Hello, I am a new adventurer into the world of family history and this is my first contact with the User Group. My problem is that, rightly or wrongly, I have been adding the text from birth, death and marriage certificates into the "Actual Text" screen for the source applicable to the record for each individual. To make an easily read record I place the heading for each field along the left hand side of the screen, with a new line for each heading, and through the use of "tabs" (Ctrl+Tab) I insert the information for each of these fields "in line, one under the other" to the right of the headings, with a goodly space between the headings and the information. It looks good on the screen, but when I come to print a record the system does not recognize the tabs and I get the heading and information printed without a space between them. eg: I format as this: When Died 23rd January 1878 Name and Surname William Brown but when I print I get: When Died23rd January 1878 Name and SurnameWilliam Brown But, when I use these "tabs" in the "Notes" screen (Alt+N) from the "Edit Individual" screen the system recognizes the tabs and prints the record as I have laid it out. Why should I get a different response for these different screens? Assistance would be appreciated! Regards, Ron Adelaide, South Australia

Ron, The bottom line with reference to any formatting in the Actual Text box for sources is that the layout on-screen and layout on-report cannot be reconciled - a fault which we can hope to see rectified at some future version. Basically, the Actual Text can be formatted to look good on screen and like a drunken sailor on the report - or, - to look good on report and like a drunken sailor on the screen. I have opted to have the layout look good on-report. I do this by pre-preparing the data and layout of the Actual Text outside of PAF in either MS Word or MS Excel (using a single spreadsheet column) - but prepared using a mono spaced font (like Courier New), I do not use tabs but spaces to align the data as required - many horizontally arranged forms I find better to arrange vertically. I have, over time, arrived at a number of formats I can use over and over again (census, certificates etc.) by just overwriting the variable data. Once completed, I copy and paste into the Actual Text box and Save. The screen layout, using a proportional font will have the data mis-aligned but the spaces (instead of tabs) will ensure that there is appropriate gaps where needed. Two further actions needed - (1) the Tools > Preferences > Fonts for Notes on Reports needs to be changed to the same mono spaced font - in order to accommodate what can sometimes be lengthy line information I have also reduced the font size to 8 points ---- (2) when pasting into the Actual Text Box, do so starting at the beginning of line 2 (ie, do a carriage return in the box first) - otherwise, when printed, the Actual Text starts in the middle of a line immediately following the source heading and repository information, this way the Actual Text always starts on a new line on printed reports. The end result is that printed reports contain the desired aligned layout and the Actual Text box data is mis aligned but still readable. Have fun! Stewart PS - You are absolutely correct to use the Actual Text Box to record a transcription of the actual source document - whatever happens do not contemplate putting this information into general notes. -----Original Message----- From: Ron Gates [mailto:ragates@senet.com.au] Sent: 13 July 2005 06:48 To: PAF-5-USERS-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [PAF-5] Use of Tabs in Notes Hello, I am a new adventurer into the world of family history and this is my first contact with the User Group. My problem is that, rightly or wrongly, I have been adding the text from birth, death and marriage certificates into the "Actual Text" screen for the source applicable to the record for each individual. To make an easily read record I place the heading for each field along the left hand side of the screen, with a new line for each heading, and through the use of "tabs" (Ctrl+Tab) I insert the information for each of these fields "in line, one under the other" to the right of the headings, with a goodly space between the headings and the information. It looks good on the screen, but when I come to print a record the system does not recognize the tabs and I get the heading and information printed without a space between them. eg: I format as this: When Died 23rd January 1878 Name and Surname William Brown but when I print I get: When Died23rd January 1878 Name and SurnameWilliam Brown But, when I use these "tabs" in the "Notes" screen (Alt+N) from the "Edit Individual" screen the system recognizes the tabs and prints the record as I have laid it out. Why should I get a different response for these different screens? Assistance would be appreciated! Regards, Ron Adelaide, South Australia ==== PAF-5-USERS Mailing List ==== FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service http://www.familysearch.org/