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Digital Sticky Notes

I have been working (almost daily for the last three months) on Zittel Zygology mentioned in this post. The idea of working on connecting family lines for two DNA matches has exploded to epic proportions. I am currently working on connecting lines for 20 known DNA matches to my Zittel line. It looks a bit like this…

Scapple chart of Zittel descendants
Descendants of Johannes Zittel and Elisabeth Stempfel

There are over 50 couples in the first five generations and more than 50 children (most with spouses and even more children) so far in the sixth and seventh generations. (Seventh generation not shown on chart.)

I’ve written and deleted several posts about how this is coming together in my Research Quandaries notebook. Maybe once I finish up trailing the descendants of the oldest son of Peter Zittel and Rosina Hauck (far left of chart), I will get something posted. In the meantime, can I just sing the praises of Sticky Notes? My (laptop) desktop looks like this…

The Sticky Notes app is another of those things that you might not know you have on your computer unless you hunt it down. Click on the magnifying glass next to the Windows icon and search “sticky notes.” Then open the Sticky Notes app. Clicking on the + sign opens a new note.

Click on the menu icon (the three dots). From there you can change the background color, see a list of all your notes, or delete the current note. The notes can be resized vertically and horizontally. The icons at the bottom of the note are to change the text of your note: Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, and Bulleted List. The last icon is used to insert a picture into your note. Your notes are saved until you delete them. I usually close down the computer with my notes still open on the desktop and they are all there when I restart it.

I am using Sticky Notes to jot down the list of names from the indexes for the communes in Bas-Rhin where I need to then go and look up the original record in a different register. I also have a list of citations to copy and edit once I add the source to my OneNote pages for a person/couple. Extremely helpful! I only wish there was a way to permanently pin a note to stay on top of the browser window I am currently viewing.

I’d be drowning in paper if not for OneNote and Sticky Notes! (You’re welcome.)

Until the next time,
~Erin


Cite This Page:

Erin Williamson Klein, “Digital Sticky Notes.” My Family History Files, 11 December 2020 (https://myfamilyhistoryfiles.com/organization/digital-sticky-notes/ : [access date]).

Please do not copy without attribution and link back to this page.


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Inserting Files & Images in OneNote

alphabet treeInserting files and images into OneNote is different than attaching files in OneNote. When you attach a file, you are linking from another source to a OneNote Page. It is link to a web page, link to file on your hard drive or link to another Notebook, Section or Page, for instance. The problem with attaching is when the source gets moved or disappears, your link may become invalid.

When you insert a file or image, it becomes part of the OneNote page regardless of where the source of the file or image is/was. The nicest thing about inserting a file or image is that it is actually there for you to “see”, making it much more useful for research planning, transcribing, data analysis, using the drawing tools to make notes on the image, etc.

insert1

 

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You can insert File Printouts, (Word Docs, PDFs, Excel Spreadsheets) Screen Clips, Pictures and Scans. I am going to walk you through inserting File Printouts and Pictures in this post. Screen clips were covered here. (Scans will come at a later time. Maybe a short post on embedding Excel Spreadsheets as well.)

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From the Insert Ribbon > Choose File Printout and navigate to the folder where your images are stored. Choose the file in your folder > Click Insert. The file will be inserted onto the page with a shortcut icon that links to the original file. (You can delete those.) The images can be resized and moved around the page.

insert3

 

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Insert Pictures works the same way as File Printout except that it defaults to looking in the Pictures Folder on your hard drive. One thing to note here is the Insert > Online Pictures option. You can insert pictures from searches on the web, your Facebook and Flickr accounts, (you will be asked to sign in to your accounts before they will be linked) and your OneDrive account.

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For me, a much simpler technique is to Drag and Drop the files and images onto the page. Use Windows Explorer to navigate the the folder where your images are kept. If you drag and drop an image, you don’t get the shortcut icon. When you drag and drop a PDF or Word Doc, you will be asked if you want to Attach File or Insert Printout. Choose Insert Printout if you want to “see” your file on the Page. (You will get the “link” icon for Word Docs and PDFs, but again, you can delete them.) If the image is in another Notebook, Section or Page, you can copy and paste the image to the new location or create a link to the image file at the new location.

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Cite This Page:

Erin Williamson Klein, “Inserting Files & Images in OneNote.” My Family History Files, 2 March 2015 (https://myfamilyhistoryfiles.com/organization/inserting-files-and-images-in-onenote : [access date]).

Please do not copy without attribution and link back to this page.

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Part 2 – More Quirks – Section Groups & Sections

I have been busy behind the scenes working on updating my old OneNote posts, putting together some new posts and working through the Genealogy Do-Over Topics. The Research Log dilemma has me in a holding pattern where I am currently stuck in the topics for Weeks 3-5. Anne Faulkner’s (Ancestor Archaeology) Do-Over recap post had me laughing and nodding my head in complete agreement.

When my mind gets muddled overthinking things pondering life’s tough questions how I want my family history research to come together, I tend to avoid the problem give my mind a rest by pursuing some time-wasting endeavor on the computer. Just to clear my head, you know? (If you read between the lines, you might come to the conclusion that I am a procrastinator…) In my research-log-decision-making-avoidance mode, I started a new quilt design for a quilt that has a pedigree chart on it with an appliqued tree and leaves. Copying and pasting all those leaves onto my quilt design and then coloring each one with a different green fabric? Complete time-waster…

predigree-quilt (I know it doesn’t look like much here, but I haven’t finished the whole tree applique. Just imagine your ancestors names in the beige rectangles and photos in the beige diamonds and something like this starting at the bottom left and going out and up around the chart with leaves. Lots of leaves. But not so much detail on the trunk…)

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I thought perhaps I should do something more productive today. Move a few things off my Task Manager To Do’s. (Like get that research log decision made and just jump into working with whatever I come up with!! Use it now, tweak it later?)

There have been a couple of questions about organizing Section tabs and Pages for each person so I thought I should address how that has evolved as I have been working in my Williamson Surname Notebook. Basically, I have changed the Section Group setup by adding a third group.

Originally I had only two Section Groups created to hold Sections for individuals in my family tree. One for the direct surname line and another for non-direct names organized alphabetically. As I started adding more and more Sections to my notebook for each person, it became apparent that this setup wasn’t going to work for me in the long-term so I reorganized the groups. For now I have three Section Groups. Section Groups alphabetize themselves and I wanted my Section Groups in a certain order so I added numbers to their names.

surname1

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One important thing to note and something I have to keep reminding myself is I want my OneNote Notebook to be a digital duplicate of how I had my physical binders set up. My original binders were set up in family groups with their records grouped together behind a printed family group record. Once a person got married or remarried, a new family group record was created and the related family documents grouped behind it. (By the way, if you are using OneNote to share your research or to create a digital backup up of the physical notebooks you already have, for convenience and ease of setup, create and layout your OneNote Notebooks just as you did your physical notebooks!)

So rather than think that each Section tab was for an individual person, it should be that they are for a family group. (Banging my head against the desk and saying, “Duh.”) I haven’t yet decided if I am going to keep the naming convention I originally set up [male name only] or rename the Sections to include the wife/mother’s name. If I switch to adding the wife/mother’s name to the Section tab name, I was thinking I would have to add a new Section for subsequent marriages. That hasn’t been an issue for my direct-line ancestors; but as I get more into the collateral lines, I will have to give this a hard think.

This is the Direct Line Section Group for my Williamson Surname Notebook. In each Section are Pages for people in the family group.

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I am working on getting things in order on my direct line to start, however, I have some records for my collateral Williamson lines. As I was adding them to the original Non-Direct A-Z Section Group, it was getting a bit overcrowded in the W-X Section. I decided they all needed their own Section Group. This newly created second Section Group is for your collateral lines of the same surname. By the way, the Sub-Section Group ‘Who Married Whom’ is for a research rabbit hole. Two Williamson men married two Williamson women in a double wedding ceremony. The marriage index doesn’t list parents’ names for any of the four. I was trying to figure out which ones I was related to (all four names match people in my tree) and the resulting avalanche of records I gathered needed its own Section Group. (I’ll tell you about the rabbit hole another day…)

surname3

 

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The last Section Group is for lines that have ‘married into’ my surname. Obviously that includes some new direct line surnames as well as husbands to Williamson females. For the surname for my great grandmother, great-great grandmother and on, I have created separate Sections in the front of the A-Z tabs for them. Instead of a separate Section, each family group gets a Page with Sub-Pages. If the Section gets too cumbersome to navigate (too many pages of family groups), they can be moved into their own Section Group or even their own Notebook if needed. Right now, that isn’t been a problem and I’ll think on it when I have to.

surname4
I hope that helps you understand a little bit better how I have been organizing my family groups in my Surname Notebook.

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Part 1 – Quirks of My Notebooks – The Main Sections

Part 3 – Quirks Continued – Pages for Family Groups

 

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View on OneDrive

Surname Notebook – Sources sorted by Record Type

View on OneDrive

Surname Notebook – Sources sorted in Chronological Order

View on OneDrive

Research Quandaries Notebook

Link to “By Record Type” Surname Notebook Link to “Chronological Sources” Surname Notebook Link to Research Quandaries Notebook
Surname Notebook by Record Type PDF Surname Notebook in Chronological Order PDF

 

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This post was updated 10 April 2020 with new links to the notebooks on OneDrive.


Cite This Page:

Erin Williamson Klein, “Part 2 – More Quirks – Section Groups & Sections.” My Family History Files, 20 February 2015 (https://myfamilyhistoryfiles.com/research-plan/surname-section-groups-and-sections/ : [access date]).

Please do not copy without attribution and link back to this page.