Family Trees
 

Hey,

How do you guys keep a record of your family trees? We've used excel sheets, but I'm sure it will get too much for us to manage. How do other chapters deal with this? Is there a program for it? I assume geneology programs which people normally use for family trees wouldn't work for these purposes?

http://www.stlcoplxa.com/wp-content/...ambda-zeta.xls

ZAX,
Adam

I got our chapter started on www.geni.com. It's a pretty simple interface and the last time I updated the tree you could still import profiles from facebook, so everyone's info and picture were automatically filled in.

They also let you export the whole tree into a GEDCOM file so you can take it elsewhere in case they close down or start charging a bunch of money. So far we've got over 150 of our 1000+ brothers in the tree, so lots more work to go! It's a good thing you're starting while the chapter is young; it'll be a lot easier to keep track of.

If you're Office savvy, you can keep them in Excel and import them into Visio. All you need to do is have two columns: column A would be the person, and column B would be the Big (you could also add other information like initiation date etc, but that's not necessary for the basic display view). Then use the Organization Chart Wizard in Visio and it'll automatically make trees. You can choose how they display, as well- you could make a huge one that shows all the history, or display by certain family lines.
ETA: Sorry to crash, just saw this in the main GC area and thought I'd throw my 2 cents in :-)

I couldn't find Visio - is this something that is generally available? Our school has Office 07 installed on all computer, so we do have Office.

I guess I'm a bit spoiled because I've always had the expanded versions of Office. I assumed Visio was part of the standard version. It's a diagramming application that is great for org charts (like this) and process mapping. I suppose you could ask the school tech office if you could get it, or maybe try to find an online geneogy or flowchart site.