Family Historian User Group

After the announcement of FH7 I was thinking of putting my tree re do on hold as I am not to far in and wouldn't mind making some changes to what I have already done. I was thinking about tidying up the tree I imported from FTM and restarting my redo once I had a look at FH7. What are other peeps views? I wouldn't mind making changes to a mature tree I had been working on for a few years, but I am not so sure that I could face going through it all again having just finished inputting all of the data. Did anyone do this when they upgraded to FH6?

With Family Historian there tends to be "evolution" not "revolution", meaning in general, what you have done already will carry over to new versions with out too many problems.

The core new functions such as "Word Processing" and spell checking in notes will import your plain notes so there is nothing lost on that front.

The new functions and diagrams for DNA will not change your data, just your ability to interrogate it more efficiently.

So personally I would get started, but just keep in mind what is coming.

I agree with Jane.
It is unlikely that FH V7 will make such radical changes as to invalidate your 'redo'.
It seem that at last, the top Wish List item of 'word-processing' will be implemented for all long-text fields such as Notes and Text From Source, but that won't jeopardise your 'redo'.
The most significant change that had an impact on existing data was when FH V6 introduced Place records with geocoding, and some users chose to rearrange their Place and Address strategies to take advantage.

Anyway, FH V7 has not even been released for beta-testing yet, and Simon has said that won't be before Christmas.
Then beta-testing and updates usually takes several months, so I won't expect FH V7 much before Easter 2020.

If I heard and recall correctly, there is something in v7 about templates for source citations. Now, I have no idea quite what that means in v7 terms, but it might mean that templates will exist that prompt us to enter certain data consistently for each source record type. So (say) for a GRO birth certificate, you'd be prompted to enter the volume and page, etc., and that would appear in (eventually) reports or queries in a specific place.

Over the years I've had 3 or 4 different schemes of "templates" (skeleton source records usually) and it might be that, post-v.7, I'm going to have another. So, depending on how committed you are to what's in a source record and the resulting report, you might ponder holding off your ReDo until you can use the templates. Then again, that sort of thing really might not "float your boat"!

Thanks for that folks,

What you mentioned Adrian was what was in my mind. I was thinking along the lines of what I enter in notes may end up being added via a template that puts it somewhere else and I would have to go back through my whole tree reinserting/moving data to get it in the correct place in FH7.

If you're happy with the way you're citing your source, I would expect that the new templates will be configurable and allow you to continue working that way but easier...

Personally, I'm not going to ReDo my ReDo -- nothing is ever perfect, and there are only so many hours in the day. I might modify stuff bit by bit when I have time and am most likely to prioritise formatted text in source citations, for example. But I'm not going to aim for unattainable perfection -- I'd end up chasing my tail forever.

WilliamFrier wrote: ↑

31 Oct 2019 23:37

... reinserting/moving data to get it in the correct place in FH7.

Because of the need for compatability with people who won't update stuff, it's not really a case of there being a correct place in FH7 (he said, taking a look in Microsoft Crystal Balls for Windows) - but I would certainly agree that these places (depending on how Calico Pie are programming things) are likely to be more useful, in order to take advantage of new facilities.

Then again, the changes might be confined to source data entry, ending up in the same format as now so it doesn't matter - we don't know yet. (And the people who eventually get to handle it in Beta testing first will be under strict NDAs I imagine. As per usual).

I understand where you are coming from, I was more thinking about the whole discussion I started when I asked about the date to put in the Entry Date after reading the Where To Put It booklet . I was thinking that the templates may solve some of the where to put it issues I had.

As I said I am really not that far into the redo that I can't stop, put it on hold and I can tidy up the FTM import check the data that has moved over is correct. I know some of it changed or ended up in the wrong place, even some of my sources got mixed up, that was the reason I decided to do the redo in the first place.