Family Historian User Group

Hi, this could and may be not directly FH query but..I have two separate family trees and instead of opening FH and then selecting which file to open, I would like to create 2 shortcuts to FH with selecting say tree A in start up, and the other selecting tree b in start up. Easy answers please.
regards

Create a shortcut to each project file (which is within the Project folder, e.g."D:\OneDrive\Genealogy\Family Historian Sample Project\Family Historian Sample Project.fh_proj". Double clicking on the shortcut will open FH with that project loaded.

There's also Jane's Create Individual Shortcut plugin, which you can use to make shortcuts to any number of individuals in any number of projects.

I was going to suggest that plugin too, but it does have a tiny 'gotcha'.
It doesn't work if the Windows file path to your Project folders contains any non-ANSI Unicode foreign language characters.

I think it is the same issue that I faced in the backup and restore via Windows plugin.

It's an odd quirk in Windows (bug?) that commands that work fine directly from the command line don't work correctly in a batch file/command script if they contain non-ASCII characters (at least with my locale set to UK - it may be different with other locales).

Unfortunately, I don't think there is a solution that is accessible to a plugin without unacceptable messing about with user Windows settings. All it could do is check the entered file path and give a warning if invalid.

Mark, I think in this case it is due to the Plugin being encoded in ANSI rather than UTF-8 and using Lua commands.
So any UTF-8 characters in the file path are mishandled and malformed in the shortcut.
However, I'm happy to be proved wrong

Thanks for all who answered. Followed Helen's advice. Doh simples really when you think about it. Thanks once again

If the path contains a non-ASCII ANSI character (e.g. a Latin language accented letter), the plugin creates the shortcut correctly, but Windows does not interpret the path correctly and FH generates an error.

If the path contains a non-ANSI UTF character, the plugin warns that it has not created the shortcut correctly, but even if the shortcut is corrected in a text editor, it still does not run correctly.

So you are partially correct - the plugin does not cope with non-ANSI UTF characters, but even if it were corrected, it still wouldn't work for any non-ASCII path due to the underlying Windows issue.

Given the improvements in FH7 over FH6 for start-up, the plugin is probably largely redundant for FH7 users, particularly as the method Helen recommended is so easy and works for all projects.

OK, understood. Windows wins again!

If you are referring to an easy quick method to select which project Family Historian should load - first of all ensure that you have Family Historian pinned to your Windows taskbar.

Then, when you are ready to start a FH session on a particular project, right click the FH icon on your taskbar and select from the list of recently used projects (actually that list is .ged files but selecting one opens the project).

Yes, Trevor is correct. That is the Windows Jump List right-click technique and applies to most applications.
It works for FH icons on the Taskbar, the Start Window, and the Most Used apps on the left of the Start Window.
(but not icons on the Desktop)

If you hover over any Project GED in the Jump List there is a 'Pin to this list' option with a pin icon.
Select that and it gets pinned to the top of the Jump List (with an 'Unpin from this list' option).

So you don't need to create any Desktop shortcuts because they are already there in the Jump Lists, which have been available since Windows 7.