If you've not used Ancestral Sources before then you may find the "Introduction to Ancestral Sources" video helpful. This is available on the Ancestral Sources You Tube Channel.
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Ancestral Sources will generate rich text source transcriptions allowing your source text to include tables, coloured text, fonts, etc. In addition it supports Family Historian 7 source templates, including the 'essentials' and 'advanced' collections. Ancestral Sources continues to support projects created in Family Historian 6 and earlier and includes additional features and improvements that will benefit users who don't upgrade to FH7 immediately.
What is Ancestral Sources?
Ancestral Sources is a very popular utility, created by Nick Walker, designed to be used in conjunction with Family Historian to allow faster, more convenient creation of Census, Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Death and Burial/Cremation records. Ancestral Sources makes adding source entries to Family Historian much quicker and easier to achieve. Simply enter the record details and allow Ancestral Sources to do all the hard work of creating Census, Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Death, Burial, Occupation linked via citations to sources and multimedia records.
Ancestral Sources pioneered a source-driven approach to entering data into Family Historian. Most of the information that is added to a family history file originates from one of just a few types of documents, namely birth, marriage and death certificates, church baptisms, marriages and burials, and census records. The concept of Ancestral Sources is that it allows the data from these source documents to be entered directly into the software, building up the family history data in a more intuitive approach than the usual methods used by genealogy applications. For example, typically entering a census household entry in a family history application requires multiple facts such as census, occupation, birth, etc. to be created for each individual, all linked back to a source via citations: a very time consuming exercise. Ancestral Sources makes this far easier and much quicker to achieve.
Ancestral Sources is highly recommended for all users of FH. The availability of Ancestral Sources is frequently cited as a key reason to use Family Historian over other genealogy applications that do not have similar functionality.
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What's new in Ancestral Sources v7.8?
I've produced a short video that talks through some of the new features: What's new in Ancestral Sources v7.8?. In particular there is a lengthy demo in the last part of the video that takes an in-depth look at using method 2 (lumped) templated sources in Ancestral Sources, which is now supported as an option.
- When editing the fields of a source template that are not auto-completed, Ancestral Sources will now remember the previous value entered and gives the option to carry forward that previous value. This should save time when entering data using templated sources, particularly if a batch of records from the same source are being entered. A query from Gary Gauthier prompted me to add this feature.
- There is now a toolbar button that allows the 'Key Person' to be selected for census records. By default the key person is the individual in the first row of the table, but this can now be changed via a new Key Person toolbar button. The default census method 1 title template has also been changed to use the {KEYPERSON} tag rather than {OTHER} - this will only affect new users or anyone who resets their settings. Thanks to Peter Rollin for suggesting this.
- Ancestral Sources will now allow templated sources to be created for those who use Method 2 (lumper) sources. Various changes have been made to the user interface to accommodate this. For example the link to create a Repository will now only be shown if a repository is referred to in the source template.
- There is now a new accents/diacritics feature that works in a similar way to the facility in Family Historian. Hold down a letter in a text box to reveal alternative accented versions. Up to 9 alternatives can be allocated to any letter key and some other keys. Accent settings can be imported from Family Historian if they have been customised there. Thanks to Gary Gauthier for suggesting this.
- When entering the birth place for a birth source, or place of death for a death source, there is now an option, set by default, to automatically duplicate the place and address to the residence for the parents or spouse (if applicable). Thanks to John Rosser for suggesting this.
- When recording death or burial entries, previously if the default 'Suggest occupation' setting was set, the occupation of the parents and spouse (if specified) were also suggested. 'Suggest occupation' now only applies to the deceased individual. There is a new option 'Suggest occupation for others' that controls whether the occupation is also suggested for parents or spouse. This is not set by default.
- Now includes a 1931 Canadian census template. This is a slightly modified version of a template produced and kindly shared by Teresa Eckford.
- Nationality columns in census entries will now display as drop-down lists rather than text boxes to take advantage of the auto-complete facility. This was suggested by Robin Dew.
- Added menu items with keyboard shortcuts to allow alternative methods of selecting repositories, editing source templates, editing source text. Added a CTRL + F option to set the focus on the Find Name text box. CTRL+T selects the Date field when using census sources. Added a new Keyboard Shortcuts help page. This work was inspired by discussions with Alan Medows.
- Tab pages, for all source types except Census, can now be selected using short-cut keys Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, etc. Choosing a tab page will now focus the cursor on the first control in the tab.
- If Templated Sources are being used then the link to create a repository will no longer be shown on the main screen. This will only be available from the Source Template screen. This was to done to stop issues that could occur if a repository was added from the main screen even though the source template may not include a link to the repository.
- The Batch Flag Add screen wasn't correctly handling changes to scaling but should do now. This issue was reported by Richard Andrews.
- Removed the ability to type into the zoom drop-down list on the Image Viewer form, because it didn't really work anyway and could cause an error as reported by Alan Medows.
- Alan Medows also pointed out that AS would display an error if the columns of a census grid with records added had an additional column added in the Census Template Editor. This is now fixed.
- AS would generate an error if the Options screen was used when a project or standalone GEDCOM file wasn't loaded. This is now fixed. Thanks to Gary Gauthier for reporting this.
- Fixed some errors that could occur if only a year was specified for a census.
- Made a small improvement to the way the baptism and birth places synchronise.
- Peter Rollin reported that the KEYPERSON.CUSTOMID tag was incorrectly returning the name of the person if the key person was a 'person not in file' in a census entry. This is now fixed - it will return no data in this scenario.
- Fixed an issue reported by John Morrison where some additional text was incorrectly added to census headings if the 'Census: Blank line after titles' option was being used.
- Made some further changes to the way the tab order works in AS - in particular the splitter controls no longer act as tab-stops. I'm hoping this won't cause any issues to users but allowing these to act as tab stops caused inconsistency in tab order.
- Alan Medow pointed out that using the buttons to move a row up or down lost the changed text in a cell if it is in edit mode. This is now fixed.
- The Find Name and ID text boxes will now select any text in those boxes when they get the cursor focus to make it easier to clear them if necessary. Another Alan Medows suggestion.
- When saving a burial entry it was possible to enter an invalid death date and for the entry to be saved. This is now fixed.
- The event date and death date error indicators weren't cleared if the entry was cleared, they are now. Thanks again to Alan Medows for reporting.
- Made some changes to census template editor to allow a date to be specified when the 'Year or Description' isn't a year.
Download
Visit the Ancestral Sources v7.8 Download page on the Knowledge Base site.
See also the Ancestral Sources Help Online and the Ancestral Sources Knowledge Base pages.
Thank you to Simon Orde at Calico Pie for all his support and encouragement in producing Ancestral Sources, Jane and Helen at the FHUG for all their technical expertise in getting the AS download, help and knowledge base online and everyone who has helped to test, report issues and make suggestions for improvements.