Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed - Automated Sorting
September 09, 2013
Long-time Legacy Family Tree users will think they have died and gone to heaven (myself included) after reading about this next Legacy 8 reveal: automated sorting!
Although in real life, children are born in birth order, and people who marry more than once get married in chronological order, as researchers we sometimes do not discover these children or marriages in order.
Marriages
For example, my ancestor, Lorenzo D. Brown, was married to five different women:
- Clarinda Ann Williams
- Ida Parker
- Lottie Hentz
- Rhoda
- Sarah Nermire
Initially, because I did not know when each marriage occurred, I entered each relationship alphabetically. First I added Clarinda, then Ida, then Lottie, and so on. Later I discovered each of the marriage records and I added the new dates and places. Legacy kept the marriages displayed in the original order even though I now had the marriage dates:
In Legacy 7 and earlier, to sort the marriages I had to click on the Sort button.
In Legacy 8 (and beyond...) you will never have to manually sort these again! They are automatically sorted as you add them.
Children
The same is true with the births of children. After adding the 15 known children of Nathan and Anna Brown, if I were to discover a new child, who, according to their birth year fit in as the 9th child, Legacy 8 will automatically sort the child into the correct position.
I know...seems that this new automated sorting feature should have been around for a long time...but it's there now! Horray! You can't tell I'm excited, can you? And this is one of the smaller new Legacy 8 features.
Events
Let's say that I finally found Asa Brown in the 1830 census. Because you have read chapter 5 of my Legacy Family Tree - Unlocked! you understand that this census should be a part of his timeline, so you add the new census event. In the past, any newly-added event would sort to the bottom of the list of events.
In Legacy 8, it will automatically sort to fit in exactly where it belongs:
Did you also notice the age column in the enhanced Events/Facts section above? Great!
Global Sorting
Just in case you have some unsorted children, marriages, or events in your family file, we have also included a new Global Sorting tool in Legacy 8. This is found on the Tools ribbon, in the Tools section:
Clicking on this option brings up this screen:
Just click the "Sort the Selected Lists" button, and Legacy 8 will go through your entire family file and get everything correctly sorted. In those cases where you have a child, marriage, or event without a date, AND you want to keep them in their current order, just select the "Don't sort the..." option and Legacy will leave that family/person alone.
We've worked hard on this new feature and hope that you really like it! So what do you think?
Legacy Family Tree - Unlocked!
See Legacy 8 in action with the new Legacy Family Tree - Unlocked!book by Geoff Rasmussen (that's me)! Get the PDF edition free when you purchase the 236 page paperback. Click here for more information or to purchase.
What are the other new features of Legacy 8?
Here are links to the articles I've previously written:
Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed - Q/A, new Tagging options, and other surprises
Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed - Migration Mapping
Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed - Instant Duplicate Checking
Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed - Shared Events and Automated Sorting
Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed - Potential Problem Alerts and "Gaps of Unusual Size"
Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed - Sources
Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed - Origins and Migration Reports
Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed - New Wall Charts and options
Legacy Family Tree 8 Revealed - Color Coding
When will Legacy 8 be released?
There's still more than one truthful answer to this:
- I'm not really sure, but probably before the end of the year, and hopefully way before then
- When it has been thoroughly tested by our development team and beta testers
But if you are considering downloading either the free or deluxe editions of Legacy, don't wait! Any purchases of Legacy 7.5 from May 8, 2013 forward will receive the new Legacy 8 at no charge. And as always, anyone who has purchased Legacy Deluxe previously will qualify for special discounted upgrade pricing. Get started today - you won't have to relearn everything when Legacy 8 is ready, but you'll get some really nice new features when it is.
Posted by Geoff Rasmussen in Legacy - New in 8 | Permalink
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Comments (16)
Wow, really excited to get the new Legacy 8 - eagerly awaiting for it! :-)
Posted by: Jemima Buoy | September 09, 2013 at 11:00 AM
So what happens to events or children with no dates? In the past, they were sorted to the top, therefore, I used the up/down arrows to place them into the order where they should be.
Posted by: M. La Nell Shores | September 09, 2013 at 11:12 AM
M. La Nell: if the option to "Don't sort the...if there are one or more blank dates" is NOT checked, then events/children/marriages with no dates will be sorted to the top of the list. This is why we added this option. If it is checked, it will leave that event/child/marriage alone and keep it how you manually sorted it.
Posted by: Geoff Rasmussen | September 09, 2013 at 11:14 AM
I'm more excited about the shared events! What kept me from switching from The Master Genealogist was the "witness" function!
Posted by: Rebecca Pyle | September 09, 2013 at 11:47 AM
I would like to see children from all marriages sorted by birth date instead of as it is now first from selected marriage and then from other. Maybe as an option. I have some siblings listed as 1946, 1947, 1949, ½ 1941, ½ 1949.
This would be even greater.
Posted by: Leif Baertelsen | September 09, 2013 at 12:06 PM
this new sort will hopefully get children of multiple marriages connected to the correct parents by using dates. I find so many users don't make their corrections, they just keep entering stuff.
Posted by: Barbara Curtindale | September 09, 2013 at 12:55 PM
I already have received and read the book. Follow with excitement revelation of all the new features. I can hardly wait. Please, hurry :-)
Posted by: Jette Brix | September 09, 2013 at 01:02 PM
This is a very exciting new feature. I and the people I am teaching to use Legacy Family Tree are definitely looking forward to using it soon. The list is getting longer for what we are looking forward to seeing.
Posted by: Eileen | September 09, 2013 at 01:10 PM
You've been saying Legacy 8 will be "available by the Enid of the year ... Or sooner" for months now. Any new updates on when? End of the year ("or sooner") is quickly approaching!
Posted by: Marie Gale | September 09, 2013 at 02:16 PM
Marie - end of the year is still within the realm of "End of the year...or sooner."
Posted by: Geoff Rasmussen | September 09, 2013 at 02:54 PM
Barbara - the sorting will not unlink and relink children from the wrong set of parents, you'd still need to do this manually.
Posted by: Geoff Rasmussen | September 09, 2013 at 03:45 PM
Leif - you can get what you want right now when you click on the Chronology View. As it is now, your children display this way because it shows the children of the current couple first in the Family View. Then it displays the half-siblings if there are any.
Posted by: Geoff Rasmussen | September 09, 2013 at 04:04 PM
I like the new sorting feature. It will certainly be a time saver in regards to data entry.
Posted by: John Calkins | September 09, 2013 at 06:07 PM
all these tid-bits about the new version are great and as an already user of the program, am ready for the new version. Quite with the teasing and let us have it! Dragging the release date out is frustrating.
Linda Ludwig Irish
Posted by: Linda Ludwig Irish | September 10, 2013 at 07:34 AM
Hi Geoff, what about including the Media Gallery in the global sorting
Posted by: Doug Brown | September 12, 2013 at 06:39 AM
Doug - great idea, I'll add this to the enhancement request database.
Posted by: Geoff Rasmussen | September 12, 2013 at 10:19 AM