Family Historian User Group

Hi,

I just got the trial version of FH6 to see if it's the right fit for me. First impressions are good, but I am exasperated trying to find a way to add hyperlinks to individual records. So for example, I've gathered many interesting web link referring to various ancestors, and rather than cut & paste a huge amount of information in notes, I would like to hyperlink these sites in individual records for future reference.

Seems to me that this should be fairly straightforward, but I've scouring help forums and here for two hours with no luck. Am I missing something obvious?

Your help is much appreciated by this newbie!

Hi JLeb

You can certainly add web addresses into your file, like any other text - but I would caution against it as an alternative to cutting and pasting.

The reason being that the information is there now, but you don't know it will still be there tomorrow. Even commercial websites can lose licences to provide certain information, and once you've found that nugget of data which proves that you are related to King Canute or perhaps somebody less famous you don't want to lose it.

So I always cut and paste and save it as a note within Family Historian, or print off the relevant webpages. I then record the web address as well as the source for future reference.

Oh - and always remember to back up your data to another medium as well. No computer lasts for ever and again you don't want to have to start from scratch because you only had one copy of your research!

Depending what the information is that you find create an appropriate fact and add the link into the source for that fact and as Russell says add all the data to that source in case the web page disappears or the link changes.

I echo what has been said and advise you download and capture any relevant information on your PC.

You can enter web address URL in any Note fields or other plain text fields, but they are not active hyperlinks.
You need to copy them into a browser address bar to access the associated web pages.

However, there are a few scenarios where they can become active hyperlinks...

Anywhere that Media can be added to say an Individual record or a Source record, it can be an active hyperlink.
Setting that up is a bit intricate by hand, so there is the Add Media URL Shortcut Plugin to assist you.
(However, Plugins are the one feature not supported in the 30-day Trial version of FH.)

If such URL are added to a PDF document, then they become active hyperlinks, and the PDF document can be added as a Media item.

If the FH Project is Published as Website or CD/DVD HTML pages, then there is a Plugin to convert all URL to active hyperlinks.

Thank you so much for the tips and feedback. Much appreciated!