Family Historian User Group

I am very new to FH having downloaded a trial of v6 yesterday so I'm still very much exploring its features. I have already entered some basic data and looked at the various reports that can be produced and have even created a website. So far , so good! My main concern is about the ability to use a family tree project to organise copies of Birth, Death Marriage Certificates etc in PDF form. I have been able to attach PDF documents to the Media tab for an individual. However I can't see how these PDF documents can then be accessed when you are viewing a family tree. Only the pictures seem to be shown. For example on the sample website I produced I can view all the basic details of individuals including pictures and any notes I have written about them BUT crucially any PDF docs such as Death certs do not appear. I have managed to add a PDF Death Certificate to the website home page but really I want all these PDF docs to appear within the entry for the individual so that when someone views all the details for an individual they can read the notes AND also click on PDF links to download any relevant documents such as the persons Birth, Marriage and even Death Certificates. Is this actually possible using this software? Obviously I can try to manually edit the HTML source code that was created by FH6 but that is only because I am able to do this myself. I have friends who are also considering buying this software (I am evaluating it for them) and they would need to be able to add PDFs and have links to these created by the website wizard.

Any help would be much appreciated!

This topic has come up before (try a forum search) and I'm hoping someone can come up with a better answer as in the future I would find it useful myself.

One option would be to convert the PDFs to pictures or extract the pictures (certs etc) from the pdf, but that takes away the ability to search text in the pdf and an "image" of the pdf might not be as easy to read.

Hi Jim, welcome to the FHUG.

As a newcomer may I advise you look at how_to:key_features_for_newcomers|> Key Features for Newcomers and follow all the links.

Regarding PDF, check the advice in how_to:v4:adding_multimedia|> Adding Photographs and Other Multimedia especially under Adding Other Media and the links to Related Forum postings, plus under See Also a link to fhugdownloads:pdfcreate|> Downloads and Links ~ PDF Utilities.

You can view PDF by clicking the triangular Open in Editor/Player button in a Multimedia window, but only image Media appear in Diagrams, Reports, Web Pages, etc. The same applies to word-processor documents (RTF/DOC/DOCX) and audio & video Media. Bear in mind that PDF/RTF/DOC/DOCX are unlimited in page length so are much more difficult to incorporate into Diagrams, Reports, Web Pages, etc, than images (JPG/PNG/TIF/GIF).

So the solution that most users adopt is to convert the PDF into a graphic image file and link that instead of, or as well as, the PDF.

Usually Source Documents such as Certificates would be attached to a Source record Media tab, rather than the Individual, because they act a source for several people. Each person or relevant Fact would cite the Source record so all the details are in one place. This Source record would hold a transcript extracted from the Certificate in its Text From Source field. So the need to search PDF after the initial data entry is probably unnecessary.

Such data would normally be captured via ancestralsources:index|> Ancestral Sources which supports the concepts explained in glossary:sources|> Sources both of which are referenced in the Key Features for Newcomers mentioned to start with.

Many thanks. Have investigated further and realise that the software does not fully do exactly what I wanted which was to maintain a family tree with links between individuals but also have the capability of linking documents (eg Word or preferably PDF) to individuals. I appreciate you can attach JPGs but (a) that requires conversion (b) it only really works for single page documents. What if I want to link to a multipage document such as a life story? I find it very strange that some of the feedback suggests this is a technical limitation when it is possible to actually add a PDF document to the Tabe of Contents ie the Home page of a website created by the software. I was able, for example, to include a Deatch Certificate in PDF format to the Table of Contents list . The problem being that all my PDFs would appear as a (very!) long and unstructured list on the home page rather than being seen as a URL in the entry for the person it relates to!

Dont get me wrong, I like what I have seen of the software so far and have only really scratched the surface of using it. I am just a little disappointed as I was really hoping to use it to create a website oriented Family Tree with links to PDFs as well as pictures. I may have to reconsider whether I just use a website creation program to create a family tree instead!

Hi Jim, you have slightly changed tack.

Single Page PDF
You started talking about PDF single page Certificates and the solution seems to be acceptable.
In my experience most Source Documents such as Certificates and Census Records and Church Records are provided as online images, or as paper that must be scanned or photographed into images. Rarely are they available as PDF.
So can we agree that such documents can be attached in image format and be closely associated with each Individual in the online tree?

Multi-Page PDF
Now you are talking about multi-page PDF documents such as life history/biography. Are you saying you already have such documents? If so, then that would be unusual, and I would not expect their to be large numbers to attach to the Home Page.
That Home Page feature is primarily to attach large Family Tree Diagrams or large Reports in PDF format.
Most users rely on FH to produce the life history documents/reports based on the Facts added to each Individual and supported by Source document Citations. Each web page for each Individual/Family would be that life history/biography using the Narrative Reports in FH.

Mike,

There are a number of use cases for which the PDF document format makes sense -- I don't think it's as unusual as you think.

1. Multi-page sources where a PDF is much more convenient than multiple images. A simple example would be a will or a newspaper cutting that spans two or more pages; a more complex example would be the document I have where I've imaged the Land Tax records for a single parish over several decades -- to source an assertion that John James paid tax on a particular property over a period of time, I would rather link to a single file that spans the whole period than to 20 images extracted from the document. Ditto if I've got a handwritten journal -- I want to attach a copy of the whole journal to the source record -- or a long (tabulated) transcription. Yes, I can use a multi-page image format such as TIFF to overcome some of these problems, but for text documents, it's perverse to use an image format that sacrifices the ability to search the text.

2. Some sources are actually provided as PDFs (e.g. information from the 1939 Register, if you requested it before Findmypast started digitising it).

3. If I want to explain the reasoning by which I've arrived at a particular conclusion (e.g. John James was the son of John James of Trecwn Mill, not the son of Thomas James of blah blah in spite if the whole internet saying he is) -- i.e. document a proof statement/proof summary/proof argument (as described at http://bcgcertification.org/blog/2015/0 ... guments-1/ ) -- I need to be able to attach a structured text document to a 'fact' in FH. I do this by creating a quasi-source that is my proof argument with the PDF document attached and then cite that argument where it's relevant. Except that at the moment there's an extra stage -- create a TIFF from the PDF so the document is linked from web pages... Again, its nonsense to turn a text document into an image that can't be searched.

Helen

Hi Mike. Many thanks for your feedback. I didn't mean to 'change tack' - perhaps I wasn't good at explaining my requirements. Yes I can see how I can add Birth certificates etc ie single page documents as JPG files. I have several certificates stored as PDFs and I can obviously convert these back to JPGs using conversion software and get them added to an individual record that way. Some work on my part but not the end of the world. I do think however (in my humble opinion of course!) that a simple URL link to a PDF is a better solution. For one thing three short URLs to the Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates takes up much less space than the three thumbnail images for the JPGs. I added my Fathers Death Certificate as a JPG and it appears under his photograph on an Individual Summary but I do think it looks odd (my personal view entirely)

Secondly I do additionally have requirements for adding multiple page documents in PDFs. A simple case is that when my father passed away there was an 'obituary' which ran to several pages and contained a summary of his life in verse format. Can't really be added to Notes or as a JPG. Also the benefit of having PDFs stored in the project is that they are searchable so that you could enter some text such as 'influenza' and find all the documents containing that text. As I said in my original post, I am simply very new to this software and still exploring what I can do with it and was a little surprised that there was no support for managing PDFs. I think if the product had such a feature it would open up endless possibilities. I dont know if this is a future feature request but I'd like it to be!

Jim's points:

Jim said: three short URLs to the Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates takes up much less space than the three thumbnail images for the JPGs.

I am not sure I follow that argument. The JPG images are files, much like the PDF files, and those JPG need URL links, just like the PDF need URL links, so I don't see a significant difference.

Jim said: I added my Fathers Death Certificate as a JPG and it appears under his photograph on an Individual Summary but I do think it looks odd.

That is because you added it to the Individual record Media tab where photos are meant to go. You have overlooked my point in my first reply: Usually Source Documents such as Certificates would be attached to a Source record Media tab, rather than the Individual, because they act as source for several people. Each person or relevant Fact would cite the Source record so all the details are in one place. This Source record would hold a transcript extracted from the Certificate in its Text From Source field. So taking your Fathers Death Certificate, it probably has his Date of Birth, and a relation as an Informant, and possibly a Home Address. So it should act as a Source not just for his Death Event, but also his Birth Event, and the Informant, and possibly a Residence Fact. Such Source details are included later in the web page reports, and get repeated where relevant for each Individual.

Source data would normally be captured via ancestralsources:index|> Ancestral Sources which supports the concepts explained in glossary:sources|> Sources both of which are referenced in the how_to:key_features_for_newcomers|> Key Features for Newcomers.

General PDF points:

Whether PDF are text searchable or not depends on how they were created. PDF of old documents are often just images anyway, and not textual facsimiles, so they cannot be searched for text.

There is nothing to stop multi-page PDF being linked into Source records (or elsewhere). They just need to be opened in an external viewer to read/search them.

Jim's request is to incorporate them into Reports via URL links, particularly when creating HTML web pages. The current complication is that Reports are created for various media: On-screen, printout, RTF, HTML, TXT. So a special case would be needed for HTML format.

Nevertheless, I admit that it would be a useful feature. So I suggest Jim or Helen submit a support request to Calico Pie.

There has been a development for adding multi-page PDF to FH created websites/CD/DVD.

The Improve Website or CD DVD HTML Plugin will support a magic code {{MEDIA:file|text}} that becomes a hyperlink to the non-image file such as a PDF.

See Multi-page images (that old chestnut) (13121) for full details.