Family Historian Product Details
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Features:
This information was taken directly from the Family Historian site:
Unrivalled Support for Charts and Diagrams
Instantly create Ancestor, Descendant, Hourglass and Everyone diagrams, as well as Family Historian’s very own All Relatives diagrams. Diagrams are tightly integrated and used for browsing, exploring and editing – as well as for creating superb wall charts. Print diagrams at any scale or orientation. All diagrams are fully configurable and most options can be changed on–the–fly.
The All Relatives diagram – unique to Family Historian and greatly enhanced in version 3 – really does allow you to view all your relatives (including in–laws) in a way that looks great and is easy to understand. Relatives of the same type (all first cousins, all second cousins, etc) are laid out in the same row; so you can read off how people are related, from the (optional) row labels.
The new Everyone diagram shows everyone in your family tree file, and all of their relationships.
Diagrams can be saved as files, and you can work on them, and add to them over time. You can add as many trees as you like to any diagram, and link them. As well as getting Family Historian to show pictures in boxes, you can also add additional pictures (and additional text, lines and rectangles) to diagrams, and place them wherever you like. Diagrams can be saved in 9 different picture formats.
You can create your own custom diagram types, using any existing diagram as a template. You have unrivalled control over both the text content of boxes and the appearance of boxes and the layout of diagrams as a whole; but it’s even easier when it’s all done for you, which is why Family Historian comes with a choice of 32 standard ‘text schemes’ that determine the text content of boxes, and 8 ‘presets’ that determine the overall look of boxes.
Smart Trees
Family Historian’s smart trees give you unprecedented control over chart layout. Hide, show, move, resize and re–order boxes and watch as trees automatically adjust themselves to reflect your changes. Click on buttons to expand or close any branch on any diagram, and, again, the diagram will automatically adjust to accommodate the change.
Family Historian Sets a New Standard with its Support for Pictures and Multimedia
In Family Historian, not only can you add as many pictures as you like for each person, you can add a picture once and link it to each person in the picture. You can even link each person to their own face in the picture, and show just faces in diagrams without having to ‘crop’ your pictures. Family Historian is the only Windows family tree application we know to support this – and yet it is really an essential feature if you wish to work with pictures. You can display pictures (and faces from pictures) in diagrams and reports, and family tree CDs and websites.
You can also add sounds, video and any other kind of multimedia. You can even add links to other family tree files.
100% GEDCOM
GEDCOM is the universal standard format for shared genealogical data; but applications vary significantly in how well they support it. Family Historian is, we believe, unique in being 100% GEDCOM compatible, and 100% GEDCOM complete. ‘100% GEDCOM compatible’ means that Family Historian can save all of its data to the GEDCOM format. ‘100% GEDCOM complete’ means that Family Historian can load all records and fields from a GEDCOM file – including other applications’ extensions to GEDCOM. You might think that 100% completeness is the least you should expect; but it is not what you usually get. We know of no other application that comes close. Other family tree applications simply discard records and fields that they cannot load. Some will tell you when they do this. Some won’t.
Create Websites and Family Tree CDs
Creating superb and stylish websites or Family Tree CDs is easy using Family Historian’s powerful wizards. You can omit all details of ‘private’ individuals, or show only restricted information about others. You have extensive configuration options if you want to use them; or you can just use default settings and still get great–looking results.
Internet Search
Search for your ancestors in websites across the Internet using Family Historian’s integrated Internet Search tool.
Highly Configurable Reports
Family Historian comes with 28 fully–featured and highly–configurable reports (not including query–based reports – see below). These reports include narrative reports, outline reports, summary reports, complete–record reports, the Family Group Sheet and more. All reports can be saved as web pages or as word–processor documents. A wide choice of options are provided for the display of pictures (and captions), and sources. You can create custom reports using any existing report as a template.
Excellent Support for Sources
Where did you get your information from? Family Historian makes it easy to record your sources with its automatic source citations. Also invaluable is the ability to copy and paste citations from one event or attribute to another. Family Historian’s Property Dialog is designed so that you can see at a glance the sources of each item of data without have to ‘drill down’ to another level.
A Uniquely Powerful Merge/Compare Facility
Only Family Historian lets you compare any two GEDCOM files side–by–side so that you can see exactly where and how they differ, and how they will end up if you merge them – before you commit yourself to merging anything. You have complete control over the merge process (and can tweak or override any aspect of it). You can see at a glance, exactly which records will be updated, which will be unaffected, and which will be new (i.e. have no match in the current file). This is file merge/compare. Family Historian also supports both record and branch merge/compare. The former allows you to compare and merge any two records you already have in your file. The latter allows you to compare and merge entire duplicated branches (and, again, only Family Historian offers this).
Record merge/compare is very useful, but not adequate as a substitute for file merge/compare. To use record merge/compare to merge two files, means adding all records from one file into the other, and then trying to find and merge the duplicates. We do not recommend this approach even if (or perhaps, especially if) the find–and–merge process is automated, as there is no possibility of adequate oversight and control – unless you check each record, one–at–a–time, which would be impracticable unless you have only a few records.
A Powerful and Sophisticated Query Engine
A ‘query’ allows you to extract whatever data you want from your family tree file. For example, you could use a query to get any of the following information:
- what were the ages at death of X’s ancestors in the 19th Century?
- what boys names have been used by the descendants of Y?
- who are your relatives and what are the 5 closest ways that you are related to each of them (if you are related to them more than once)?
Installable Fact Sets (Events & Attributes)
With Family Historian you can record full details of any events in the lives of the individuals or families in your files. Family Historian comes with a large number of pre–defined events for you to select from (birth, death, baptism, marriage, divorce, etc), but you can easily create any new event types that you wish, and use them exactly like standard events. Attributes are facts about a person – e.g. their religion, where they lived, what they did. Again, Family Historian comes with a large number of standard attributes, but you can easily add your own. Family Historian has no built–in support for disease history, for example. If that’s what you want – no problem. Just add whatever attributes and events you need, and quickly see at a glance, who’s had what, when, and how old they were at the time.
Now in version 3 you can even define entire sets of events or attributes (fact sets) and export them for others to share, or install fact sets that others have defined.
Notes & Documents
You can have as many notes as you like about each individual in your family tree file (this is in addition to notes relating to specific events or attributes). Often, in practice, when an individual marries, you will wish to make notes that apply both to them and to their spouse. Sometimes you will wish to write notes that apply to a number of individuals. Family Historian supports all of these scenarios. It also allows you to see at a glance, and read, all the notes that are relevant to a given individual – and, of course, provide source citations for all of them. But if a note is not enough, you can also link your records to entire documents, written using your preferred word–processor, which you can store separately or embed in your family tree file.
No Limits
Each user can have an unlimited number of spouses, children, sets of parents, pictures, multimedia, notes, source citations, and so on. You can store multiple, possibly conflicting versions of most items of data, such as names, dates, places, etc.; and you can assess the reliability of each version.
Easy and Fun to Use
With its innovative and visually–oriented user–interface, Family Historian is not just very easy to use – exploring and working with your family tree data has never been more fun.
Tutorial, Documentation and Help
Family Historian comes with a Quick Start Tutorial booklet in the box, to get you started using the program. When you install the program, also installed onto your computer is a complete PDF (electronic document) version of the full length manual: “Getting the Most From Family Historian”. You can print this yourself if you wish, or read it on your computer. This manual takes you through all of Family Historian’s extensive functionality. Its philosophy is that the best way to learn is by example, so most chapters can be worked through as little tutorials, if you wish.
The first three chapters of the manual are more or less identical to those of the Quick Start Tutorial.
In addition to the Quick Start Tutorial and “Getting the Most From Family Historian” there is also extensive, context–sensitive Help. Even where there is no Help button as such, pressing F1 will usually take you straight to help that is relevant to the current context.
Screenshots:
A complete list of features and side-by-side comparisons are available on the Genealogy Software Review HomePage.
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