Property Box
Property Box: Facts tab
This tab is used for both Individual and Family records. It displays information about events and attributes (collectively known as facts) that are relevant to the Individual or Family. An Individual fact is a fact which is primarily associated with a single individual (called the principal). Examples of individual facts would be birth, death, baptism, and so on. A Family fact is a fact in which a couple are the two joint primary participants (the principals). Examples of family facts would be marriage and divorce.
When the Property Box is displaying a given Individual's details, it displays the following
- all Individual facts for that individual
- all Family facts for that Individual (that is, where the individual is one of the principals - one of the parents/spouses - in the Family record)
- all facts of any kind in which the Individual participated as a witness (see Witnesses Dialog)
- (optional) Timeline Facts - that is, key events in the lives of close relatives of the Individual (see Select Timeline Facts Dialog)
When the Property Box is used to display information for a Family record, it displays the following:
- all facts for that Family record
The Gripper Bar
Beneath the list of facts is a toolbar. Click-and-drag on a horizontal
gripper bar 
below the toolbar, to re-size the list.
The Facts List
Right-click on any listed fact to see a dropdown menu with options relating to that fact.
The facts list displays the date of each fact, a brief description of it, and the age of the Individual (if this is an Individual record).
If you select a listed fact, the fields and values that relate to that fact are shown below the list - such as the date or place at which the fact occurred. You can also (Individual facts only) specify the age of the Individual at the time of the fact, in an Age field to the right of the Date field.
It may seem surprising that even in the case of the Birth event, the Age field is displayed and editable. Its label is greyed but the field itself is not. The Age field is there because it allows you to specify ‘Stillborn’ as a possible ‘age’. The label for the field (‘Age’) is greyed because it is obviously not appropriate to talk about a person’s age at birth.
Tip: Only specify the age of an Individual at the time of an event or attribute if you have this as a separate piece of information. If you only know it because you calculated it from the date of birth and the date of the event/attribute, you should not enter it. Family Historian will calculate the age for you anyway in these cases and show it in the Age column within brackets (e.g. “(22-23)” - i.e. 22-23 years). If the age information is supplied in the Age field, Family Historian will display it without brackets (e.g. “22”). If the age information is inconsistent with other information already held, Family Historian will add an exclamation mark in brackets after the displayed data (e.g. “22 (!)”).
Tip: Double-click on the Age field for help in supplying possible values. This also works with the Date and Place fields too.
The final column in the Facts List is the 'More' column. This can display the following icons:
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Fact has one or more witnesses. These can be viewed in the Witnesses Dialog. Right-click on the fact and choose Witnesses from the dropdown menu, to open the Witnesses dialog. |
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Fact has one or more media items. These can be viewed in the Fact Media Dialog. |
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Fact has a note. This can be viewed in the Fact tab's Note box, when the fact is selected. |
The Toolbar
The toolbar buttons have the following functions:
| Item | Description |
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Insert an event or attribute into the current record. When you click on this button a 'Fast-Add' menu is displayed, showing the most commonly-chosen fact types. You can add or remove any fact type (including custom fact types) to this menu. The last option, More Fact Types, opens the Fact Types Dialog to allow selection from a list of available fact types. |
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Click on this button to copy the selected events and/or
attributes. You can copy more than one event and/or attribute. To
select more than one, press-and-hold the Ctrl key while clicking
in the left column.
Note: You can only copy events/attributes that belong to the record being viewed (i.e. blue dots for Individual records and red dots for Family records). Family Historian does let you insert and view family record events that affect Individuals (e.g. marriage and divorce), when viewing an Individual’s record; but you cannot copy and paste them in that context. |
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If you have previously copied events and/or attributes, click on this button to paste them into the current record. |
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Click on this button to delete the selected events or attributes. |
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Opens the Fact Media Dialog to show (and add, edit or delete) media associated with the selected event or attribute. |
 
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These buttons are used for re-ordering events and attributes (that is the physical order in which these items are stored in the record). Only events and attributes that are stored within the same record can be re-ordered. |
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Enable or disable the display of timeline facts from the Individual's extended family. Timeline facts display with a grey background, allowing them to be easily distinguished from other facts. See Select Timeline Facts Dialog for more details. |
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This is a button.
Clicking on this button produces a dropdown menu with the options:
The former opens the Witnesses Dialog. The latter opens the Select Timeline Facts Dialog. |
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If the currently selected event or attribute is a Timeline Fact
or a witnessed event, clicking this Go To button
will show the event or attribute in the context of its principal's
record (or the record of one of the principals, if two). If
the currently selected event or attribute is a Family event
attribute, which has more than one principal, it will switch to
showing the event or attribute in the context of the other
principal's record. After clicking the Go To button, you can return to where you had been by clicking the Go Back button 
on the main Property Box toolbar. |
The Sentence Field
The last field on the Facts tab is the Sentence field. This shows how the event or attribute would be described in a narrative report (that is, a report which describes individuals as if telling a story - narrative reports are available from the Publish Menu). You can edit the template used for any type of event or attribute (standard or custom) by clicking on Fact Type on the Tools menu. When you do this, the Fact Types Dialog appears (‘Fact’ is just shorthand for Event or Attribute, and ‘Fact Sets’ are collections of types of facts). You can select any event or attribute and click on the Properties button to view and edit its template. When you do this, you are making a change which will affect how sentences appear in narrative reports for all instances of the fact type in question, unless overridden.
It sometimes happens that a given template is fine for most cases, but you may have the odd case where you want something special instead. In that case, you can override the standard template for a given fact type by editing the Sentence field directly in the Facts tab of the Property Box.
When you click in the Sentence field, its contents will change. Where previously it may have shown a sentence like this:
He was born on 21 August 1962 in Clapham, London
... it may now show something like this:
{individual} was born {date} {place}
It has switched from showing you how the sentence will look given the current data, to showing you the actual template used to generate this data. This template will usually contain template codes, as this one does. In the example, {individual}, {date} and {place} are all template codes.
If you change the template used, the background of the Sentence field will change from brown to white. A brown background shows that the standard template for this fact type has been used. A white background shows that a custom template is being used, for this particular instance of the fact type in question.
If you change your mind and want to cancel your custom template, and revert to using the original form of the template, simply delete everything in the field. When you click elsewhere (or tab out of the field), the field will revert to its standard form.
See Template Codes for a complete list of template codes that are available for you to use.
Tip: Use template codes whenever possible rather than typing in the underlying data. For example, suppose an Individual’s name was “John Smith”, it might seem that you could use “John Smith was born in 1953” just as well as “{individual} was born in 1953”. But in fact the latter is better. This is because Family Historian does not always replace the template code ‘{individual}’ with the person’s name when generating a narrative report. Sometimes ‘He’ might be used instead, if it would make the report easier to read. Family Historian can only do this kind of thing, if a template code is used, rather than the person’s actual name.
See the Witnesses Dialog for details of how to specify a narrative sentence for witnesses, describing their role in the event.