Printing large format trees

Well, my Christmas project of putting together an "all-in-one" family
tree has created a very large printout.

I'm using FTM 2006 and the printout want to be about 24" by 10 feet
long! I would really like to be able to format this to a large
blueprint sized poster and would like some help.

Is FTM capable of formatting an ALL-in-One tree to this size? Haven't
seemed to be able to find that feature!

ALSO...is it possible to print out a small "fits on one sheet of
paper" (either letter or legal, portrait or landscape) diagram of my
"all-in-one" tree to get an idea of it's overall design? I realize the
writing may be so small as not to be readible, but it would help to
visualize the larger, actual printout....
TIA!

Charlie Hoffpauir...

Yes, FTM should be able to do this, but you may need special printer
software to go with FTM. I was making PDF charts much larger than that
when I was using FTM version 8 several years ago.... I installed Adobe
Acrobat, and used Acrobat to print to a PDF file. I'm sure other PDF
generator programs should also work.... just web-search and I'm sure
you'll find some.

Once you "generate" the PDF, you can then zoom out to see the general
format, or in to read the details.

Charlie Hoffpauir

Paul Blair...

Actually, you can sneak a peek using only FTM.

Get an All-in-one chart on screen, then do View | Zoom | Size to window.

Of course, it will overflow the window edges, but you can get a sort-of
idea of how the result would look.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/

Charani...

My complete tree is slightly deeper than yours and a lot longer. All
even picked up an apparent inconsistency in one part of my tree. I
was impressed by their turn round as well. (Disclaimer: I have
absolutely no connections with the company other than being a well
satisfied customer.)

Hugh Watkins...

the newer versions of FTM have a print to pdf utility

once you open the result in acrobat reader you can make it any size you
like and take a screen shot a4 size too

Hugh W

John...

I don't know whether FTM can do this directly. Can you define a large
format printer (one of the roll-fed HP plotters), then try that as the
output device (just using print preview)? I've had to define a custom
page size when using these printers for genealogy charts, as the
default page size is something like 6 feet.

Unless you have defined a printer that can handle that size output
(such as a roll-fed HP inkjet plotter), then Windows isn't capable of
printing or previewing it.

Up until last year, I had a friend (rest his soul) who had a wide
format (48") HP plotter and would let me use it for the occasional
large chart (on the order of 3 feet by 17 feet - about 1100 people in
my wife's family over 12-13 generations). I had to define the printer
page size as being at least that big to get the chart to print as a
single sheet.

My primary gen program is Legacy and I think I used Family Tree Super
Tools to get the big charts I've taken to family reunions in the past.

There are a number of online services who will print your chart of
almost any size for $X per foot. Most of them offer some means of
getting your data into their preferred format.