Biography timeline maker
Share the stories of family members, historical figures, or clients in a vivid, engaging way with Timetoast. Create interactive timelines that showcase life's milestones and preserve memories for years to come.
Turn scattered notes into a clear life story
Many biographies start as scattered notes, photos, and documents:
- Dates and events live in different files or notebooks
- It’s hard to see the sequence of a life at a glance
- Sharing drafts with students, family, or colleagues is clumsy
The result: life stories stay fragmented instead of becoming a clear, memorable narrative.
A biography timeline brings everything together:
- Shows how key moments connect across years and places
- Makes it easier to spot gaps, patterns, and themes
- Gives people a visual way to explore someone’s life story
With Timetoast, you can organise details in a grid, then turn them into an interactive timeline that’s easy to share.
Organise key events before you share
Use the grid view when you’re gathering and organising material:
- Add childhood, education, work, and later-life events in seconds
- Use custom fields for places, people, sources, and themes
- Sort by period or location to check for gaps
The grid feels like a spreadsheet but stays directly connected to your timeline views.
Turn notes into a clear life story
Switch to a timeline view when you want people to experience the story:
- A horizontal timeline is ideal for big-picture overviews of a life
- A vertical timeline works well for scrolling on phones or when you want to see all the details
You keep editing in the same project, while Timetoast updates every view for you.
Highlight places, periods, and relationships with color
Biographies are full of recurring people, locations, and themes. Timetoast helps you surface them:
- Filter by period – childhood, early career, later life
- Filter by place – cities, countries, or regions
- Filter by theme – family, work, travel, achievements
- Color-code events so patterns stand out at a glance
You can change filters and colors depending on the story you want to emphasise in each viewing.
Built for families, classrooms, and research teams
Use Timetoast for classroom assignments, family histories, or research projects. It gives you enough structure to stay organised without getting in the way of the story.
- Invite students, family members, or collaborators with clear view and edit rights
- A shared workspace so everyone works from the same biography project
- Keep timelines private, share them with a small group, or publish them more widely
- Export your data when you need to write a paper, book, or speech
What a biography timeline looks like in Timetoast
Here’s a simple structure you can use as a starting point. You can set this up yourself or start from the Biography template in Timetoast.
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Fields that capture a full life
A typical biography project might include fields like:
- Event – the moment, milestone, or turning point
- Year or date – when the event took place
- Place – city, country, or region
- People involved – family members, colleagues, or key figures
- Theme – education, family, work, travel, achievements
- Source – documents, interviews, links, or archives
- Notes – extra context, quotes, and stories
You can rename or add fields to match your project – for example focusing on letters, court records, or school reports.
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Views for different audiences
Each view displays your work in a different way:
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Research view (grid)
All events with sources and notes. Used while you’re still gathering material. -
Story view (horizontal timeline)
The main life story, focused on the most important events and themes. -
Full view (vertical timeline)
Filtered to a theme, or age range that’s most relevant for your audience.
You can switch between these views in a couple of clicks, without recreating the biography in a new document.
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Research view (grid)
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How a typical project might run
As you work on a biography you might:
- Gather events in the grid as you review photos, letters, or archives.
- Review the timeline with others to check dates, places, and missing moments.
- Share a view for a talk, assignment, or presentation.
The biography stays current because you keep editing one project instead of maintaining lots of separate files.
Who biography timelines are for
Timetoast is flexible enough to support different people working around the same life story.
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Teachers and students
- Turn biography assignments into clear, visual projects
- Compare two life stories side by side using shared fields
- Embed timelines in class websites or learning platforms
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Families and individuals
- Preserve family histories without needing design skills
- Invite relatives to add their own memories and dates
- Share a private or public link instead of sending large files
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Researchers and writers
- Keep sources and events in one structured project
- Filter by place, theme, or period while drafting chapters
- Use exported data in articles, books, or presentations
Key benefits at a glance
With Timetoast for biographies you can:
- Turn scattered notes and photos into a clear timeline
- Keep one organised project instead of many overlapping documents
- Show different levels of detail for research, class, or family use
- Update dates and details in a few clicks without redesigning anything
- Start faster with a template tailored to biographies
Start faster with a biography template
You can create a biography project from scratch or start with one of our templates designed for personal and historical stories.
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Popular options include:
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Biography timeline
Highlight key events, people, and places across a person’s life. -
Classic timeline
Title, description and categories. Bare-bones, flexible structure. -
Blank project
Start with a clean slate and add only the fields and views you need.
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Biography timeline
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Each template comes with:
- Helpful default fields for biography work
- Sample events you can edit or remove
- The grid view and horizontal/vertical timeline views ready to use from day one
Timelines for different use cases
See how Timetoast is used across projects, teams, and subjects.
Project Management
Plan milestones and track progress with clear, visual timelines.