Family Historian User Group

I've just bought FH6 having previously stored my tree on Ancestry. Wanting to record everything properly, I decided to start my tree again and have used Ancestral Sources to enter the full details of a number of events - on one branch of my tree - and attach the BMD images.

I appreciate that I'm only a beginner but I want to know what I can and can't do with FH6 before adding a large number of people to my tree.

Looking at the reports, I've tried several but am stuck as to how I can customise them, including most but not all of the information added from the certs to each event. eg I am getting several sentences covering informant, age and address - see attachment.
And it comes up with 'a' informant not 'an' .....

I would also like to make the text smaller for the sources than for the main text of the report (I've found out how to change the font and colours for various parts of the reports etc) but can't see how to make the source text smaller).

Is there a beginner's guide to reports (and books)?

Hope this makes sense and thanks for reading; any help much appreciated.

Hi Dierdre, did you work through the Key Features for Newcomers as advised in your earlier posting?
That covers a lot of the important FH features including Reports and Books, especially in the FH Documentation and Tutorials.

To answer some specific questions:

Use the Tools > Fact Types features to alter Sentence Templates for Narrative Reports.
For the Informant case, select Birth Event, Edit > Roles > Informant > Edit and change the 'a' to 'an' in the Witness Sentence Template.
Then repeat for the Death Event.

No, it is not possible to alter the Sources font separately within FH.
However, you can Save Report As > Word-processor Document (RTF) and adjust fonts using a word-processor such as MS Word. Other word-processor are available and some are free.

See how_to:report_content_multimedia_format_layout|> Report Content, Media, Format and Layout.

Hi Mike, thanks for your reply.

I've spent several hours each day on FH and have gone through many of the topics and videos in the key features for newcomers section; all really helpful. I've also found the 'getting the most out of FH5' manual. But I hadn't found much on customising reports; I had saved one into word but it lost some of the formatting so will try and do what i want in FH.

I have also changed a number of the sentences in the fact types but hadn't spotted where to change 'a' to 'an' (i'd looked for an informant sentence).

My main issue though was with the three sentences appearing for each informant event. I'm only on my phone at the moment do can't look to see if i can edit that in the same place but I'll check it out tonight.

FH clearly does a lot (i work with Microsoft Access and Excel every day so am used to queries etc) but i clearly have plenty to learn. Apologies again if I'm being impatient.

Thanks.

In Getting the Most From FH5 the customising of Reports and Books is cunningly disguised under:
Chapter 17 Reports
Chapter 18 Books & Booklets

The Witness Sentence Templates such as for an Informant are reached via the Roles button in the associated Fact Definition dialogue within Tools > Fact Types.

In assume you have actually created those Informant Roles because AS does not make it very clear that you need to do so.

Thanks again Mike. I found those chapters in the guide but neither answered my questions! I was looking for a design mode of the reports i guess, where i could choose which facts i wanted to include.

I'm in work so haven't had a chance to explore it fully, but the fact types should help. If I can't get that to work as i want, I'll probably delete the informant info from the BMDs and just add anything i want in the relevant notes section.

And yes, i created the informant roles in AS as instructed in the 'how to' video - for the first few, i even had the video running on my tablet while i added the info into AS on the computer.

Looking forward to trying out more tonight, so thanks again.

I wouldn't necessarily delete the Informant information if you can't get the formatting right (I spent quite a few weeks working through this when I migrated from TMG so share your frustrations!). You can always leave the data in FH but exclude it from the reports by clearing the Fact Template data for the relevant Witness Name.

In the FH Book on page 194 there is a Report Options screenshot illustrating Events/Attributes fact options, and goes on to explain how to customise the facts included/excluded to produce a Hobby Report. Those options allow any combination of facts to be chosen.

I am not sure what AS 'how to' video you are viewing, because there are none for Birth and Death data entry, and certainly not for the FH V6 Witness style Informant Role. This Informant scenario turned out to be the primary problem unearthed in the Fact Entries (13541) thread. As advised there, you must create a definition for that Witness Role in FH otherwise you get the effect you have reported with a and an.

I have added some advice to ancestralsources:index|> Ancestral Sources regarding Informants.
See ancestralsources:family_historian_birth_death_informant_witness_role|> Family Historian Birth & Death Informant Witness Role.

Thanks both; I've clearly got some reading / work to do before deciding if FH is right for me. I watched every video I could find and certainly used one while I was entering the data, but that may have been the census one.

Anyway, thanks again for your help.

You might want to explore the Individual Summary Report (ISR) format for doing your reports. This is the option I settled on after being unhappy with the way the FH templates generated text, formatting etc.

I decided to go with an approach where I took complete control of all the text writing and formatting. I do this by using the Note boxes that are available for each Fact event. I use these boxes to write my own stories about each event. This gives me complete control of the text.

To supplement these Notes, I use the Add Citation option that is available for each Fact to add Source documents, photos, copies of various records, etc., all of which are in jpeg format.

I also frequently like to write lengthy biographies for people. I created a "Biography" Fact in FH and then select that for a given individual. Once that Biography Fact has been added to the individual's profile, I again use the Note box to type the biography. In some cases, I may find a bio already written about an ancient ancestor. If it is not in a text format that I can copy and paste into the Note box, I will just copy it as a jpeg image and attach it as a Source document to the Biography Fact. In those cases, I may use the Note box for a brief intro to the attached Source document.

I have customized my ISR settings to create a printed layout that I prefer. For example, I have it setup to display all my attached jpeg media files to utilize a full page display, rather than the smaller thumbnail display that the ISR will default to.

This approach works great for my purposes. I get a very well organized presentation of all the Facts for each individual, along with my own written story that is related to each Fact, and, is displayed immediately below each Fact.

Not sure what your ultimate goal might be. Just thought I would throw this out for consideration. In my case, all my ISRs will be compiled into a book (with an FH generated Index that will make it easy to find people) that I will have printed for my children and their descendants.

Hi Bob, thanks ever so much for this, really helpful, and clearly explained. I hadn't looked at the ISRs but, following advice from elsewhere, have been playing with the individual narrative reports, using the notes section to add in the text I want. While there is more to do (tweak!) I'm much happier now that I will be able to do what I want with the software.

I've just had a quick look at ISRs and changed the colours of the text to see what goes where, and that option looks very promising too, thanks. The ISR seems to remove the repetitive nature of census entries. I will certainly look more into the ISRs.

My current plans appear much the same as yours... a book with summary and detailed sections, photos and a family tree (which I've also managed to change more to my liking), for my children and a few interested cousins who have helpfully provided a few treasured photos.

Once again, many thanks for your reply.

Hi Bob and Deirdre,
Thank you both your very useful comments that I have just come across. I seem to be laying out my records in a very similar way. One question though, how to you link a citation to a Note, rather than to a Fact?
I have a large collection of letters which provide information on an Individual's life, and I want to link them to the Notes where, like you, I am writing expanded stories of what occurred. The letters are all on Jpegs and in the media file of a Source.
I don't want to create a different Source for each letter, but I am prepared to write a number of local notes and link each one to the source (the letter collection) with a "Where Within Source".
I could link the Source just to the Fact, but that would mean an extremely complex "Where Within Source" to describe which part of the Note was linked to which letter in the Source.
Does this make sense? Or am I approaching the matter the wrong way altogether?
All the best

Jamie

While it's specifically what you don't want to do, couldn't you make "Letter Collection " the Repository and each letter as a source in that repository? Makes the Where within source easier, I would think

Jamie, assuming you did attach the Citation to a local Note it still would not help you with the Where with Source.
It would be attached to the Note as a whole and not any particular paragraph, so no different to attaching to the Fact.

If you wish to experiment, then on the All tab, locate the Fact that has the local Note.
Click its left-hand [+] to expand and reveal the Note field.
Right-click the label Note and choose Add Source > Add Link to Existing Source and select the Letters Collection.
Create the types of Report you prefer and check the Notes and Citations and Sources are to your satisfaction.

However, I tend to agree with Stevie, that it would be better to have a Source record for each Letter.
Then the need for any Where within Source may vanish, or at least be a lot simpler.

Another snag with lumping all letters into one Source record is how they appear in Reports.
If you include Sources in your Reports then any Citation of that Source will include all the letters.
If you choose to include their images then it is case of all or nothing.
Whereas, if you split each letter into a separate Source, then only cited letters will get included.