Family Historian User Group

For relations that are alive I want to include their current contact details, postal address, email address, mobile phone etc. Where would be the best place to include this info? Or can I link it to my Outlook Contacts where this info is stored? [question]

ID:2923

One way would be to use the residence attribute. Don't date it, but you can fill in the address (under which can be added postal code), email, web, phone (upto 3) details. However if you are publishing your info on the web, you need to make sure you don't publish these details. This is possible if you create a custom attribute, e.g. 'Contact Details', which you can then exclude when creating your website (select options for the individual report, and specify the custom attribute in the exclude list).

HTH

If you have MSOutlook Contacts and already maintain details there in any case, then another possibility would be to export each chosen individual's details from Outlook to a vCard file stored in a chosen folder associated with your geneanology stuff and then create a Individual's link to each of those files from within FH via Insert>Document, either as a seperate multimedia object or as a field link for the individual? Haven't explored the differences of those or the best way to do it - I just quickly tried adding to the bottom of the list of items already on the object tab for the individual in the property dialogue. After the link is created, clicking on the 'play' button on the FH object tab when the vCard list item is highlighted opens up the vCard (in normal Outlook format if on a machine with Outlook installed - and seemed to open a simplified tabbed property window when opening the vcard file on a machine where Outlook was not installed). At least that way you need only maintain and amend contact details in one place (Outlook) provided that when you amend them in Outlook you recreate a new version of the vCard back to the same folder as the original. If you used Categories within Outlook to flag any of your Contacts that had FH links that might act as a reminder to update their vCard when altering their details.
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Would certainly have all the labelled 'spaces' to store the type of details you want to store for a contact, and display them in a familiar way.
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Just a passing thought - and as I said, haven't explored the 'best' way to create the link from within FH - not sure if it would work as linked from a custom event or not.
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If someone else would like to expand on the best way to create the link within FH I'd be happy to hear since I might like to to do this on my file sometime soon too.