Property Box
Property Box: Facts tab
Facts tab of Property Box, showing facts for an Individual record
The Facts 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 Window)
- (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). In some cases, the date may be shown as '(s)', or may be followed by '(s)' . The '(s)' means that there is a sort date associated with the fact. Sort dates can be entered or cleared on the Date Entry Assistant Dialog - along with other date information (see next).
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. If the event has a sort date it will be displayed as a link, immediately to the right of the Date field (between the Date field and the Age field). Clicking on this link opens the Date Entry Assistant Dialog, allowing the sort date (and other date details) to be edited or cleared.
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. Double-click on a Note field to open the note in the Note Window.
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 Window. Click on the icon itself, or right-click on the fact and choose Show Witnesses from the dropdown menu, to open the Witnesses dialog to view or edit witnesses for the fact. |
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Fact has one or more media items. These can be viewed in the Media Viewer. Click on the icon itself, or right-click on the fact and choose Show Media from the dropdown menu, to open the Media Viewer and view or edit media associated with the fact. |
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Fact has a note. This can be viewed in the Fact tab's Note box, when the fact is selected. Click on the icon itself, to open the Note Window to view or edit the note. |
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 Witnesses Window to show (and add, edit or delete) witnesses associated with the selected event or attribute. |
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Opens the Media Viewer 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 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, and only if their displayed order matches the order in which they are stored in the record. Tip: If you want to change the order in which events are attributes are stored, it may be easier to do this on the All tab of the Property Box. |
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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 following menu commands:
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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. |
Fact Flags
Every event or attribute (that is, fact) in Family Historian
can have up to 4 fact flags. All combinations of fact flags
are allowed, but if a fact has the Rejected flag, this
overrides all other flags. To set a flag for a fact, select the
fact in the Fact List, and click on the cog button 
on the Fact List toolbar (see
above), or right-click on the fact itself. In either case, a menu
will be displayed with a Fact Flags submenu. To set or
clear a flag, click on the flag name on the Fact Flags submenu.
When a fact flag is set, the icon for that fact will display before the text, in the Fact column of the Facts List. The meaning of the flags are as follows (each definition, except the last, presupposes that the Rejected flag is not set):
Private- Marking a fact as private means that you can exclude it from reports, or exports, if you wish to. Private facts can also be excluded from diagrams, albeit less easily. To exclude private facts from a report, tick Hide all private facts on the Privacy tab of Report Options (they are often hidden by default in any case). To exclude private facts from an export, tick Exclude 'private' facts on the Export Gedcom File dialog. Again, the default is to exclude them in any case. Hiding private facts in diagrams is less straightforward. If you are using the All Events and Attributes text scheme, in your diagram, for example, you need to edit the text (in the Text tab of Diagram Options), and then edit the <all events & attributes> item, and untick Include Private Facts.
Preferred- Marking a fact as preferred means that it will display, in preference to other facts of the same type, on the main tab of the Property Box (unless you have customized the Property Box to not show the preferred fact, which can be done). Preferred facts can also be accessed in other contexts. A person's preferred birth and date death, for example, will be used by default, when calculating a person's life dates. If no fact is marked as preferred, the first birth and death facts will be used instead. You might also want to mark one of a person's occupations as preferred, if he or she had other occupations, but it is this one that they are best known for.
Tentative- Marking a fact as tentative can be a useful reminder to yourself, that further investigation is required. By default, tentative facts are excluded from exports, although you can override this in the Export Gedcom File dialog.
Rejected- The Rejected flag takes priority over all other flags. Typically you will mark a fact as rejected, if you are satisfied that it is not true. Regardless of what other flags a fact may have, if it has the Rejected flag it is rejected. Marking a fact as rejected means that it will be excluded from diagrams and reports, and not used in calculating life dates, etc. By default, rejected facts are excluded from exports, although you can override this in the Export Gedcom File dialog if you want to. Marking a fact as rejected, rather than simply deleting it, has a number of advantages. For one thing, if you later change your mind and decide that it was correct after all, it is easy to reinstate the fact (simply clear the Rejected flag). Also, by keeping the fact and marking it as rejected, you are making a positive statement. Suppose there is a claim somewhere that X lived in Paris, France, in 1955, but you have satisfied yourself that this is false, and that the claim is untrue. If you simply deleted the supposed fact, anyone looking at your data might assume that you were not aware of the claim. By including it, but marking it as rejected, you are showing that you are aware of the claim, but have concluded that it is false.
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 sentence template used for any type of event or attribute (standard or custom) by clicking on Fact Types on the Tools menu. When you do this, the Fact Types Dialog appears. You can select any event or attribute and click on the button to open the Fact Definition Dialog to 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 sentence template used to generate this data. This template will usually contain codes, as this one does. In the example, {individual}, {date} and {place} are all sentence template codes.
If you edit the field in any way, 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 the sentence for this particular instance of this fact has been overridden. When you change the default sentence, we call this a sentence override.
If you change your mind and want to cancel your sentence override, and revert to using the original form of the sentence, simply delete everything in the field. When you click elsewhere (or tab out of the field), the field will revert to its standard form.
The Sentence field has its own little menu which appears when you click on the vertical bar (with a little black triangle) to the right of the Sentence field. The commands on this menu are as follows:
- Edit Sentence
- Exactly like clicking in the Sentence field. Allows you to edit the Sentence field and create a sentence override.
- Exclude Sentence
- Click this menu command if you want the sentence to be excluded from narrative reports.
- Reset Sentence
- Effectively cancels either of the other two options, and resets the sentence to its default value (if you have been editing the sentence, this is equivalent to simply deleting everything in the Sentence field).
See Sentence Template Codes for a complete list of codes that are available for you to use.
Tip: Use sentence 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 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 code is used, rather than the person’s actual name.
See the Witnesses Window for details of how to specify a narrative sentence for witnesses, describing their role in the event.