Family Historian User Group

[Nick Walker Edit: I do apologise but it looks like I initially accidentally edited the original questioner's post rather than answering it so some of the text from the original questions are missing. However, the questions asked are as follows]

1) I cannot find any reference id for the Irish census and ancestral sources is unhappy about saving without such an id.

2) the census forms download as Acrobat documents and when I try to put them into the image Viewer it tells me it cannot display it so I can still read it but cannot have it open when I am trying to copy entries.

3) If there is a relative (niece) staying at the time of the census how do I show her in the relationship column

1) I cannot find any reference id for the Irish census and ancestral sources is unhappy about saving without such an id.

AS isn't unhappy about you saving without an ID. It is just checking that you've not forgotten with a 'are you sure?' question. If you don't want it to warn you then go to Tools->Options->Census Settings and untick Warn if reference id is blank

2) the census forms download as Acrobat documents and when I try to put them into the image Viewer it tells me it cannot display it so I can still read it but cannot have it open when I am trying to copy entries.

Acrobat files can't be viewed within Family Historian itself or the reports it produces. They can only be viewed in a separate PDF reader (e.g. Adobe Reader) and AS matches this functionality. If you have the option to download the files in jpg or other image formats then that would be better. However, if PDF is the only option there is nothing to stop you having the Adobe reader open on the screen in a window and resize AS so they can be viewed side by side (or above/below each other).

3) If there is a relative (niece) staying at the time of the census how do I show her in the relationship column

Just type Niece into the column, you're not restricted to only the entries in the drop-down list. When you get more confident with AS you could edit the census templates and add Niece to the available list but its probably not going to happen often enough to make this worthwhile.

I hope that helps to answer your questions?

Best wishes

Nick

I used to do the same i.e. upload as a pdf but I have started converting all the pdf media to jpg for convenience.

Should have also suggested that you may also wish to consider something like this Advanced JPEG Compressor at http://www.winsoftmagic.com/ajc.html

The pdf is much smaller in size than a jpeg so I try to reduce the jpg size once it is converted.

As regards conversion I just use my scanner software which, in my case is, Omnipage. I can select the file, scan it and save it as a jpg.

I have Ver17 but Ver 18 is now available at http://shop.nuance.co.uk/store/nuanceeu ... wwodlgIAEA

Thank you so much Nick and Mackfai for your helpful replies - I shall return to the fray!

Lost Cousins suggests using the image reference number as your Census Reference.

makfai wrote: .......
The pdf is much smaller in size than a jpeg so I try to reduce the jpg size once it is converted. ..........

Yes this is often a pain after conversion. However if you use the free PDF-XChange Viewer available here
http://www.liberkey.com/en/catalog-flat-list-view.html
or http://portableapps.com/apps
it has a very neat and flexible way of exporting a PDF to images with a much better size than adobe acrobat, all in 1 step.

Open the PDF > File > Export > Export to image
which then gives lots of simple options.

Don't forget though, once it is an image, you loose all the underlying text of the PDF (OCR or manual), so you will not be able to search it in the future. I am leaving my "master" docs as PDF, best of both worlds, you can always create an image in the future, I am trusting that FH will eventually have the ability to view pdfs.

Jim,

I'm not sure if you are aware, but PDF-XChange Viewer has another option which will OCR the images in the PDF for you if they contain text. It is at Document > OCR Pages.... On a large PDF it takes awhile to run, but it works great. I do it all the time for PDFs which contain books that are not OCR'd.

Bill