Program Description

Ancestral Author helps you document your genealogical research by creating illustrated genealogy books in hyperlinked Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). It automatically extracts genealogical ancestor and descendant reports from GEDCOM files. In addition, it extracts a list of sources and references, and a full name index. With a few simple directives, these can be organized into chapters, and placed in a document with a title page, a table of contents, chapter and section headings, etc. Photographs can be included to document your research and add visual appeal. The end result is an easily created, beautifully crafted genealogy book documenting your family history. And since the document is in the Adobe PDF format, it can be read by anyone, regardless of the type of computer they have. PDF files can be sent through email, stored on a website, placed on a CD, or printed on high quality paper. PDF files are particularly well suited for browsing on a computer. Ancestral Author creates hyperlinks, which allow you to click on a name in the document, and jump immediately to the page on which that person appears. This makes it very easy to browse genealogical relationships. Instead of paging through the document to find the children of an individual, just click on a child's name, and you jump immediately to that page. Or click on a parent, and you are brought to the page documenting the parent. Ancestral Author was designed at the outset to be very simple to use. It uses a wizard style user interface to walk you through the process of creating a genealogy document. An online tutorial shows you how to get started, and help is always available from support@ancestralauthor.com.