Making sense of relationship is difficult and I had always wanted to make a family tree to map all the relationships.
I wanted to use this work-less lockdown time creating a family tree of both my father's and mother's side. I basically had following requirements.
I wanted to use this work-less lockdown time creating a family tree of both my father's and mother's side. I basically had following requirements.
- Should be compact
- Should be easy to add new member with time
- Should be easily sharable on the web
- Should be able to view list by age (to know who is elder or younger and to know the thakali of the family)
- Should be editable by others if required
I could do it manually in paper but it was time consuming and won't last long. I then tried out some softwares to map the family tree.
One of those was Gramps. It was feature rich opensource software. I can among other add unlimited amount of family members and their own family tree up to the extent possible. It also allows me to view ancestors and descendants of a particular person. While it exceeds my expectations in many things it was not able to fulfill my requirements espacially No 1, 3 and 5. The final family tree was not compact enough and although it can produce output for publishing to web, republishing the output for just updates is major pain in ass [which may be because I am not computer expert]
After lots of hit and trial I settled with Goggle Sheets template I created. While it may not be the best solution, I built it with my requirements in my mind and was able to achieve my requirements mentioned earlier.
- The Google sheet I used is compact.
- I can add new members any time
- I can publish the sheets as page or other can view and comment on the sheets. (even edit it, if I grant permission). I can hide private data like contact no, DOB while publishing
- I can sort it date wise, use filters
Point to note is there is a way to create a family tree in google sheet using organizational chart template. But while it resembles a true family tree, I didn't find it useful enough for large family in terms of visibility and content.
Here is the completed family tree. Hopefully this can be a template for others as well.
But convenience I missed was I can only make family tree of one lineage per project and cannot create a connected family trees. For example while I can add my wife to the tree as spouse I cannot add my in laws. If this is bad then you should use the software method. I have added all the free software that can be use to maintain the family tree. If anyone wants to use the excel sheet they can do that by saving a copy for themselves.
Some softwares for making Family tree. Although I have tried Gramps only all the others are free.
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