How I make my family tree charts | LibreOffice Draw Tutorial

[@brunog3768]

This is actually really nice for us Alternate History Nerds to do alternate dynasties

[@petrvilimek6041]

It sounds weird, but I´m kind of excited for what you´ll come up with

[@Yitewewoteli-dQw4w9WgXcQ]

That means you're the only one who could make a family tree of those creepy fanfics that some people do. I salute to thee

[@JoaoGabriel-et4kq]

I like to do that

[@KateHistoryMysteries]

João Gabriel I have made family trees for both fanfics and essays using Wikipedia’s sandboxes.

[@rachelevil]

Or those of us who spend way too much time on our D&D settings

[@MattFyrm]

Matt is the Bob Ross of family trees

[@StarTheTripleDevil]

At first I thought this comment was saying that he should make Bob Ross' family tree.

[@agrama.4543]

@@StarTheTripleDevil omg m2

[@leiladekwatro3147]

He just loves making those happy big ass trees

[@whyguy12]

@@StarTheTripleDevil he should

[@joshygoldiem_j2799]

The Joy of Charting - Season 37

[@jasonzurlo1543]

I'm almost more impressed by your charts after seeing how primitive your methodology is. Truly a testament to patience and dedication.

[@TheBanjoShowOfficial]

what's primitive about it, this is how I would think anyone would do it. If anything this requires more thinking than if you just plopped names into a webpage algorithm and it did it for you. This is how I'd do it.

[@jasonzurlo1543]

@@TheBanjoShowOfficial I moreso meant the use of the OpenOffice software instead of something like illustrator, and also not utilizing some sort of template with all the common shapes and colors.

[@WatchOnYT]

As a LibreOffice user, here's a tip if you want to mess with images only once - copy an existing image, place it where you want, make sure it's selected, and then just paste (or insert) the new picture. That way you don't need to spend so much time sizing and moving.

[@nicko5945]

An hour long video from useful charts, sign me up regardless of the topic!!

[@layoverbear]

was not expecting my prime minister to be the unofficial subject! so happy you finally made this video.

[@lupinneverdied6865]

you should do a harry potter family tree and do the peverell family because almost every major harry potter character is descended from the three peverell brothers

[@spirituallyours64whengnats69]

Craft.

[@trashvideoboi1220]

That’s Actually a good idea

[@sparksbet]

while there is a lot of very detailed info out there which you could use to make Harry Potter family trees, the Peverells are so far back in the relevant characters' histories that you'd have to skip a great number of generations between them and the oldest descendants we know any information about. also, as far as I'm aware from my own research into the Harry Potter family trees, only the Potters and the Gaunts are directly descended from the Peverells. This ties into the Weasley family by Harry's marriage to Ginny, but still most Harry Potter characters do not have any blood relation to the Peverells that we know of -- it's just Harry and Voldemort specifically. If the other major Harry Potter characters are descended from the Peverells, this isn't documented within any Harry Potter material that I'm aware of.

[@lupinneverdied6865]

@@sparksbet yes I phrased that poorly The Potters and the Gaunts are the only ones who are actually directly descended from The Peverells but as you said that ties the Weasleys in with Harry's Marriage to Ginny but since most of the Pure-blood families are related (either by marriage or blood). you could connect other Pureblood families from the Weasleys. I think It would be cool to see how all the Pure-Blood families relate to one another.

[@redera9560]

I made a pretty accurate one but there are no generation skips so none of the peverells are there but yeah

[@Macion-sm2ui]

Great video. When I was younger I was making my own royal family trees, but they was ugly. Now if I want to return to my old hobby or make nice tree of my familly I know how. Thanks :) (sorry for my english)

[@alexandertan8592]

This tutorial finally allowed me to draw my own proper family tree from my ancestor during the Song dynasty until today, summarizing decades of research of my roots. Thanks matt!

[@mikhailjoshuapahuyo1431]

Now I'm making my family tree it's very useful, that's why this channel is called USEFULcharts

[@RH-vr7cs]

I bought several of your charts. They are amazingly accurate and impressive. The work , effort, knowledge you are giving us is extremely valuable and saves on us the thousands of hours you spent preparing them .

[@junolee8826]

aaaahh thank you so much for this video!!! im working on a historical novel that spans 15 or so generations and ive never been happy with how their genealogy chart looks when i draw it by hand, so im 100% gonna use this!!!

[@lminecraft7317]

1:01 Can we all appreciate that he does all the work manually and considering the size of the chats he makes, must take a lot of time. He has to resize and type every single thing by himself. Wow.

[@GregorSchafroth]

Yes this is fantastic. It does give him an opportunity to think through the whole story again tho, so that's not just boring technical work I'd say :)

[@michaelsmullen9891]

Impressed with your patience and attention to detail in what is essentially a laborius task. You must love what you do!

[@robertfraser5994]

Back in 1988 before the existence of flow charting software, I designed a gigantic chart using MacDraw in the same way you describe here. To avoid drawing each element from scratch, I created templates. I created a storage form with my most commonly used elements arrayed on the storage page. Then I could copy and paste them into the new chart I was creating. The colors of various boxes and lines were already created, so all I had to do was click on the text within a box and type in my new label. If a line wasn't long enough, I would slide the element where I needed it and then grab the line and extend it or change its length by entering a length number. You have so many charts drawn now that it could be that you can reuse most of it for a new chart that is similar. In that case, you could save a copy of the original, retitle it as the new chart, and then proceed to enter the new data. It might be best to backspace out the data from the original chart so that an orphan from the original does not remain in the new chart. I know that for tutorial purposes you were demonstrating how you would start with a blank file. Maybe you are already reusing elements and groups of elements, or have an even better system for saving yourself from having to start each new chart from scratch.

[@andybawn1]

Hi ya. nice video thank you, hope you don't mind but I have a couple of point.1. there is a crop tool in Libre just right click the image. 2. Select the box and the image, right click and group them together they will then move as one and finally 3, use connectors not lines to join the boxes, the connectors will glue to the box and will follow the box where ever it goes. Hope this helps and speeds up your wonderful charts

[@arrtemfly]

it's always great to see your favourite content maker use free and open source software!

[@nugget7236]

Foss is over rated

[@Njoofene]

As someone who have been working with family tree software for years, this is the best way of customising your family tree - exactly how you want it. Family tree software that I've used (and `I have used many over the years) are pretty basic and did not give me the option to customised the tree exactly how I wanted and planned to right from the beginning. As such, I have transferred my family tree to Libra Office Draw manually. It is pretty time consuming though expecially if you have have over 3000 people in your tree like I have.

[@Britishgeohistorian]

how did you reasearch all of them?

[@Njoofene]

@@Britishgeohistorian Family documents; interviews with elderly relatives - most of whom have died now (I would advise you do this first before looking at documents and before it is too late); birth, marriages and death records, etc. My family history is well documented and it goes on for centuries. The reason why the tree is so large is because it includes cousins and their descendants. There were lots of cousin marriages especially in the old days for dynastic and cultural reasons.

[@Britishgeohistorian]

@@Njoofene Ok. Thanks for your help I think I will look in my country's national archives to start my own

[@MrAntonla]

Great video, just a small correction: Actually, James Sinclair was an MP until 1958, but his riding (electoral district) was redistibuted in 1947, and thus changed riding in 1949. BTW, Justin Trudeau's 5th great grandfather, Major-General William Farquhar, was the first British Resident and Commandant of Singapore.

[@cheerbozz]

@Anton Lindequist Ariens Justin Trudeau is a Trudeau, the relevant people are his paternal French Canadian aka Acadian side not his mom side who were among the first French settlers in Canada Next time don’t waste your time on useless crap !

[@MrAntonla]

@@cheerbozz Why would his maternal ancestors be less relevant than his paternal ancestors? I was merely pointing out a mistake in the video and giving what I thought was an interesting factoid. Besides I would say it is you who "waste your time on useless crap" by attacking a more than a year old comment which was simply stating facts.

[@gforceneonaxetake2345]

Dude, the amount of time it must take you to create a FULL family tree, especially a royal one MUST BE EXHAUSTING, and very time consuming

[@thebluegrassgenealogist1300]

Thank you very much for doing a video on this. :) I have always liked the simple, but straight forward charts you do and always have wondered how you went about doing them. They do look good framed on my wall and my wife told me I should do my own charts for our families like yours. I know there are genealogy chart programs, but I usually do not like how they are formatted and are less manageable, at least the ones I've used.

[@thebluegrassgenealogist1300]

I wanted to do a follow up comment. I have figured out you can do this exact thing also in Microsoft Publisher as well as LibreOffice Draw. I have started doing my own family tree starting with me and going up the tree. This is really neat. :)

[@togamac]

The speed and clarity of your presentation is just right! It allows me to easily toggle back and forth between my project and your tutorial. Great job! Thank you! I have one problem though. I've lost my sidebar and although I've managed to get it back, I can't get it to look like the original, i.e., the one with the text fonts, sizes, line, paragraph,area, etc.

[@togamac]

Forget it! I figured it out.

[@powerfulaura5166]

Great to see such a big creator using free/libre & open-source software.

[@syamilmohamad2024]

Hi there, please do the family tree for Kedah Sultanate, they are one of the oldest monarch which is still exist today.

[@drswag0076]

and this videos is the reason why there are fan made charts in your style. people watched it, and took note and went to town.

[@feliciagaffney1998]

This is perfect! Thank you!! I'm working on a specific family group of my ancestry, and want to diagram it with a simple descendancy chart. I'm mainly tracking 2 generations (some on the 3rd lvl down, as well) and just want to show the connection to my great grandmother. (Her great aunts and uncle is what I'm working on.) I can't find any descendancy charts I can just plug my stuff into (and make simple modifications for each generation) like the Word version ancestral charts I've been using forever. And I can't just flip the charts around to use for descendants. I'm not opposed to creating my own, I just wasn't sure how to go about getting started. So, thank you very much!!!

[@tompov227]

The charts you make are already impressive but seeing the process makes it all the more impressive. What did you use to record the whole screen in Ubuntu??

[@UsefulCharts]

Kazam

[@mukarramali]

@@UsefulCharts currently what software/app do you use record the screen in Mac Matt?

[@John-qo9hw]

@@mukarramali command+shift +5 should do the trick in Mac

[@mukarramali]

@@John-qo9hw I do that, but whenever I am screen recording I have to be very careful with my cursor otherwise my whole PDF just randomly moves. This annoys me a lot, plus there is added distraction of scrolling tab visible on the right side of the screen. Matts video’s not just have High quality and detailed view of the posters but also very good animations associated with the particular topic he is recording over.

[@nannerz1994]

I love this, and how you're overly detailed in your explanations. I had assumed you were a Photoshop extraordinaire

[@saskiaviking9447]

Yes finally I know which software to use! I was using Keynote on Mac (not very efficient but doable) for family trees (I made one of Poland) so thanks so much for informing me!

[@Gamer-lq6zy]

Your family looks awesome

[@JorgeHernandez-bl2ms]

I've always been curious about this

[@mateodo8669]

Doing this kind of stuff manually makes you a true Legendary.

[@matheanotmafia9811]

fun fact: Justin Trudeau is a direct descendant of william farquhar, one of the founders of my hometown, singapore. When Justin trudeau visited Singapore a while back, he even took a selfie with the grave of Esther Bernard (originally Esther Farquhar), his great x4 (i think) grandmother.

[@bujin1977]

Have you been spying on me? Only last week I was actually looking at your videos to see if I could work out how you draw your trees as I wanted to create one for the medieval Welsh Princes & Kings!

[@ugcheleuce]

OpenOffice was originally called Star Office, and it was not originally made for Linux. It was originally made for MS DOS, but by 1997 had a version that ran on Linux as well, after a commercial Linux distributor created a Linux version of it. OpenOffice and LibreOffice are associated with Linux mostly because it is opensource software, and many people think that all well-known opensource programs all started out as Linux programs.

[@kamroz0502]

Can you please do a polish royal family/ kings/queens chart!!!

[@victormezynski9727]

I've been waiting for poland since I got here from the Who would be king of america video

[@chileanywayso]

I currently use this to make family trees, and now my Elizabeth II and George Washington Relationship tree is one of the most popular from this week.

[@OwenB1126]

yo i think we relate does it also have Robert E Lee

[@hackenlee3435]

Good tutorial!Easy to understand.

[@GregorSchafroth]

I used to look for some kind of drawing software for a totally different purpose and suddenly your charts came to my mind. Thanks for sharing so much! (before I just used Apple Keynote and made a big page there, but Keynote now keeps crashing and apparently is just not made for so many objects on a page)

[@erikaheck8261]

This takes some serious patience omg. This is not your typical family tree tracker. Sheesh

[@irishdawn8387]

love this demo, wish we could see move of these of how you do an actual tree WIP in the future!

[@glennandre32]

This is way easier than I first imigined! Thank you for this! :D Love your videos btw :)

[@MaJetiGizzle]

Really cool that you use Linux and particularly what seems to be Ubuntu as your distro. Nice. 🙂👍🏼

[@StarTheTripleDevil]

I didn't even know LibreOffice and OpenOffice were the same thing until this video. I always thought they were separate things since my laptop has always had LibreOffice and my PC has always had OpenOffice.

[@jesuschrist8178]

I’ve always used Family Echo for my family trees. Very easy to use.

[@bewarebeware7658]

Me too. I've been trying to make a Warriors family tree, but I want there to be colors for each Clan. That is impossible in FamilyEcho. (I'm talking about the book series by Erin Hunter.)

[@Xcerptshow]

7:25 Where does Castro fit in?

[@wunnatxj988]

You should do who would be king of Greece if Alfred,Duke of Edinburgh-and later the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha(second son of Queen Victoria and Albert,the Prince Consort) accepted the throne and succeeded Otto I in 1862.

[@evileyeball]

My main tree that I have made Is in a spreadsheet and goes back from me (using data sourced from my mothers work on our tree) to my 9th great granparents. As what I did is made one sheet that goes from me back to my Second great grandparents and then made a seperate sheet for each of those families with 2-9th great on it because the fan was much too large otherwise It takes 256 Spreadsheet rows to properly display my 9th great grandparents on a chart with 2nd through 9th... you can imagine how much more it would be if I started at Me

[@danilapolesciuk4316]

A spreadsheet? Like Excel?

[@faithhope1882]

Really good lesson thank you...I just came across your videos which is going to save me a great deal of time as I was using MS Word to create my charts. Thank you

[@lorraineaylward8167]

Thanks late this. I joined the subreddit and bookmarked your site. Great work.

[@abdulzaher8981]

Matt your voice is so soothing

[@Aima952]

Some how knowing that you don't use software that makes things easier than I could do it on Microsoft Publisher makes your charts even more impressive!

[@theportuguesehistorian6093]

If you are to run out of room, how do you make the work space bigger?

[@ocbee6175]

The Portuguese Historian squish the family tree. Make it smaller. That works best

[@patricksmith3135]

This was a great video: super subject: interesting technology and well presented. Bravo.

[@mai_world]

Amazing tutorial! Thanks, Matt!

[@applepieke6970]

If it already took one hour to make that, I don't want to know how long it takes when you make one of those very big ones

[@loganplayz3609]

Probably like 30 hours + 20 hours research

[@Mahinique]

I'd love to see Family Trees featuring Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and DARK characters.

[@Richard-zm6pt]

Thanks so much for the demonstration. I have downloaded LibreOffice now and have begun a descendancy chart for one of my own family lines. I'm not sure it is the most efficient way to do it, but to have a chart designed in a particular way for presentation, it is a great tool. Now, how do you create such large charts. I need to do that with this very large family.

[@gabrielbryangalope3710]

I really like your charts. Hope you continue to do these content!!! God bless you!

[@ceckataceckata5357]

Cool. How would you put in the chart birth parents together with adoptive parents, when they're all known?

[@Weesperbuurt]

Thanks for taking the time to share

[@Gaby-sc6il]

Waouh ! There is à Big difference between french time names and canadians ones. Sorry for my english. In France, Justin is newer and xavier for exemple is à bit old

[@Doctorwhotrucking77]

You could group and ungroup box and photo so nothing moves less u want it to. Saw that on another video.

[@oscardrawsit]

Is there a video with the kings of Belgium ?? If not could you make one pls ??? :)

[@maximilianorojas835]

Excellent tutorial, congrats With this information, I'll be able to do my family charts

[@hottubmobileneil]

I am not Neil , It might be interesting to see the Castro family tree as well ?

[@NayanKale1]

Thanks Matt, this video has been very useful, I created one for my own family :)

[@samuelbousfield4342]

HE HAS TOLD US THE SECRETS I WILL MAKE MANY FAMILY TREES

[@samuelbousfield4342]

@Coolninja 7011 uhhhhhhhhh your moms haha

[@gothenix]

I needed this so much Bloody hell mate, thanks

[@WaluigiPlushBros]

Dang that Western European monarchs chart must’ve been a nightmare to develope

[@panzertorte]

Thanks for sharing, that auto-align trick will be a life-saver for me this coming term ;) I already use LibreOffice's writing program, but I think I deleted Draw in the belief that I didn't need it. I'll definitely give it another go! Making your interconnected charts like this must be a nightmare, though! ;)

[@elijah613]

Awesome cant wait to try it out!

[@CJMapping]

Are you thinking about making a section on the useful charts website for people to make their own custom family trees like this?

[@CJMapping]

But it’s like where they just put in names and it automatically makes the boxes

[@thelittletyrant5539]

That's something I didn't expect from this channel. I wonder if you still use it today?

[@144Tropical]

Very fascinating. Thank you for sharing. MANILA, PHILIPPINES

[@redera9560]

When you aren’t explaining things, how long does it take to make a family tree

[@snigdha8404]

Will you ever do a video about the royal family tree of Hawaii?

[@slamwall9057]

He did that

[@collinssportstalk7504]

@UsefulCharts can you tell me what four cut double click means plz

[@bared473]

My main question is : how do you do for very large family tree, because the page isn't that big...

[@evileyeball]

Hahaha Ater watching one of your videos I headed into draw and made some charts relating to my own family which is funny

[@HistoryandHeadlines]

I'm watching this video to learn how to make family tree charts in my own videos!

[@rafaeljohnvillaruz2100]

@Usefulcharts This Is Amazing!!! I Think I Can Make My Own Family Tree.

[@UsefulCharts]

Post your creations on our subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/UsefulCharts/

[@randomstranger8705]

This is what i have been waiting for... Yeyyy

[@PhilippeMorin123]

I decided to watch that for another project, but I was expecting you to show us how to make some kind of templates/shapes instead of having to copy and paste each person every time... Are you talking about that later in the video? EDIT: It seems like that feature is called "gallery". Edit #2: Apparently, "galleries" aren't the only solution. Styles are probably the first thing I'll want to look for.

[@ctplanning8137]

Have you ever made a family tree where the generations are not in "swimlanes" but instead the y value for a person is their birthdate?

[@baskywater779]

Thank you for uploading this!

[@HebaruSan]

I like "copy image to clipboard" in my browser followed by ctrl+shift+v in GIMP to paste to new image, saves having a bunch of temp files sitting around

[@jacobscrackers98]

There are special folders especially for temporary files in MacOSX ($TMPDIR and /tmp), Windows (%Temp% I think) and Linux (/tmp).

[@Sour-BILL]

James Sinclair’s lifespan was 1908 to 1984

[@PerTrygveMyhrer]

I have now tried this and it worked great though I found it a bit hard to get lines to line up. It worked better when I used connectors. I do wonder should I add military ranks in my charts since there are a bunch of them

[@katherineteper8149]

You may consider updating Justin Castro-Trudeau - the true family line. Cheers!

[@gabrielbryangalope3710]

How about the 'Timeline of World History' chart? How did you made that huge chart?

[@babarmunir4650]

Excellent tutorial

[@jurgnobs1308]

i am a professional genealogist and make family trees and charts all the time. wish mine would look remotely close to as good as yours.

[@stellarconcealment]

What do you do if the family tree gets so big that you need to make the background larger?

[@gearoidp]

Great video, very detailed on your process.

[@Global_Capsule]

Can you make a map on history of math's number system. It will be very helpfull for every aspects to researchers.

[@Kwacklet]

Thanks, you helped me for my assignment.

[@susanna_mitchell]

Can you make a family tree of Hitler. Yes, he was an awful man but it would be quite intriguing to see a vile man's history

[@andrewarango6449]

Great tutorial, loved it.