Introduction

The animated tutorials below will help you get started with adding pictures to your tree.

It is highly recommended not to use embedded images, even though they are supported. Linked files offer more flexibility and avoid problems with over-large GEDCOM files.

Remember: When you link photographs into ƒh, the photos must stay in the placeAccording to GEDCOM, a Place should hold “The jurisdictional name of the place where the event took place…”   you have chosen. See Organise Your Files for more information and suggestions.

Family Historian V6+

This video tutorial illustrates the new drag and drop options in version 6 and the Media Link Tool. See the Copy & Paste and Drag & Drop advice for further details.

Family Historian V4+

This video tutorial illustrates how to use Add Pictures and Add Link to Face.

See also Adding Multimedia to a Fact.

Adding Other Media

• Scanned or downloaded document Image Files such as JPEG or PNG can be added in a similar fashion to photographs, but would typically be linked to the Media tab of Source RecordsSource: “where information was found”. This could be anything from an archive in a county records office, a book, or even a relative’s recorded recollection. Citing your Sources helps to show how you reached a particular conclusion about an Individual.. Use Add > Pictures…
• Document Files in textual formats such as PDFThe Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format developed by Adobe to present documents in their original formatting, independent of software, hardware, and operating systems. PDF files can contain text, graphics, links, and buttons, form fields, audio, video, and or DOCX can be added, but will not be automatically displayed within ƒh, nor included in Diagrams or Reports or Books. However, clicking the Open in Editor/Player button in a Media window will open any document in its default viewer such as Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Word. Use Add > Document….If the document is predominantly an image, it is best to convert it to an Image File format using one of the Graphics Packages or copy & paste each image within a document to a separate image file. For text within such documents use copy & paste to copy to Text From Source or similar transcript text fields.
• It is possible to similarly add Video and Sound media files, which will play by clicking the Open in Editor/Player button . Use Add > Other Media….
• Internet hyperlinks may also be added. The Format field should be set to url, and File set to a Shortcut URL file; for example Media\wikipedia.url with a URL of http://www.wikipedia.org. Then the Open in Editor/Player button will open the web page in your default browser.The Add Media URL Shortcut pluginPlugins are small programs that allow new features to be added without upgrading Family Historian itself; some plugins are written by Calico Pie and others are written by users. offers an easy way to add a Shortcut URL file, via a new Media recordWhen you add a picture, video, sound recording, document file etc into a Family Historian project, a Media record is created to represent that media item within the project; the Media record includes a link to the actual Media file., to the Media tab of a selected record.

• It is best to avoid using Add > OLE Object…  unless you fully understand the concepts involved, and that the Open in Editor/Player button only seems to operate in the Media Window.

Note:

1. Sometimes, when browsing to add files, the Windows file-type option bottom-right, may need to be set to All files (*.*) to show all filenames.
2. Regarding all of the above Media types, only Image Files are displayed in Diagrams and Reports. The Plugin Improve Website or CD DVD HTML allows hyperlinks for non-image media to be added to ƒh published website/CD/DVD familyFamily records store information about families, and links to all the Individual Records for those individuals who make up a family. You can view and edit Family records in the Property Box Dialogue. trees.
3. See Multimedia File Formats for further details.