Family Historian 5 help and advice needed

[GallowayLass]

Hello everybody , not been on for an absolute age and here I go with the questions!

I downloaded a 30 day full trial of this software last night to see if I like it as I'm torn between upgrading from FTM 2006 to 2014 and changing completely to something else.

This software gets a lot of good reviews and is supposed to be a lot more versatile than FTM. I'm particularly interested in its claimed ability to split trees.

I uploaded the OH's tree into it from a GEDCOM 5.5 file that I made from my FTM 2006 file. I couldn't get it to import the FTM file directly although I thought from the menu options that I could. I must have missed something crucial?

Anyway, the file opened up fine but my God what a fearsome looking beast it is. I don't think I feel near confident enough to change over without attending a beginner's course and building a small tree from scratch.

What's folks' views on Family Historian? Should I persevere?

I've looked at the help files for 2 jobs;
a) How to change the displayed date to the way I like it eg. 3 March 1905 and not 3 Mar 1905. I found an "interpreted as" option but all that did was leave the original format in place and followed it with my preferred format in inverted commas. The date now displayed as 3 Mar 1905 "3 March 1905". How do I get only the version I want?

b) Splitting a tree - I didn't understand the instructions at all. Perhaps I was too tired to take it in. I have quite a few persons who are siblings of a "married in" and I have recorded their spouses and issue as well. I also include parents of married ins. Perhaps I have been too wide in my additions but there are plenty instances in all my lines where cousins have married and I also have 4 lots of siblings marrying siblings. In the early days of my research I took note of everybody I could find in incoming families in case they provided clues as witnesses and informants etc. or as links for other researchers to match up with. I've just kept on doing it. My question is Does FH's splitting facility allow me to include all such persons?

[PeteW1959]

Are you talking about the date in the record window, or on the diagram? As far as I know you can't change the date format in record windows apart from changing from UK to USA for numerical dates. Diagrams are infinitely customisable, and if that is where you want the change you need to go to Diagram/Options/Text Tab...and the default is for 'Birth, Mar, Death' to be the Current Text Scheme. Click on 'Edit' and change the 'Date Format' box to Long.

Splitting the tree, in my opinion, is misnamed because it doesn't actually split the tree. Basically you make a copy of the tree and delete all the records you don't want. This is the way to do it.

1. Make a copy of your Gedcom (or project if you are working project based)
2. Write a query to select the records you want to keep or delete (you can do it either way)
3. Delete the selected records, or their inverse.

The difficult bit is the query. The easiest way I can think of is to create a 'flag', and use that to manually mark all the people you want removed. You can choose to delete all records found by the query, or delete all records NOT found by the query. If you run it on two copies of the file, selecting the different option each time, you should end up with two trees, each with one set of records.

Hope this helps, and stick with it; there is an excellent forum (www.fhug.org) where there are some real experts, especially Jane who runs it. I have been using it for more years than I can remeber and have always been happy with it.

[GallowayLass]

Thank you Pete. I was probably looking at the record window assuming that's what you see when the programme opens? I've no idea what a diagram is. I'll look at the help files for diagrams later.

[PeteW1959]

I have just thought of another way to select the records you want to delete; you can create Named Lists (Lists/New Named List), and add records to it. You can use that list to select the records for deletion.

[Elizabeth Herts]

Galloway Lass, don't give up. I bought Family Historian just over a year ago and love it. Initially I was rather daunted, but I soon found my way around. As suggested, use the FHUG site (Users' Group). I posted a few really elementary questions and everyone was very helpful.

Diagrams are just a way of showing parts of your tree - e.g. a selected person and their ancestors (you choose how many generations), or a selected person and their family group or descendants. They are really helpful.

Wulliam on here in particular is a proficient user - just look at the book he made using Family Historian.

If I can use it I'm sure you can. I went over from PAF so I wasn't even used to anything as sophisticated.

[Elizabeth Herts]

If Family Historian is currently open on your computer, try this:

Highlight a person by clicking on their name.
Go up to the diagram icons (on the right next to the tab labelled "Media).
Click on which ever icon you like - the first one is Ancestor.
To alter what you see select "Diagram" on the bar above.
Go to the bottom and click on "Options".
Now you can select what you want to see - e.g. how many generations, how you want spouses displayed, etc.

It's great fun!

[Anne in Carlisle]

Don't give up. Try working through some of the sample family. That gives you a taste of what you can expect. Don't be put off by the daunting amount of things FH can do either. You don't have to use them all to start with but the features will be there waiting for you when you need them.

The FH User Group has some VERY helpful and knowledgeable members ready to answer your questions. There are also lots of little "how to" videos to help. Also a lot of "plug ins" to make the program even more useful. (I haven't even got round to using any of those yet!)

Anne

[Caroline]

FH is the best software ... definitely persevere with it. I've been using it since it first came out and although scary at first, you can use as much or as little of all its features as you wish. Personally, I always work from the diagrams to enter/edit people. So I call up the tree of a person I need in the way that Elizabeth said and then double click on the person and their details pop up in front of me.

[jtaubman]

As Anne says, please come along to the FHUG user group (link below) if you have any questions, check out the Knowledge base link to find Videos and how to's on lots of subjects.

Don't forget to check out the "Book" from the help menu, it's in a tutorial format and works though lot's of the functions of FH in a tutorial style.

You can keep as many branches of as many families as you want in Family Historian, if at any point you want to share parts of your tree with other people you can use the export options to do so. Where the split tree option get used most often is when you receive gedcom files from other people which have too much information in them and you use split tree to remove all the branches you are not interested it.

[GallowayLass]

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

I have found the diagram view as Pete suggested but I still can't get my dates to display with the month written in full eg. 3 December 1905, I'm stuck with 3 Dec 1905. This is really driving me daft as there's no option anywhere for me to choose the format. I've been into all the submenus and options boxes available. The one place I did see date format mentioned was in a statement below the international option. I have chosen "English - United Kingdom" and the statement implies that my dates will be in the format I want (see link to screenshot) but they just ain't GRRRR!!!

http://i1106.photobucket.com/albums/h374/GallowayLass/Untitled.jpg

I'm off out to visit Mum. I'll go into the user group pages when I get back.

[PeteW1959]

With a diagram open, click 'Diagram' on the top menu. The bottom option 'Preferences' is what you want.

The Preferences window has tabs across the top; click on 'Text'.

There is a short description, then a box with the currently selected scheme showing; the default is 'Birth, Marr, Death'

The list below should have the current scheme highlighted, so click on the 'Edit' button to the right.

In the Edit window, 3rd row down, middle box is 'Date Format' and the default is Compact (i.e. months as Jan, Feb etc). Change this to 'Long'.

Click OK

If you want this to be the default, make sure 'Save as default' (bottom left) is ticked, then click OK.

This will change the date format in the diagram, but not in the individual record windows; as far as I know you can't change that.

[Caroline]

I'm not sure where you are trying to get the LONG date format? The Property Box (where all the details about an individual are) uses the SHORT date as specified in your computer's control panel, the same in a diagram but when you want a Report, it will output dates in the LONG format i.e. January not Jan. There is quite a lot about the dates in the Help. The beauty of the way the dates work is that it doesn't matter how you type them in, it will change them automatically.

If you want the whole month showing in your tree diagram, you need to edit the text scheme under Diagram options then click Apply and it will apply on all diagrams until you change the text scheme when you will need to edit that one. You can play around and customise the text schemes as much as you like until it looks how you want it.

[jtaubman]

The entry screen always shows the 3 character month, BUT you can customise the Text scheme for diagrams to show the full month, and most of the reports default to showing the full month anyway.

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