- Quite a few dialog boxes in F.H. can be resized (a 'dialog box', if you don't know, is a little window that open up to do a particular task - e.g. the Merge/Compare Dialog). If the dialog box has a maximise button in the top-right corner, you can resize it. Click-and-drag on any corner (or edge), to make it bigger; or just maximise it by clicking on the maximize button.
- Anyone who writes their own queries should be aware of 'Shortcuts'. There are 4 of these listed at the bottom of the box on the L.H.S. of the Columns tab in the Query Window (when viewing an Individual Query) - 'Father', 'Mother', 'Spouse', 'Child'. There are some things you can only do using them. e.g. if you want to see details of a person's spouse (or first three spouses, say), you have to use a Spouse Shortcut. Likewise, if you want to see a person's first four children (by any spouse) you have to use a Child Shortcut.
- Everyone should regularly backup their family tree data. Backups are designed to protect against hardware failure (e.g. hard disk crash), software failure (e.g. device driver, operating system or application error), user error (e.g. you deleted something by mistake or changed your mind), and malice (e.g. viruses). Ask yourself how much you would mind if you lost your data. If your data is _really_ important to you you should consider giving copies of it to trusted friends or relations in case your house burns down. You don't have to use backup software if you don't want to. Just copying files onto a CD, Zip drive or whatever is fine (diskette drives are not ideal for backups because each diskette stores so little data). Even keeping copies of data files on your hard-disk is better than doing nothing, and will protect you against some (but obviously not all) disasters. (Release 2.1 of F.H. will include a Backup and Restore facility, incidentally, to make it easier to do backups - but don't wait for it!).
- When you start F.H., the F.H. logo appears in a box. If you don't want to wait for this to disappear, click on the box. It will disappear immediately.
- Have you looked at the 'Record Links' dialog (available from the View menu)? People often ask how to find which records are linked to a Source. The Record Links dialog will show you the links to any records, including sources.
- Did you know that you can specify which parent a child was adopted by? To simply indicate that someone is adopted, without providing any details, you follow the instructions as per 'Child is Adopted or Fostered' on p. 33 of the Quick Start Tutorial. You can however give more details about the adoption if you want to. To do this, add an Adoption event (on the Events tab) for the individual. When you do this, you can specify date and place details etc, for the Adoption event, if you want to - you don't have to. You will find that you can also specify which family the person was adopted by. Having selected the family, you will then find that another field 'Adopted by which parent' becomes ungreyed (you should be looking at the bottom half of the Events tab in the Property Dialog, in Large Mode, at this point). If you click on 'Adopted by which parent', you will find that you can specify Husband, Wife or Both.
- Did you know that using the 'Work with External File Links' dialog (available from the Tools menu) you can see all the multimedia files (e.g. pictures) that your Family Tree data file is linked to? Double-click on any closed branches to fully expand or close them. If any of the links are 'broken', the link will have a cross in it; and you can 'repair' the link from the dialog. You can also see which record a picture is linked to and jump to that record. See the Online Help for this dialog for more details (click on its Help button).
- Everyone should know about Automatic Source Citations, but did you also know that you can copy and paste source citations? You can do this from the Source pane of the Property Dialog.
- Did you know that you can use a query to mark nodes (boxes) in the Diagram window? For example, you could open an Ancestors diagram and then run a query to colour blue every box for an ancestor who died of a heart-attack (see Chapter 7 of the User Manual for more on this).
- Did you know that diagrams can display relatives for couples as well as individuals? This is what you get if you open a diagram when you have a family record selected (family records have a little icon with 3 little boxes in it, looking like a mini-family tree). If you are already looking at 2 people who belong to a couple in a diagram, click on one, and then press-and-hold the Ctrl key and click on the other, so that both are selected. Now click on any diagram button to view a diagram which has both of them as joint root. There are small but not insignificant differences between what you'd get if you had either of them alone as the root. For childless couples, this is the only way that you can see both of them together in an Ancestors diagram, for example.
Simon