All users are encouraged to join the Family Historian User Group which is an excellent resource for Family Historian users. Among many other things, it has forums where Family Historian users can post questions and get help.

For questions about Family Historian in relation to The Master Genealogist, see Frequently Asked Installation Questions – for TMG Users. General (version 7) The Guild of One-Name Studies YouTube channel includes Why I Use Family Historian – Paul Howes, which is over an hour long, and includes a demonstration of the Merge/Compare File feature, starting at 46:00, using a file that contains over 190,000 individuals. Project-level fact definitions. Fact definitions specify how information is presented in reports and books. Now fact definitions can optionally be stored as part of a project, so you can be sure that if you give family members a copy of your project, any reports or books that they generate from the data will look the same. Enhancements to Internet Data Matching. The MyHeritage hints service has been extensively reworked to bring it into line with the latest service requirements. You can now also easily access a summary of accepted, rejected and pending hints, for each person.Using the How Related tool, you can view how individuals are linked using diagrams and a variety of facts. Media Extensive new power-user features. Technically sophisticated users create program extensions (called plugins), which can be shared via the Family Historian plugin store, so that all users can benefit. Now there are even more possibilities for power-users. In many contexts within the program there may be a Help button. Pressing this button takes you to Help that is relevant to the current context. If there is no Help button, pressing the F1 key will usually take you to help that is relevant to the current context. Other Resources

Tables. These are useful in many contexts, and are used extensively in the new handling for Text from Source in source records and source citations, and with the new support for Research Notes (see below). Heredis offers several charts, each of which comes with multiple variations and styles. The major highlight of Heredis 2024 is a brand-new Family Chronology chart, which allows you to view a selected person’s family as a series of timelines, making it possible to see which family members’ lives overlapped with each other. Heredis 2024 also adds a mixed ancestor and descendant wheel to its list of charts and reports. For questions about installing or reinstalling, or if you have problems accessing the Help, see Frequently Asked Installation Questions. For questions about products, see Product FAQ or System Requirements. The Places tool remains unchanged in RootsMagic 9, but it still neatly consolidates all your locations and maps in one place. Viewing, managing, and editing places is easy thanks to the fact the Edit Place dialog sits within the main interface as opposed to requiring a separate pop-up window, plus you can now edit place links to people and events from here too.If a person is said to have died in reports, this must be because there is a death event in their list of events and attributes. To solve the problem, open the Property Dialog for the person in question, select the Facts tab, locate the death event and delete it. Family Historian 7 also includes a transcription feature using word processing tools. Using templates for source types across regions, you can create word-for-word transcripts of documents. Notes Out of all the platforms we tested, Family Historian 7 was the easiest to get to grips with. Although its interface might seem a little dated, its simple layout makes it easy to navigate around. Getting the Most from Family Historian 6, by Simon Orde, the creator of Family Historian, is a comprehensive guide to the program, for beginners and advanced users alike. Although written for version 6, it is still very relevant and useful for version 7.

New export options. These have been added to accommodate all the new features, so that other applications which do not support Family Historian features, can still import the essential data – especially in relation to word processing features and source template field values. Fonts and text styles (bold, italic, underline and strike-out), text and highlight colouring, paragraph styles (bullets, indentation, alignment). RootsMagic 8 consolidated and simplified its charting tools, and RootsMagic 9 leaves the new-look tools completely untouched. While you lose access to the old RootsMagic Chart tool, a standalone app with almost unlimited customisability, you gain a simple user interface, choice of over 40 charts and reports and the ability to make changes to your existing charts without starting again from scratch. RootsMagic 9 adds two extra reports, centred around its new Associations feature that allows you to link individuals to friends and peers and other influential figures as well as immediate family. Improvements to the Property Box (main data entry window), to make it even easier to use, especially when space is limited. Version 10 focuses its attention on improvements to the Virtual Globe view, delivering snappier performance, a cleaner look and new timeline control to filter what events are shown within a specified date range.

Verdict: RootsMagic 9 offers refinement over game-changing new features, but despite some annoyances remains excellent value for money. Heredis: The pros and cons The Mapping tool can display markers for more than one person, but it’s not as intuitive as it could be. First, only the selected person’s markers are highlighted in a different colour, and there’s no chronological line between places to help you easily trace someone’s life journey. Other new features include tools for analyzing DNA data, matching with MyHeritage records, and support for GEDCOM 5.5.1. Core Features If you are a user of The Master Genealogist, please see Frequently Asked Questions – for TMG Users. Powerful built-in scripting toolscan be used to automate repetitive tasks, make extensive one-off changes to your data, or even to create your own new tools or new kinds of output. If you want, you can even use them to create plugins for submission to the Family Historian Plugin Store (see above).