Family Historian User Group

If you load the file into another program without exporting, the notes will simply have some "codes" in, but the text is still readable Presumably HTML/XML tags, as this would give the required formatting without making the output excessively complex or opaque. I thoroughly endorse the "it will be ...

I hope the upgrade doesn’t break the basic principle of GEDCOM compatibility. Clearly, the word processing data have to be stored somewhere, but hopefully in supplementary files that are somehow linked via proprietary GEDCOM tags that don’t compromise data export to other packages. Despite the well ...

You don’t have to go too big - my LG is “only” 29”, and I find that plenty big enough. It’s the same as two non-widescreen 17” monitors side by side, and in my experience over the years, 17-19” non-widescreen is about the right size for text-based applications such as FH. If you want to look at very...

I needed to replace monitors recently, and went with a single "ultrawide" from LG. It's brilliant - plenty of room to have FH and a source document open side by side without the huge sacrifice in desk real estate required by twin widescreens, or even a laptop with supplementary monitor. Mine is 2 * ...

Interesting to read the arguments for and against in the link Lorna posted. For me, it is clear - our hobby does not trump assurances given in 1921, and it should stay confidential until 2022.

I go further - I rarely give an explicit citation for name, as there is an implied citation in every source you quote, as you have assumed that the person named in the source is the same as the person in your database. Similarly, if all I know about an individual’s birth is what’s written in a censu...

Guess there is no ideal solution. For what it’s worth, underscores are probably more common in programming languages, so if you write add-ins you may be more inclined to use them. I also use underscores to denote missing or uncertain characters when transcribing, but the context generally makes the ...

Strictly speaking, the en-dash should be used to denote a span (e.g., John Smith lived in London 1850-1859), but I think it is safer to stick to the simple hyphen for all dashes. Easy enough when entering text directly from the keyboard, but be careful if copying from a word processing package that ...

There are a few options in the attached link. Once you have a GEDCOM file, it can be imported into FH directly.

https://genealogy.stackexchange.com/que ... -to-gedcom

That rather begs the question of where are Calico Pie on this forum? I tend to dip in and out over time, but I don’t remember seeing much (anything?) contributed directly by their small team. It could create the impesssion that FH is regarded as a mature product with little active development...

Thanks Lorna, that is a good additional explanation. It might take a new user a while to get clear in their mind the difference between a media Record and a media File (it did for me, anyway!). The record is really just a device for keeping together the media file and information associated with it ...

Indeed - I like to capture as much from sources as possible, as that is the only thing in our databases that is 100% certain. It is absolutely certain that the Parish Register recorded name and age as it does. Going from there to anything else (when they died, when they were born, even exactly which...

Dave has tested a simplified Python script that does what he has described, and it can be posted here for others to use and develop as appropriate. As posted here, it takes a single named source and splits it up such that each lumped citation becomes a new source with a name of the pattern Original ...

Inserting places a copy of the media file in the Family Historian project folder. If you only ever access your media through FH , this has the advantage of being easier to manage and backup, as there is a permanent association between the file and the database that does not change. Linking does not ...

My style is similar to Adrian's. If I only have a burial date but not an exact death date, I record an approximate death date based on the burial, typically the same month without the exact date. Age at burial was also a useful indicator for mid-nineteenth century deaths before age at death became a...

Happy to assist if you want to take the Python route, as this is an easy modification of the general script described in the cited thread. You would need to install the free software, modify a script with my guidance and run it from the command line, so does require some familiarity with more genera...

Mike, Splitting can be customised according to what information is available. For Census entries, I already have the PRO reference as the detailed citation (the citation Where within Source ), so this readily creates sufficiently distinct split source names, one per household. I add the location for...

These conversion routines are now done, and I have two Python scripts exactly analogous to the previous Excel/VBA versions but vastly superior (more compact, easier to follow, much quicker, and above all, free!). The first formats the Family Tree Maker export GEDCOM to address various issues raised ...

Calico Pie are a tiny organisation (four employees according to their latest Companies House return), so opportunities for stress testing new features and versions in-house are limited. Have previous upgrades arrived fully formed, or do they invite forum members to beta-test prior to release?

That might raise the question of who writes the standards in the future. Trying some random examples of UK place names in Ancestry for example, their place name database is a mess of mixed US/UK punctuation styles and missing apostrophes. Maybe in another generation, all but the most basic punctuati...

Indeed! Probably better to describe my target as “consistency” rather than absolute “correctness”, as there are multiple versions of the latter, and it changes with time...

Being a bit of a pedant about these things, I was reviewing my database to ensure place names were punctuated correctly and came across links to both St. Neots and St. Neot's registration district. Unsure of which was correct (in, as in King's Lynn , or out, as in St. Albans ) I checked online, and ...

The Excel routines were useful for tidying and converting my own tree, which was originally developed in Family Tree Maker , which has a more traditional "database" approach that doesn't work well in FH due to fundamental limitations of GEDCOM . It was based on older routines that I used with FTM to...

Not all packages use the Living flag the same way. I have many examples in my Ancestry tree where the Living flag has been set automatically when no death date was specified, even if birth was over 200 years ago!! Not sure if the bug is with Ancestry or RootsMagic, which I use as a “helper” applicat...

I’ve always been scared of losing activation codes and the like, so I generally have up to three copies, as appropriate for the original media: 1. E-mails containing user names and/or activation codes are filed by supplier, with the PST files backed up both locally and in the cloud. 2. A simple spre...