Family Historian User Group

Hi all,

Just a heads up that Version 7.0.20 is now available

https://www.family-historian.co.uk/down ... ee-upgrade

the of updates here:

https://www.family-historian.co.uk/v7-updates

I've just opened a project using 7.0.20 and all of the UIDs used by the Ancestry Synchronisation plugin have disappeared.

John - there's something about UIDs in the update list linked to by David. They are loaded elsewhere, which may not be what you need. Suggest you have a look at that and see if it makes sense to you.

In some projects I can see a unique id in the all tab, but in the first project I looked at they've totally gone.

The first project I looked at was the sample project. Does installing an FH update reset that?

I'd added quite a lot of test data for something I'm working on to the sample project and it has all disappeared.

I'd also used the Ancestry Sync with that project which is how I realised something was wrong.

jelv wrote: ↑

18 Apr 2023 11:56

The first project I looked at was the sample project. Does installing an FH update reset that?

I'd added quite a lot of test data for something I'm working on to the sample project and it has all disappeared.

I'm pretty sure an upgrade does reset the sample project. Do you have a backup of your changes, that you can restore (as a different project)?

RootsMagic Import

• Family Historian now supports converting fact definitions for all facts used in a project (previously it only converted custom and unrecognised fact definitions). This is optional, but enabled by default.

• Up to now, Family Historian has automatically converted RootsMagic rich text (bold, italics and underline) into the Family Historian equivalent rich text, when importing from RootsMagic 7. The conversion now also works correctly with import from version 8 and 9.

The changes sound like they could be important to me, but I'd like to be sure of what to expect before re-importing my RM9 data. Depending on how one interprets what was said, it may or may not affect my dataset.

1) Is the intent of the first point that FH7 will also convert even the standard RM9 fact definitions to the equivalent FH7 ones?

2) Is the intent of the second point that all RM9 rich-text will be converted, even in user-defined templates and fact sentences?

Confirmed in my testing. Upgrading the FH version blows away the Sample Project without warning, even if it has been changed by the user.

IMO, that is sloppy programming. The Sample Project is my data, in my Documents folder, not in an FH system folder. Resetting it also deletes all snapshot backups, so I had to recover it from my own personal backups.

Like John, I was using it for development and trying out ideas. Isn't that one of things it is supposed to be for?

Gary_G wrote: ↑

18 Apr 2023 13:18

The changes sound like they could be important to me, but I'd like to be sure of what to expect before re-importing my RM9 data. Depending on how one interprets what was said, it may or may not affect my dataset.

Gary, none of us are mind-readers, so our interpretation is no more likely to be correct than yours. Import your data into a new project and see what happens!

Mark;

Not being a mind reader, either, I tried that before asking.

It's difficult to check a change, when one doesn't know what was intended by CP and one has several hundred entries in a database. Thought someone else with more experience might have already figured this out.

Mark1834 wrote: ↑

18 Apr 2023 13:43

Confirmed in my testing. Upgrading the FH version blows away the Sample Project without warning, even if it has been changed by the user.

IMO, that is sloppy programming. The Sample Project is my data, in my Documents folder, not in an FH system folder. Resetting it also deletes all snapshot backups, so I had to recover it from my own personal backups.

Like John, I was using it for development and trying out ideas. Isn't that one of things it is supposed to be for?

I suspect this has always happened. I was a bit irritated a few months ago when I'd added some made up families and various sources to the sample project while recording a video and then found the sample project was reset. Following that I made my own copy of the sample project and use that now for my videos, safe in the knowledge it won't get wiped. In an ideal world, during installation, FH would ask if you wanted it to create a copy of the previous sample project before overwriting it.

I'd also confirmed by testing that upgrading blows away the sample project and I also think doing so without warning is PPP.

Luckily I have a backup!

Yes. I, too, had an unexpected surprise wrt. to the sample project. Being a newbie, I was using it to check things out. fortunately, I back up everything.

I found the release notes less than clear. It seems like the maintenance upgrade was implemented as a complete re-install of the base package, excluding only user-projects from the re-install. I would have thought that this would have been noted.

From the Help file:

Use the sample project as a learning tool only. You can make changes to it if you wish, to try out new features you're not sure about (in fact, it's a good idea to do this),but do not store your own data in it.

It's repeated in a few places in the Help File, but mostly where new users would look. So, even if the warning registered when you started out, many people wouldn't remember if for long.

Gary_G wrote: ↑

18 Apr 2023 14:20

It seems like the maintenance upgrade was implemented as a complete re-install of the base package, excluding only user-projects from the re-install. I would have thought that this would have been noted.

It's always been done that way for FH

ColeValleyGirl wrote: ↑

18 Apr 2023 14:31

From the Help file:

Use the sample project as a learning tool only. You can make changes to it if you wish, to try out new features you're not sure about (in fact, it's a good idea to do this),but do not store your own data in it.

It's repeated in a few places in the Help File, but mostly where new users would look. So, even if the warning registered when you started out, many people wouldn't remember if for long.

Yes but I think "Don't store your own data in it", which is obviously very sound advice as people need to realise they should create their own project for their family tree, is a slightly different scenario. If you were using the Sample Project as a learning tool only (as advised) it doesn't tell you that the data in there will get wiped - users could quite reasonably be using it as a learning tool for several weeks, adding in templates to test things out, etc.

I really struggle to see the justification for doing this when the option to reset the sample project is available from More tasks in the project window.

I agree it should be clearer that the data will be replaced by every upgrade, but understand that CP might (one day) want to release an upgrade to the sample project showcasing some of the new features.

The sample project gets installed to C:\Program Files (x86)\Family Historian\Sample anyway - I presume that is used by the reset sample project option. How about a pop up the first time FH is started after an upgrade asking if the sample project should be reset as it may contain examples of new features which would of course be listed here.

Well... The new version is not converting the formatting flags in my RM9 citation notes to FH7 Rich-Text. I suspect it's not doing it anywhere else, either. Think I'll forget about re-importing. It doesn't appear to add anything that will help me.

Given that CP rarely interact with user forums to explain their thinking, I’ve raised a ticket with the excellent points made here.

Let’s see if we get anything other than the generic “referred to developers for consideration”.

In the meantime, people wanting to use the Sample Project for more than short-lived tests could do what I do -- I include it in my Projects folder, and thus in my daily backup schedule, so if I cared about any changes CP makes, I could restore my copy (perhaps even merge it if I wanted to include CP's changes).

Although, if you have been using it for 'substantial' work, you'll have been backing it up anyway, so this is teaching grandparents to suck eggs.

To be fair to CP, they do seem very responsive to user issues: just look at the long list of features in this new update which is only a month or so after the previous one.

I don't remember the replacement of the sample project being raised as an issue before. The side-effects of doing this are probably not something they've even thought about before, I'm sure it isn't a deliberate attempt to cause us problems

Also in fairness to CP, I think is incumbent on the user to ensure they make copies of the sample project (and backups)
before they make any changes they wish to make permanent. As a former software developer, any time I included sample data, it was a given that it would replace any previous sample data from earlier versions. That is because I often had to make updates to the sample data to reflect software changes. While I don't think that was a requirement by CP in this case, I do not think it is unreasonable to assume CP will refresh the sample file on an update. If they didn't, someone else would be asking why it was not done and suggesting it was a "sloppy" update. These are the things which drive developers crazy and use up precious development resources.

And I, for one, would not want them wasting their time fixing this type of "sloppy programming". At most, perhaps a request that they add a note to the project file warning that it will be refreshed with each update so, alter at your own risk.

Indeed - and let the developer who has never introduced an unintended consequence cast the first stone!

I've always found them very receptive to a well structured "this doesn't seem right because.." proposal, as opposed to "I wouldn't do it that way if it were my app"...

It is clear from responses here that it annoys users (even retired and active IT pros), so let's see what they say.