Family Historian User Group

Hi Everyone

With a diagram displayed, I have over noticed from a few days ago that I have lost all of my expressions dealing with the display of icons on diagrams apart from the default ones (Sex, Box Type and <default>)..........when one clicks on Diagram>Options>Boxes (Tab) .
They have been perfectly OK when opening and closing FH on previous occasions over the past few months being retained as expected.....
However saved Charts including those expressions to display the icons can still be retrieved OK.
The only thing that has happened a few days ago was a Microsoft update to my installation of Windows 7.
I'm convinced that this has happened on a previous occasion with a Windows update.
Can anyone throw light on this issue or had it happen to them?
Guess I will now have to cut and past my required expressions back from a previously saved Word Document......

Regards to all

Shiriki

If the saved charts have the icons displayed as required you should be able to restore the settings easily. Open one of the charts, then use Diagram>Options>Boxes tab and tick the Save as Default box at bottom left.

As far as I know the only way your default settings could have been changed is if you had been experimenting with a different diagram style and forgotten to untick that box, so that the settings you experimented with were saved as the default.

I have never found these settings to be affected by a windows update, but who knows - microsft does some weird things!

This is curious - I lost my diagram icons except one, a few days ago. I did have an MS update. Having said that, that is a desperate excuse, I freely admit. Even more desperate since one icon remained!

What I find incredibly annoying is that the Save as Default box at bottom left on the Diagram>Options>Boxes tab defaults to Save. Usually any diagram tweak is intended to be temporary, so the default is seriously the wrong way round.

I then got myself in a bit of a knot reverting to my usual Custom Diagram Type - it appears that it didn't contain the icons and rules that used to appear (by default!) on all the diagrams for Ancestor, Descendant, etc.

I must have experimented with other diagram settings very recently, those settings (I presume) got set as default because I never realised, and when I viewed my usual Custom Diagram Type, I found that my icons and rules might well have been saved as defaults, but not to the Custom Diagram type I intended for that purpose. The thing is, of course, normally it just works - I hit Ancestors / Descendants / whatever, and what I want appears from I never stop to think where...

The thing to be aware of is that the standard Core Diagram Types are handled in a very particular way.
(Those are the Ancestor, Descendant, Ancestor and Descendant, All Relatives, Everyone, and Blank diagrams.)

Firstly their settings are stored in the Windows Registry that is more prone to being 'adjusted' by Windows Updates, etc.
Secondly, they all share the SAME settings, so if you change any one of those it affects them all by default.

So to preserve any custom settings against damage, ALWAYS use Diagram > Save Diagram As > Custom Diagram Type.
You can continue using the Core Diagram Types with custom settings, but if they get damaged you can use Lorna's technique to retrieve them from the saved Custom Diagram Type.

See how_to:move_settings#core_diagram_settings|> Core Diagram Settings for full details, but in the context of moving diagram settings from PC to PC, although the concepts work within the same PC.

Also see Wish List Ref 273 Option to default "Save as default" tick box and Vote.

Hi

Many thanks for the replies and for ways to hopefully retrieve the situation.
I will try the suggestions out when I return home next weekend.

Regards

Shiriki

Adrian, when you say you lost your Diagram Icons, do you mean the Icon files went astray, or the Boxes Conditions that invoke them went missing?

As a matter of interest, where do you store your Icon files, because if not in the C:\ProgramData\Calico Pie\Family Historian\Icons folder, then anything that disrupts the folder path to your Icon files will make them vanish.

tatewise wrote:Adrian, when you say you lost your Diagram Icons, do you mean the Icon files went astray, or the Boxes Conditions that invoke them went missing? ...

Curses, I knew you'd pick me up on that! I thought I'd clarified it, but apparently not everywhere. It was the conditions (is that good English?) that went missing. The icon files were safe.

tatewise wrote:... As a matter of interest, where do you store your Icon files, because if not in the C:\ProgramData\Calico Pie\Family Historian\Icons folder, then anything that disrupts the folder path to your Icon files will make them vanish.

They are there in that folder, though to be frank, they're one of the things I change so seldom that I'd never have remembered if you hadn't prompted me.

tatewise wrote:... So to preserve any custom settings against damage, ALWAYS use Diagram > Save Diagram As > Custom Diagram Type.

... see Wish List Ref 273 Option to default "Save as default" tick box and Vote.

Voted - never voted on it before because it had never turned round before and bit me on the *****. Now it has....

Philosophically, I have to say, it's all a bit flaky. Charts and Diagram Types behave differently when my mental model puts them as fairly similar (rightly or wrongly) except for who the root is. Change the text scheme on a displayed Chart and, at the end, it will ask you if you want to save it. Change the text scheme on a Custom Diagram Type that you've loaded and it won't ask you anything....

My lack of clarity is, I think, partly because once I have a Custom Diagram Type that I've loaded, I still think of it as displaying that Custom Diagram Type - but, if I understand it correctly, it isn't. In fact, it's lost all connection to the Custom Diagram Type (speaking of which, if I do a Save Diagram As > Custom Diagram Type and want to reuse my previous name, I can't because it doesn't show the existing names!)

I might try to think of Custom Diagram Type as Custom Diagram Settings. That just feels better for my personal view.

Excuse the ramblings here but although I'm a major user of diagrams, under all normal circumstances I use the same type, with the same settings, so eventually I simply lose any deep understanding of the relationships here and so, at some time, shoot myself in the foot.

The distinction between Charts and Diagram Types is rather more than think.
Yes, Diagram Types only save Option settings, but Charts save almost everything, including:

• Tree roots of all the trees (original and inserted)
• Any other inserted Text Box, Picture, etc
• Background picture

The distinction you mention about changed settings when closing a Chart versus a Diagram Type is I suspect due to the fact that the latter is effectively just initialising the Option settings of a Core Diagram Type and as you say loses its context. A major difference compared to opening a Core Diagram Type is that Save as default is never ticked!

However, when I use Diagram > Save Diagram As > Custom Diagram Type it does offer the current name.

I have now voted for that Wish List item - had never spotted it before!
Mike, I see you added a comment in support of it in August 2012, but you don't appear to have voted for it. Was this an oversight?

Just to add to Mike's comment. Custom Diagram Types as of V6 can also have text, boxes, pictures and lines etc, this is how the custom diagrams in the knowledge base download work.

The core difference is that they do not retain the root of the diagram and can only contain one "tree", others will be dropped when saved.

Further to Lorna's comment, when I also followed the wishlist link I discovered that I had previously voted, with a score of 0. Obviously that's completely pointless; maybe some votes have been lost in translation?

tatewise wrote:... However, when I use Diagram > Save Diagram As > Custom Diagram Type it does offer the current name.

Yes - just playing about with it, I think I've used it long enough, altered things enough in some fashion, to break the link. However, having been reminded of the Program Data folder (which now has a short-cut from my desktop), thanks, I can easily see my standard name.

@Adrian ~ You don't need to go to such lengths - just use View > Custom Diagram Types and the names are listed.
(If some of your FH features are not working, there may be a deeper problem. Try re-installing latest FH download but use Run as administrator privilege.)

@Roger ~ I don't think Votes have gone astray.
I interpret a Vote of 0 as a negative 'no interest' vote, as opposed to no Vote meaning neither for nor against.
Maybe you just pressed the Vote button by accident?

@Jane ~ Thank you for that insight. I had not realised that had changed in FH V6.

@Lorna ~ My comment was not so much in favour of reversing the tick option as inhibiting Standard Diagram customisation completely, as is the case with Standard Queries. Despite comments, I tend to only Vote for features that I consider important, and this tick option I can happily live with.

tatewise wrote:@Adrian ~ You don't need to go to such lengths - just use View > Custom Diagram Types and the names are listed.
...

Indeed they are - however given that some of my names are rather codified, by the time I get back to the save option, there's a distinct possibility that I've forgotten whether it's "census resid" or "resid census"... I try not to remember too much - not when copy and paste does a better job of it!

All joking aside, the good thing about this thread is that it's made me think a bit more deeply about the Custom Diagram Types that I have saved and I've realised that (so far as I can see) I'd probably got more saved than I needed with, e.g., Ancestor and Descendant versions of the same type. I can easily swap Ancestor and Descendant, I realise, which lets me delete some, which then reduces the maintenance when adding in expressions for icons, etc.

Adrian, just to be clear, you use View > Custom Diagram Types and select a name from list for the Diagram settings required, but then immediately when you use Diagram > Save Diagram As > Custom Diagram Type that same name is NOT offered in the Save As Custom Diagram dialogue as the default Custom Diagram Name.

Agreed

Have you tried re-installing FH as I advised?

No - I haven't identified a bit that isn't working in the way I believe it should.

What you have just 'Agreed' is not working correctly.
It has always worked the way I described, as far back as I can remember.
The default Custom Diagram Name has always been the one just used.

Sorry Mike - misinterpreted and misunderstood what you meant.

When I do exactly what you say, then the same diagram type name is offered in the Save As Custom Diagram dialogue as the default Custom Diagram Name.

Obviously, at some point in the proceedings, having altered bits, pressed buttons, eventually it does lose that default but not immediately. That "eventually" was the bit I thought I was agreeing to.

Yes - apologies for answering the question that I thought you were asking, instead of the one that you were.

What quickly breaks the link to the Diagram Type that I used to set the Diagram up, is if I hit the Ancestors, Descendants, etc. icons on the tool bar. Well, if I understand this thread correctly, that's because I have now changed to one of the In-Built Diagram Types, so of course it won't default to saving to the Diagram Type I started with.... That's one bit I hadn't appreciated before this thread.

Correct - as soon as you invoke any one of the Core Diagram Types via say the four button icons, then that loads the Windows Registry settings, and loses the Custom Diagram Type connection.

You can of course set Tools > Workspaces > Re-use of Open Windows Permitted to No. Then you can work with any other diagram you like without losing the one previously opened, and its name will be displayed at the top of the screen whenever you switch back to it. I often have several diagrams open at once.

LornaCraig wrote:You can of course set Tools > Workspaces > Re-use of Open Windows Permitted to No. ...

I like the diplomatic "You can of course"... I had forgotten that and usually explicitly lock diagrams that I don't want re-using. I'll try that setting, not least because it gives the Diagram Type in the widow's title bar (but only when there's at least 2?)

Thanks