* What other software do you use for Family History?

[Jane]

Just to add to what Tatewise said, don't forget you can save the results of a query as a CSV file, which can be opened in Excel or even just select all the cells on the Query result page and paste them in if you prefer.

[makfai]

I use OneNote http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/onenote/  It is great for dumping research into.

If you are using an iPad you can also use OneNote with Outline+ http://outline.ws/  This is fully compatible with OneNote. If you are researching away from home you can use Dropbox to sync your MS OneNote with your iPad Outline+.  It is so simple.
Dropbox:
https://www.dropbox.com/teams?_tk=adwor ... tAodo2cAeg

I think Colnevalley girl has done tremendous work with her research dedicated  Genquiry programme but she says it will 'never' be compatible with the iPad.  Pity that because MS Access can be used on the iPad and not everyone will be using a windows based notebook/netbook/tablet.   So, for those looking to easily record and manage research between a PC and an iPad, OneNote and Outlook+ look a good alternative until someone creates an app like GenQuiry or makes an app to make it compatible.

[jmurphy]

It looks like this thread has been dormant for a while.

Since my earlier posts, I've switched to LibreOffice, which is a fork of OpenOffice. I changed over when OpenOffice started crashing a lot on my XP laptop.

I've just installed the Scrivener free trial from Literature and Latte.
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/

It's a writing tool which is perhaps best known for screenwriters, but it's also quite useful for research. It has an outliner and a corkboard; you can put keywords in documents, and so on. You can incorporate photos and PDFs and other files in your project binder. It may have just the right balance between flexibility and structure that I need. I'll know more after I've used it more, but I'm hoping that I can use it to organize reference notes about places, businesses, property, and other topics which aren't necessarily associated with a single person in Family Historian.

Has anyone tried Evidentia yet?

[ColeValleyGirl]

I've just installed the Scrivener free trial from Literature and Latte.

<snip>

Has anyone tried Evidentia yet?

I've been using Scrivener for some years, but not for Family History. And I haven't tried Evidentia (it seems a bit unethical for me to do so, somehow).

[jmurphy]

I've just installed the Scrivener free trial from Literature and Latte.

<snip>

Has anyone tried Evidentia yet?

I've been using Scrivener for some years, but not for Family History. And I haven't tried Evidentia (it seems a bit unethical for me to do so, somehow).

I'm looking forward to using your software, too.

I think Scrivener is going to solve one of my big research problems. I have many single pages of City Directories, mostly downloaded from Ancestry.

Some of the streets in my focus town have been re-named, and some may have been re-numbered. I've been meaning to do a big review of all the data I've collected so far, to figure out when the changes took place, but I've been putting it off because I had no way to keep everything organized. Printing out all the pages, putting them in a binder -- how do I organize it? A binder section per year?

A Scrivener project could be a big meta-directory with all my notes -- the notes about what directory each page came from, which family or business or organization I wanted the page for, any notes about street re-namings or re-numberings, cross-references to census pages -- the works. Keywords for the town name and directory publication year would allow me to do a search and bring up all the 1910 pages at once in a search result; keywords with surnames would allow me to search for all the pages I have for one family; the split editor would allow me to compare different years more easily than looking at the jpgs in IrfanView. Since Scrivener also handles PDFs, I can add in the modern-day tax maps. The one thing I haven't figured out to do yet is how to extract information that I've captured in Firefox via the Scrapbook extension, but it shouldn't be too hard to scrape that and put it into Scrivener.

Since Scrivener is used by fiction and screenplay writers it already has tools for handling people (characters), places (locations), and so on, which I can press into service for family history. I suppose I could have been using Evernote for a lot of these things, but since I like Scrivener's UI, I think I'll start with Scrivener.

The big advantage, of course, is that if I ever wanted to write up the results of my research as a book, Scrivener is the ideal tool for drafting it.

[makfai]

I have been dabbling with Scrivener on my PC. I am using it to write up a Family History in narrative form. I know I could us FH to produce a book but I want this 'book' to supplement the data in FH not repeat it and am trying to create more of a 'story' than a data driven record.

Unfortunately, Scrivener has not yet issued its iPad version but one is being developed. In its absence I have used Storyist on the iPad. However, I have found this wanting. There are no facilities for creating bookmarks; foot/endnotes; or indexing etc so I have had to add those in Scrivener once I have transferred a chapter over to my PC.

I have persevered with the (slimmed-down) OneNote app on the iPad and feel that I am going to stick with OneNote on the PC and iPad (rather than Outline+) for my research 'shoebox'.

[makfai]

I have also seen this app for the iPad called 'papers' http://www.papersapp.com/ios/

It seems like it acts as a portable repository for research documents which you can then annotate and sync with your PC or Mac. Not tried it. Windows/Mac versions not cheap!

[makfai]

Anyone using Scrivener may be interested in viewing the videos on YouTube by Lynn Palermo 'The Armchair Genealogist' http://www.youtube.com/user/lynnpalermo?feature=watch

[jmurphy]

Thanks for the pointer to the You Tube videos -- I'll check them out.

[makfai]

Thought I would give this a bump to see if there are any new ideas.

Still haven't found a good research logger for the iPad.

[makfai]

For those who like card index style record keeping there are apps for iPad and iPhone here http://www.denvog.com/sitemap/

They are also compatible with Scrivener on Windows

[makfai]

I have posted this elsewhere but thought it was worth copyimg to this topic.

I have started experimenting with TRELLO https://trello.com/platforms It means I can access my research across platforms.

I didn't appreciate its value until I got into it but one of the advantages would be, for example, allowing other contributors (family members?) to have an input or view of what research you are doing.