The Property Dialog is used to view, and edit, record details of all types of records supported by Family Historian (9 in all). Its appearance will depend on the type of record it is being used to view. The caption of the Property Dialog tells you both what kind of record type you are looking at ('Individual' in this case), and identifies the actual record itself. In the examples below, the Property Dialog is being used to show information about Cameron Peabody.

The Property Dialog is designed to be used in conjunction with all other windows in Family Historian. If you are viewing a diagram and wish to see record details of any of the individuals in the diagram, you do not need to 'go' back to some other window. All the information you have is instantly available to you. Just open the Property Dialog (e.g. by double-clicking on the box in the diagram), and there it is. By clicking on the All tab, you can see at a glance, all the data you have about the given individual.

The Property Dialog is not just useful when working with diagrams though. If viewing a picture in the Multimedia Window (see later in the tour), you can, if you linked the person appropriately, simply double-click on a face in the picture to see the person's full record details in the Property Dialog. You can do the same thing when viewing a reference to an individual in the Records Window, or in the result set of the Query Window (again - see later in the tour).

The Main tab of the Property Dialog shows basic information about the given individual. The bottom half of the dialog is used to show some information about their spouses, and the families they shared with their spouses. We can see for example that Cameron had 2 spouses, 'Sarah' and 'Jean Clare' and that he had 3 children with Sarah. If you clicked on 'Jean Clare', you would see a list of all the children he shared with her.

There is always one extra 'spouse' tab (see the blank tab to the right of 'Jean Clare'). This is to enter details of a new spouse. If you added a 3rd spouse using the blank tab, another blank tab would be created to allow you to add a 4th if you wanted to. And so on.

The buttons with chevrons '>>' allow you to 'navigate' to Cameron's parents, or to any of his spouses or children. Children and spouses can also be re-ordered on this dialog. There is no limit to the number of spouse and/or children that can be added. You can children, without having to specify a 2nd parent for them.

Although it is the 2nd tab in the sequence, the Detail tab is probably the least important. It is really an 'overflow' tab for fields that couldn't be conveniently fitted onto the Main tab.

In some cases, fields here are duplicated elsewhere. For example, you can have as many 'Religion' and 'Education' attributes for a person as you wish. These can be associated with dates, places and notes. But if you want to enter them, you must use the Events tab. The Detail tab's Religion field only shows the bare details of the first Religion attribute for the given person. Likewise for Education and other fields.

Although called the 'Events' tab, this is really the 'Events and Attributes' tab, but that name was too long to be practical.

The Events tab lists all event and attribute information associated with the given person. You can sort on any columns in the list, by clicking on the column heading. The fields at the bottom of the dialog show more details about the event or attribute selected. For example, at the moment they are showing details about Cameron Peabody's birth because that is the currently selected event. A note added at the bottom would apply to the birth only. The fields displayed at the bottom of the dialog will depend, to an extent, on the type of item selected in the list.

This tab lists all the 'top-level' notes associated with the given individual. These notes can be specific to the individual in question. Or they can be 'family' notes. The currently selected note (red dot), for example is a family note. The same note would also be included in a listing of notes associated with Jean Clare Anderson, although the first note, which is specific to Cameron Peabody, would not.

You can also have notes which are shared between multiple records, if you wish to, and these too would be listed here if there were any (there aren't in this example).

The Objects tab lists all Multimedia objects associated with the given individual. 'Multimedia objects' typically means pictures, sounds, videos, etc. But it can actually include any file or any type at all. These files can be embedded in your family tree file, but more usually are stored elsewhere on your hard disk (or perhaps on a CD), and the family tree file just holds a link to the external file.

In this example, Cameron Peabody is only associated with one picture, taken when he was 37 or 38 (Family Historian calculates this for you, if it has enough information to do so). At present the full picture is being shown, but if you clicked on 'Close-up', the picture would change to only show Cameron Peabody's face.

The second item in the list, "I did it my way", is a Rich Text Format (word-processor) document. If this were selected, you could open the document using your favourite word-processor by clicking on the triangular button on the toolbar (currently greyed).

Whatever kind of record it is being used to view, the Property Dialog always has an All tab as the last tab. This tab allows you to see the entire record at a glance. The data is stored in a tree-structure (similar to Windows Explorer if you are familiar with that). By double-clicking on the text of any line, you can fully expand its branch. By double-clicking on 'Peabody, Cameron' you can fully expand the entire record, to see all record details, including source information and links to other records.

You can even view linked records by clicking on the little white square boxes (e.g. to the right of the text 'Parents family'). You can also edit all fields on the All tab if you wish to. It is not just for browsing. For more details, see the discussion of the Records Window later in the tour. The All tab of the Property Dialog behaves very much like the Records Window, as far as browsing and editing records is concerned.

When working with diagrams it is sometimes convenient to have a smaller version of the Property Dialog, which takes up less space, and does not obscure too much of the diagram. One click reduces the Property Dialog to this size. Another click returns it to the normal size.