* Nervous about upgrading from V5 to V6

[Jessie 888]

I've just watched an excellent webinar on Find My Past about using Family Historian for hints and so on. I think it's persuaded me to upgrade to Version 6 but I'm very nervous about losing all my 'stuff'. My IT skills are very limited so, apart from making back-up copies of all my projects and buying the Version 6 Help Manual, is there anything that I should do (or be wary of) when I'm upgrading? (I've got Windows 7 which is fine for me and compatible, apparently.)

Sorry if this appears to be a dumb question but it's taken me three years to get used to Version 5 and I still only use about 10% of its capability!

[tatewise]

Upgrading FH from V5 to V6 should be no different than upgrading V5.0.1 to V5.0.2 to V5.0.3 through to V5.0.11 which I presume you have done from time to time.

Anyway, the upgrade should preserve absolutely everything in your data, but just like anything to do with PC, there is always some risk that something may go wrong. Equally your disk drive may crash or your PC fail completely tomorrow.

So the protection for all those risks is suitable backups. NOT on the same disk drive or PC that holds the original data, but somewhere else:- external disk drive, USB memory stick, cloud store such as OneDrive or Dropbox, etc.

You should be making backups not because you are updating FH but because your PC may go wrong or Windows 7 may go wrong.

See how_to:key_features_for_newcomers|> Key Features for Newcomers under Backup & Recovery where it mentions both backup strategies for Projects and a Plugin to preserve all your customisation & preference settings.

[Jessie 888]

Thank you, Mike. Nope, I've never done an upgrade of any kind before!

I shall take your advice and read through that link very carefully.

[goodwin2]

I've used FH through several versions and like you, Jessie, was a bit nervous about upgrading from FH 5 to FH 6. I did wait a bit after it was released to do the upgrade. I sort of expected to have a bit of adjusting to do with the upgrade but found that it went so well I was comfortable with it immediately. And, as you know, FH users have this great group of folks in FHUG so you can get answers to all your concerns. I doubt you will have any problems with the upgrade.

[Jessie 888]

Thank you so much for that reassurance. That's good to know!

[Jessie 888]

Just a final little update for anybody else considering upgrading from V5 to V6.

I finally bit the bullet yesterday and it was incredibly easy. Everything upgraded/changed with no problems at all. I don't know what I was worried about! The new features are amazing too and makes researching online so much easier. Happy days!