Family Historian User Group

I migrated from TMG to Rootsmagic in 2014. At the beginning of 2016 I spent about 2 weeks looking at FH from an external view and then installed the trial version and spent the full 30 days evaluating. At that time I found too many issues to resolve, but I was really impressed with many features. Some of my issues were solvable with editing the GEDCOM file when moving from RM7 to FH6. Some were not resolvable such as the surety of each fact and the sentence structures, data would be lost.

FH now has version 6.2 but I cannot look at that version to see if some issues have been resolved. At what point does Calico Pie permit me to look at a new trial version?

Some software vendors have chosen to give full access to their software but withhold certain functions such as the ability to print or export. Is that path available to those of us waiting for certain features?

First checkout how_to:about:version_6.x.y|> Family Historian Version 6.2.2 that summarises all the version features.
Was your trial version 6.0.4 (Mar 2015) or 6.1.4 (Feb 2016)?
Versions 6.2.x do not add much beyond Internet Data Matches for FindMyPast.

Your earlier postings Gedcom import errors (13254), Sentence generated in Narrative (13278) & Narrative report output format (13323) were in Jan 2016 so I suspect you had version 6.0.4 (Mar 2015).

If you think there are some features you need to evaluate, then contact Calico Pie via the Family Historian Support page and use the + Contact Support option at the bottom. They have been known to grant a second free trial. The only feature missing from the free trial is Plugins, but that can be quite important for migrants because they offer ways to fix data incompatibilities, etc.

There is now the how_to:narrative_report_fact_sentence_templates|> Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates article that is related to your earlier postings.

Mike Thanks for the response. The issue of the trial is as I suspected. I read the response on sentence structure you pointed me to and it appears that that is very similar to the TMG methodology.

I am assuming that the GEDCOM transfer has not been changed so that I would need to adjust for Roles and Sentence structures.

I am trying to correct all the things that TMG allowed for that no other product seems to do and I can appreciate that. I am in the process of each person and fact that I touch in my current database is adjusted for any of the features that TMG provided that everyone else sees as a bad idea. Going to a 20 year old GEDCOM 5.5.1 standard.

One feature that I could use currently is the interactive charts that FH has. Even with the problems I have moving the data over, the data associated with these charts seems to come over intact.

Again thanks for the response and I hope version 7 gets released early next year. (my hope - no facts in evidence) It would be worth it just for the charting capability

Don't use the GEDCOM transfer method, use direct import instead.

Every product tends to offer different ancillary features that rarely migrate from product to product, and are outside the scope of GEDCOM. It will be a long time before standard Sentence Templates and the like will become available. Although 20 years old, the GEDCOM does at least offer the ability to transfer the basic records, and without it there would be no chance.

What issues do you have with migrating your data apart from Sentence Templates?

When I evaluated FH 6 there was no direct import from Rootsmagic therefore I needed to use GEDCOM. I have been off TMG for too long a time to go back there. If there is a direct import now that would certainly be helpful.

I have looked to find the old files from January and it appears that when I uninstalled FH 6 I did it all. Not error files, etc. therefore I would be working strictly from memory which is not a good practice when working with error conditions. the one piece of data that I can remember is the surety codes. RM7 uses Elizabeth Shown Mills scheme of Proof/not proof, original/derivative, primary/secondary, direct/indirect/negative. I think FH 6 only uses the Gedcom standard of 0-3.

Since I no longer have the error files I think it best to just buy a version and work from there. I was just hoping that I could get the Next full version (7 ???) so I don't find the version I buy is obsolete within a short period of time.

Sorry, your TMG_refugee username fooled me into thinking you were importing from TMG.

As advised in how_to:import_from_roots_magic|> Import from RootsMagic (RM) there was direct import for early RM, but now it is Gedcom.

You are correct that Quality settings for Source (_SOUR), Information (_INFO), and Evidence (_EVID) import to FH via GEDCOM as UDF tags, but the data is all present, and a Plugin could easily convert it to Citation Note text.

There has been no mention of an FH Version 7. There is usually at least two years between major releases, and V6 was release in Dec 2014. Anyway, since FH is very focussed on standard GEDCOM, it is highly unlikely that ESM style surety would be supported.