along the lines that you would not expect Audio or Video Media files to be embedded in an FH Report, and as far as FH is concerned the format of PDF & Word Doc files is just as alien as Audio & Video, whereas the format of image files is well documented and of known limited dimensions that can be shrunk and expanded easily.

The solution, as has been discussed before, is to convert the PDF & Word Docs into Media image files, &/or transcribe the text into FH text fields.

[BobWard]

I use the Individual Summary Report (ISR) format. I am going down the same path as you with my intent to tell a story about each family member.

First of all, all of my media gets imported to FH in JPEG format. When required, I even convert Excel and Word docs to JPEG so that I can bring them into my FH project. Those formats allow me a lot of flexibility to write/display whatever I choose.

For "life stories", I add a"Biography" fact and then use the Notes box to write to my heart's content. Most of my bios are initially written in Word, so that I can have a spell checker. Once I am happy with the text, I just copy the Word text and paste it into the Notes box for the Bio fact.

This approach has worked well for me. I do not use any of the FH templates to generate text. All text in my ISR are handwritten by me. So, my family history is pretty much all handwritten just the way that I want it to be. BTW, I use the Notes box to add a lot personal story telling to numerous Facts, not just the Bios Fact.

[tatewise]

Bob's strategy is very similar to my Custom Fact suggestion on Sun Mar 08, 2015.
An advantage of using the Note box instead of the Sentence box is the biographical text is exported in a standard Gedcom field recognised by most other software. Also, the text can still be integrated into a Narrative Report by making the Sentence Template use the {note} code.

I suspect what Bob forgot to say is that his Individual Summary Report has customised Options that exclude almost everything except his Biography Fact so it only includes the bigraphical notes.

However, that does not answer the orginal question of how to integrate Multimedia into the Report associated with the Facts.

[AdrianBruce]

My only current thought about positioning pictures in a sensible position in a report from FH would be to stick some placeholder text into the note for the appropriate fact - part of the text would locate the multimedia needed at that point. Then, once the report has been produced, do some post-processing to locate the placeholders, extract the multimedia location and insert the corresponding multimedia at that point. One obvious possibility would be to do this post-processing as a VBA module called from MS Word. Fine if you have it - not so good if you don't or have forgotten your Visual Basic for Applications.

[tatewise]

That is a possible solution, but does not work so easily for Media with Face Frames that are only part of the image.

[treesearcher]

I have used a PDF to Jpeg converter program (http://www.pdftojpgconverter.com). Perhaps this may help?

[BobWard]

Posted by tatewise: "I suspect what Bob forgot to say is that his Individual Summary Report has customised Options that exclude almost everything except his Biography Fact so it only includes the bigraphical notes."

No, I don't have any options selected that exclude anything, at least not to my knowledge. From what I see, the FH sentence templates (for Facts) are, by default, deactivated when using the ISR format, so I do not have to worry about the program generating unwanted text. I have a long list of different Facts added to each individual, e.g., Birth, Death, Marriage, Residences, Graduation, Military, Occupation, etc. As needed, I use the Note box for each of the different Facts to add a little "color commentary" for that particular Fact. I attach all sorts of jpeg media to Facts to serve as Source documents.

My biggest problem comes about when I export the FH ISR as a Rich Text Format file to Word (so that I can do final customized formatting and spell checking before printing). Sometimes the jpeg images come across in a different size or location. I seem to have a little trouble resizing and re-positioning those images in Word to get them exactly where I want them.

[tatewise]

Sorry, Bob, my mistake. I assumed you were proposing a biographical story-line report style that Gogargirl was discussing. The ISR with all the normal Facts, is nothing like a story-line book.

[BobWard]

Sorry, Bob, my mistake. I assumed you were proposing a biographical story-line report style that Gogargirl was discussing. The ISR with all the normal Facts, is nothing like a story-line book.

Without actually seeing an example of what she is trying to achieve, I could be mis-interpreting the format appearance of her objective. However, the bios that I use in my ISR approach are, in some cases, 10 to 15 pages long for one individual, and, do present, in my opinion, a very detailed story of the person's life. The additional Notes that I add to various Facts just enhance the "story-line" for each individual.

Perhaps her goal is to just have a lengthy text discussion of each person's life, without cluttering up the presentation with an assortment of FH generated Facts added into the mix. Using my approach, I think that could be achieved by just introducing the single Biography Fact and then write a lengthy story in the Note box. I am sure that there are more sophisticated ways to do the same thing, but I am not an experienced enough FH user to know how to accomplish alternate work-flows. I sort of arrived at my approach through Trial & Error until I got something that satisfied my needs.

[tatewise]

All the earliest postings were about Individual Narrative Reports that are mostly pictures and plain text Sentences that read like a biographical story, especially if Source Citations and perhaps Children details are omitted. The Sentences are the ones you see at the bottom of each Fact of the Facts tab in the Property Box, and that can be customised per single Fact or globally via the Tools > Fact Types > Edit > Sentence Template dialogue, which has been significantly enhanced in FH V6.

Gogargirl wants to know how far that Sentence customisation can go, and how to associate Multimedia with the Fact Sentences in the Report.

On the other hand, Individual Summary Reports need to be heavily customised, as you say by excluding all except the Biography Fact, to achieve anything like a story-line without extraneous Report style Facts.

Bob, when considering your Report options did you try Narrative Reports? If so, why do you still prefer Individual Summary Reports?

[BobWard]

Bob, when considering your Report options did you try Narrative Reports? If so, why do you still prefer Individual Summary Reports?

Yes, I did experiment with the Narrative report option. But, it uses the FH sentence templates, which I do not like due to all the awkward grammar that it automatically introduces in one huge block of text with no paragraph formatting.

I really liked the organization format of the Individual Summary Report, i.e., it provides a nicely organized & formatted list of all the Individual Events & Attributes, which I do like. The flexibility of having that organized list (with referenced Source media), along with presenting all the descriptive text that I input to the Notes boxes for each Fact, provides a very acceptable report format for my needs. We all have different preferences, but this approach works for me.

The only missing option (for me) in the ISR format is my inability to get the Source number to appear along with the Source description under all my Source documents, e.g., it might list St. Elizabeth Hospital Photo, Lafayette, IN, Oct 2006, instead of 1. St. Elizabeth Hospital Photo, Lafayette, IN, Oct 2006, when using the Source location option "At end of record on a new page".

[tatewise]

Narrative Report Grammar:
The awkward grammar can generally be overcome either by customising the Sentence Template in the Fact definition (which affects all instances of that Fact) or by customising the Sentence box at the bottom of any specific Fact in its Facts tab of the Property Box. An extreme case of this is to put just the {note} code in the Sentence Template and write the entire sentence text in the Note box which can include layout characters such as new line and tab.

Narrative Report Line Breaks:
This can often be overcome in FH V5 by inserting a blank line or two in the Fact local Note box and adding the {note} code to the start of the Sentence box. Although, this can change the first letter of the sentence to lower case, so an extra word needs to be inserted such as Then or Later or Sadly.
It has been improved in FH V6 with Formatting Codes for New line and New paragraph in the Sentence Templates, although there are still a few teething problems.

Source Record Id
I suspect by 'Source number' you are referring to Source Record Id. A workaround could be to use the Custom Id field and populate it with the Record Id by using Tools > Work with Record Identifiers. Although when you tick the Report Options > Sources > Custom Id it includes the words Custom Id: in the report. Alternatively, if you do not use the Publication Info field, copy the Record Id into there and it appears in parentheses in the report.