Adobe Acrobat form of a Family Group Sheet
Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 7:35 am
The problem will always exist that a family history enthusiast will want genealogical information from relatives who don't do much family history and consequently don't have an easy way to share that information. (It is too much of an overload to tell the less involved relative to download PAF, enter in their family information and then send it back as a GEDCOM file). I've participated in a few of those exchanges for relatives contacting all of the descendants of a person and making sure their information was up to date. How one person does it is she prints out everyone’s family group sheet (about 1000 of us) and takes it to the yearly family reunion so that whoever shows up (about 400 of us) can update their information. Sharing the information in this way seems to cost a lot in money and time and leaves opportunities for mistakes.
I think a better system would be to create an Adobe Acrobat form that could be emailed out to all of the descendants asking them to fill in their family group sheet information and email it back. I think it would be easier to coordinate all of the information in this way rather than calling everyone on the phone or meeting them at reunions. I'd bet that it would just take someone who knew about Adobe forms a few hours to create one. The best would be to create one where default values could be entered and that allow the relative to save changes they have made, but I don't know if those types of forms can be emailed.
Also, in the future it would be great if we could tell PAF to generate forms of Family Group sheets for all of the living descendants of an ancestor, and generated a csv file of the file name, head of house name, and contact information. The csv file would be great so that you could open it up in a spread sheet program to sort off all of the descendants who only have mailing addresses (not email), print out mailing labels, add columns for tracking if they have reported back, and easily import the information into your email clients address book. Additionally it would be great if PAF could interpret the information on that form.
Does anyone know how to make a blank Adobe form so that I could try it out?
I think a better system would be to create an Adobe Acrobat form that could be emailed out to all of the descendants asking them to fill in their family group sheet information and email it back. I think it would be easier to coordinate all of the information in this way rather than calling everyone on the phone or meeting them at reunions. I'd bet that it would just take someone who knew about Adobe forms a few hours to create one. The best would be to create one where default values could be entered and that allow the relative to save changes they have made, but I don't know if those types of forms can be emailed.
Also, in the future it would be great if we could tell PAF to generate forms of Family Group sheets for all of the living descendants of an ancestor, and generated a csv file of the file name, head of house name, and contact information. The csv file would be great so that you could open it up in a spread sheet program to sort off all of the descendants who only have mailing addresses (not email), print out mailing labels, add columns for tracking if they have reported back, and easily import the information into your email clients address book. Additionally it would be great if PAF could interpret the information on that form.
Does anyone know how to make a blank Adobe form so that I could try it out?