Family Historian User Group

Is it possible to edit a narrative report in Books? I can save the report, edit it in Word and then copy it into Free Text but it seems cumbersome.

No, but with the Book displayed you can use Book > Save Book as > Word-Procesor Document (RTF) and then edit the whole book in Word rather than one Report at a time.

As a matter of interest, what kind of word-processing edits do you need to perform?
It may be possible to achieve the effect you desire entirely in FH and avoid external edits altogether.

Thanks for the response.
Viv a vis the type of edits it is difficult to define. I just like to to change wording to my way of writing and, with some phrases, change them to become less repetitive. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Just another thought, presumably the index wouldn’t update once saved into Word. If it is transferred back into Free Text does this get indexed?

Sometimes the answer to a question is to try it and see. When you use Save Book as > RTF the message below is shown.


So, yes, in Word you can update the Table-of-Contents and the Index.

However, you cannot transfer the whole Word document back into a Free Text page and retain all the formatting.
Character fonts and line justification are retained but images, page breaks, Chapters, Table-of-Contents & Index are not.
I don't understand why you want to transfer back into the FH Book. Just save, edit & print the Word document.

Presumably, we are discussing the wording in Narrative Reports that you want to adjust.
The are several ways in which the wording of sentences can be customised.
In Tools > Fact Types... each Fact can be edited and the Sentence Template changed to make them less repetitive.
However, that default sentence will be similar for all Facts of the same type.
On the Facts tab of the Property Box, the Sentence for each Fact can be customised specifically for that one Fact.
Another option is to use the {note} code in any Sentence Template and then whatever is in the Note box for a Fact will be included in the sentence and thus can be different for each Fact.
The advantage of those techniques is that FH remembers the changes and will include them in all subsequent reports so you don't have to repeatedly edit the same sentences every time you recreate the Report or Book.

See FHUG Knowledge Base Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates for further details.

Thanks for the help. I will try the edit in Word and update Table of Contents and Index approach as this would seem to give me the outcome I am after for the odd occasion I will use the Book facility.

You could also try Sentence Template customisation and maybe avoid editing in Word altogether even for standalone Reports.