Open The Pedigree Chart: Fill & Download for Free

By “family tree” you’re talking about a pedigree chart, right?You can do it by inserting text boxes and lines, arranging them, etc or you can use tables. I think a table is a lot easier because you don’t need to position the text boxes manually.How I would do it:Open a new blank document.Change from portrait to landscape for a wider page. To do this, I go to Print Preview and change the Print Orientation drop down box.Insert a table with 15 rows and 4 columns. This will provide space for 4 generations (including the subject person [you]) to the great-grandparents. Include grid lines so you can clearly see the boxes while entering data; you will want to remove some lines later.Select the boxes and update the Paragraph Before and After to something like “6pt” each. This creates space between paragraphs within each cell… and moves the cell lines away from the text.Enter the subject person in the 1st column of row 8. This is the person whose ancestors you want so show in the pedigree chart.Enter the subject person’s father’s name in the 2nd column of row 4.Enter the subject person’s mother’s name in the 2nd column of row 12.Column 3 is for the subject person’s grandparents. Row 2 for paternal grandfather, row 6 for paternal grandmother, row 10 for maternal grandfather, and row 14 for maternal grandmother.Column 4 if for the subject person’s great-grandparents using rows 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15 for the parents of the grandparents. A pedigree chart always lists the male ancestor first with the female ancestor after the male ancestor from top to bottom.Now that you have their names in place, decide what else you want to include.You could add birth and death year or full dates, depending on space.You could include cause of death or medical conditions if you’re trying to identify health history.Again, what you can fit will depend on the font you use, the paper size you choose, the margins, and amount of text.You might want to adjust the page margins or paragraph before/after settings once the text is in place.Once the information is entered into the table cells now you want to remove all grid lines on the table in order to add only those lines you want to keep.For each table cell with information about a person, add a bottom border.For each couple, add a left border to the cells from immediately below the man to the cell containing the woman’s name.Optionally, you might want to color code the cells containing text to identify surnames. This might require switching the font color if the background is too dark to read the text.If you blank the cells with text you can save the finished file as a Word template so you can quickly create new pedigree charts in the future.

Here's a neat Pinterest board with examples of how to do it. On the minimalist end, if you're just looking to visualize data, basically any software will output a scalable PDF of a pedigree chart or a fan chart, including any open source one like webroots if that's appealing to you--then you can bring that PDF to any "blueprint" copier or copy shop and they'll make it whatever size you want. I say blueprint copier because they'll be less than 50% the price of most copy shops since their target market is contractors doing bulk.In fact you could bring it to any sign shop and they'll cut it all in vinyl for you. (If you're researching you may prefer it printed on paper so it can be written on and replaced every once in a while.)Regarding the openness of the data, if by that you mean "free" or "crowdsourced" (and you're not really making a statement about the Creative Commons or GNU licenses), your best starting point is probably http://familysearch.org. Type a dozen dead people in there and it'll take over from there. And it's a big enough site that a large number of wall-chart companies speak their language.

As I can see the picture linked with your answer is the case of “Autosomal recessive traits”A genetic condition can occur when the child inherits one copy of a mutated (changed) gene from each parent. The parents of a child with an autosomal recessive condition usually do not have the condition. Unaffected parents are called carriers because they each carry one copy of the mutated gene and can pass it to their children.The gene is on an autosome, a nonsex chromosome. The parents are carriers who have only one copy of the gene and do not exhibit the trait because the gene is recessive to its normal counterpart gene.If both parents are carriers, there is a 25% chance of a child inheriting both abnormal genes and, consequently, developing the disease. There is a 50% chance of a child inheriting only one abnormal gene and of being a carrier, like the parents, and there is a 25% chance of the child inheriting both normal genes