Family Historian User Group

Hello

Can I use Æ, Ø and Å everywhere in Family Historian 6.2 or will it always corrupt the letters, when exporting the gedcom file to a new place?

I'd really like to name the Danish places correctly and also names, but is it not possible with Family Historian 6.2 without corrupting it?

I hope it's possible... from my search it seems not, but I'm gonna try and ask anyway.

Also is there a function to automatically change Æ, Ø and Å to Ae,Oe and Aa when you write in FH 6.2?

Hello

You can use a special facility to enter accented characters by turning on Tools > Preferences > General > To Enter Accents when Typing. You can also enter them by using ALT-xxxx where xxxx is the appropriate code for the letter. I use both capabilities and it works fine. I export my gedcom and upload it to Ancestry.com and the accented characters work fine. I have many Norwegian and German names in my database.

As far as I am aware there is no automatic way to make the changes from the accented characters to the double letters that you mention.

how_to:entered_accented_and_other_special_characters|> Enter Accented and Other Special Characters will give you more advice.

>when exporting the gedcom file to a new place?

As long as the new place supports UTF-8 and you use the correct export routine you should be fine.

As an example, if extended/accented characters are enabled, put the cursor in any FH text box, and try holding down the capital A key. That should produce a small popup window that allows Æ to be chosen, and a few others. You can customise those popups to include whatever characters you like. If you get stuck just ask here.

When exporting to a product that does NOT support UNICODE (UTF-16) or UTF-8 there is no existing automatic translation to the double characters you suggested. However, it should be possible to write a simple script to automate that sort of translation. It might even be a feature that could be added to the Export Gedcom File Plugin when the target product only supports ANSI.

However, there are far more complex issues than character encoding when exporting to other products, because they don't all support the same GEDCOM features. So if you have any particular products in mind then you need to bear such restrictions in mind when using FH. See how_to:exporting_gedcom_with_multimedia|> Exporting a Family Tree with/without Media.