Custom Coloring for Charts

Published on: 16 May 2011

Progeny’s Charting Companion includes a handy coloring feature that lets you assign a unique, custom color combination to any person in your family tree. Three colors each describe the text, background and border.

Border, text and background colors

Custom colors can be used to represent place of origin, medical condition, occupation, military history, etc.

You can explicitly assign individual color combinations to an individual by adding a “user-defined event” with the name of “COLOR”. The description of the user-defined event consists of the names of the Background, Text and Border colors (aka. Fill, Text and Outline). The advantage of using an event is that the information is permanently stored, and does not have to be re-entered every time the chart is created.

The colors can be expressed as Red/Green/Blue (RGB) values, HTML Color Codes, or color names. Ex:

RGB 255,0,0 0,0,0 0,255,0
HTML #FF0000 #000000 #00FF00
Color name Red Black Green
Mixed 255,0,0 Black #00FF00

Here is how to add a user-defined event in some of the popular genealogy programs.

Personal Ancestral File

PAF Companion will read PAF data directly and create a variety of charts.

To create a new event type, first define the event. Click on “Edit, Individual, Options, New Event/Attribute, New”, and define the COLOR event. You only need to do this once.

Defining new event type in PAF

Next, add a COLOR event to an individual. Click on “Edit, Individual, Options, New Event/Attribute”, scroll to “COLOR”, click on “Select” and add the color description:

Adding a custom color to an individual

 

Family Tree Maker

Charting Companion for FTM will read FTM data directly and create a variety of charts.

Click on “Edit, Manage Facts, New” and define the COLOR event:

Defining a custom fact in Family Tree Maker

Next, select the individual, and click on “Edit Person”, click on the ‘+’ or press F4 (Add Fact):

Adding a color to an individual in FTM

Legacy

Legacy Charting Companion will read Legacy data directly and create a variety of charts.

Click on “Edit, Name, Add”:

 

Adding color event in Legacy

 

New FamilySearch

Charting Companion for FamilySearch will read FamilySearch data directly and create a variety of charts.

Click on “Details, Add Information”, check “Other”:

Adding color event in New FamilySearch – step 1

Click on “Continue”, and define the colors:

 

Adding color event in New FamilySearch – step 2

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