Amazon.co.uk Review

Family Historian 2.1 is Callico Pie's first update of their excellent, well-known and well-received British Family History Program for Windows, which has been specifically produced for researchers of UK records. This is a program that gives users a huge degree of control over content and appearance. Particularly helpful is a feature that enables users to display research in both lists and charts, and also includes a comprehensive search system, enabling data to be recovered very quickly and easily. The program requires Windows 95 or later to run.

The accompanying pamphlet is well set out, using straightforward diagrams and language; technical jargon is used but it is fully explained and people with a basic level of Windows knowledge will not have any problems. There is also an extensive user manual accessible once the program is installed. One of the most helpful aspects of this excellent package is that it is 100 per cent GEDCOM compatible and complete, a worldwide standard of showing genealogical data. Therefore, genealogical data can be sent or received in the form of a GEDCOM file, without having to bother with conversion, as they are formatted correctly at the creation stage.

Learn how to create a new family history file, how to add children or parents, how to open a file, how to view ancestors and descendents, how to find records and save information, or add pictures, and much more. There are several new features in this updated version, including a range of the more traditional formats for displaying information such as family group sheets. This version includes everything available on the original, plus:

• a new reports menu
• a new reports window
• 17 new reports, including ancestor outlines, individual summary reports, family group sheets, and more
• a new facility for creating named lists, such as "Key People" or "Famous People"
• a new tools menu facility to allow you to re-order out of sequence data
• new backup/restore facility
• Fast Find Edit Controls for name and/or record ID in the records window
• a number of new preferences/options, such as an auto-save facility
• improved support for dates --Susan Naylor

Manufacturer's Description

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 or reports, without having to ‘crop’ your pictures. We know of no other Windows genealogy program that supports anything like this — and yet it is really an essential feature if you wish to work with pictures. You can also add sounds, video and any other kind of multimedia. You can even add links to other family tree files.

A Powerful and Sophisticated Query Engine A ‘query’ allows you to extract whatever data you want from your family tree file. Family Historian comes with a set of standard queries, but you can easily create your own, to get whatever information you want from your own data. Every query can be displayed in a spreadsheet-like grid, printed as a report, output to a file, or copied to the clipboard for easy transfer to other programs (such as a word-process or spreadsheet). Queries can also be used in other ways. For example, if you wished to split a family tree file you could use a query to define the split. You can also run a query to select pictures to view (e.g. show me all pictures of the female descendants of Z).

Reports Family Historian's support for reports was significantly improved in version 2.1 with the addition of 17 new reports and a completely new reports facility. The new Family Historian reports are very configurable and flexible. They include Individual Sumary Report, Family Group Sheet, Ancestor Outline, Descendant Outline, and many more. All of the new type of reports can be saved in HTML or Rich Text Format. You can create custom reports using any existing report as a template. In addition to these new types of report, you still also have reports based on queries, which have been supported since version 2.0. Family Historian comes with 28 queries when installed, all of which can be printed as reports. As already mentioned, users can create their own custom queries. As all queries can be printed as reports, this is effectively another way of creating custom reports.

100% GEDCOM GEDCOM is the global 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 (5.5) format. In fact, Family Historian uses GEDCOM as its own native file format. ‘100% GEDCOM complete' means that Family Historian can load all records and fields (or tags as they are called in GEDCOM) from a GEDCOM (5.5) 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 family tree application that comes close. Other applications simply discard records and fields that they cannot load. Some will tell you when they do this. Some won't.

Excellent Support for Sources Where did you get your information from? It's a very good idea to record not just the facts, but where the information came from — your sources. Your data will be much more useful to you, and valuable to others, if you know this. Family Historian makes it very easy both to record source information (with its automatic source citations) and also to view it.

A Unique Merge/Compare Facility Family Historian allows you to compare any two GEDCOM files side-by-side so that you can see exactly where and how they differ. Having compared them, you can then if you wish use Family Historian to merge them. Some family tree applications provide no support for merging files at all. Other family tree applications let you merge files, but only one record at a time. We consider that this is analogous to being asked to sign a contract one clause at a time. Family Historian allows you to do a full file merge; so that you make all the decisions about how the files are to be merged, and can see exactly what the outcome of the merge process will be, before you start any of it. You can if you wish leave everything to Family Historian or you can view how Family Historian proposes to do the merge, and override any aspect of it in any way you like. Or you can do everything yourself manually if you prefer, using the information provided in the compare process.

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.

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.

Ease of Use Family Historian is very easy to use. It has an innovative user interface that finds new ways to let the user explore and browse their family tree data.