Is there any way of counting the number of descendants of a particular individual in Family Tree?

LegacyUser

Paul said: I just made a comment, in another thread, that I have added / am working on "many hundreds" of WRIGHTSONs in Family Tree. Out of interest, is there any way of calculating the number of descendants from a given person, either using Family Tree or a certified program? I did have a go just now, but got thoroughly mixed-up trying to go manually through all the different branches from my 8x great grandfather. Specifically, I'm only interested in those who kept the WRIGHTSON surname, but maybe this complicates the issue further.

Sounds a bit trivial, I know, but I've always been quite hung-up on statistics! Hoping I won't look too stupid (no comments, please) if there is a straightforward way I've overlooked.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I use Ancestral Quest (I have no interest in the company, other than a user of their product) and can download all the descendants of a given ancestor. It takes a while if you start a lot of generations back, but once done, you will have a count of all the people in the new database.

It is my understanding that the free version can do this... It is also my understanding that each of the big three, which includes Roots Magic and Legacy also have this ability to download all the descendants and that to be fully certified, their free version has to do this.

I'm not sure about the certification requirement, since I have no access to the requirements.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Thanks, Tom. I have Ancestral Quest and the free version of Roots Magic, so suppose I should have looked there first, before bothering people (well, you!) on this forum.

Thanks again - I'll give your suggestions a try.