What Is It?
Ancestral Author Classic is a Microsoft Windows application that creates hyperlinked genealogical documents in PDF format, from GEDCOM files, text, images, and other source material. It’s simple to use – perfect for creating professional quality genealogy reports and books to distribute to family members, post on the internet, or share with other researchers.
Note: Ancestral Author classic will be retired soon. See here for details. We recommend Ancestral Author Plus, which has more functionality.
How To Use It
AA uses a wizard style interface to guide you through the process of creating fully hyperlinked documents. The hyperlinks make it easy to navigate from parents to children, and back. Clicking on a hyperlinked name takes you immediately to the page for that person.
The wizard gives you the option of adding the following document items to your report:
- Title Page (with image)
- Table of Contents
- Chapter and Sections Headings
- Text with images
- Descendant Reports
- Ancestor Reports
- Sources and Endnotes Sections
- Name Index
You add these in the order that you want to produce fully customized documents. Multiple chapters and sections are allowed, multiple descendant and ancestor reports. This gives you great flexibility to produce a PDF document with exactly the desired content.
Drag And Drop
The simplest way to use AA is to drag a GEDCOM file onto the AA desktop icon. This will automatically create a document with table of contents, source citations, and a name index including every person in the GEDCOM.
How To Download It
Ancestral Author Classic is free to try. It runs on Windows 7, 8, and 10 computers (no Mac version). Click the button below to download the trial version.
The trial version of Ancestral Author will emit a watermark across each page. If you like Ancestral Author, you can purchase a registration key ($24.95 US). By entering the registration key, the trial version of AA is converted into the fully functional version, and the watermark is eliminated.
Why Is It ‘Classic’ and How Does It Differ From Ancestral Author Plus?
Ancestral Author Plus is the next generation of Ancestral Author Classic. It’s easier to use, has more functionality, runs on more platforms, and gives the user increased flexibility in customizing the output document. Ancestral Author Classic will be eventually be replaced by Ancestral Author Plus. The details and timeline for retiring Classic can be found here. Click the button below for a feature by feature comparison of Classic and Plus.
