Spliting a family tree

[Perkymite]

This will seem a heinous crime to most dedicated genealogists .

But, I have been given a tree of some 8400 names and I want to whittle this down to a much more manageable size, I am not really interested in Sara Anne unknown “Wife of 2^nd cousin 3x removed of husband of 4^th cousin 1x removed of Perkymite” I need to split the tree into more direct ancestors and not include the distant, distant relatives(?). In fact it is one of the reasons I bought 2012.

I have gone through the little companion booklet that comes with it and I have tried searching for Splitting a Family tree but have had no luck. Could one of you kind people point me in the right direction.

Many thanks for any help given

[PhotoFamily]

You don't mention what software you're using. If it's FTM, you may find this thead useful:

http://www.familytreeforum.com/showthread.php/101876-Is-there-a-way-to-split-a-family-tree

piece of cake in Family Historian.

If you need new software to do it, and don't want to pay, PAF is free and could do the job