Notes on Upgrading to Version 8

Version 8 Installs in Parallel to Any Previous Version

Settings from Any Previous Version are Automatically Migrated

Special-handling for Standard Diagrams from Previous versions

In version 8, diagrams have a new look, and by default all standard diagrams use this new look.  If you previously changed the settings of the 4 core standard diagrams (Ancestors, Descendants, Ancestors & Descendants, and All Relatives), all your modifications will be automatically preserved and copied to version 8 as custom diagram types.  If you upgraded from version 7, these custom diagrams will have a "V7 - " prefix (e.g. "V7 - Ancestors", "V7 - Descendants", and so on).  If you upgraded from some other version, the prefix will mention that version number. 

To access these custom diagrams, click on the Charts button  on the main toolbar, and choose "Custom Diagrams" from the dropdown menu that appears.

You can easily switch the look of standard diagrams at any time to match any preferred look, including the look (that is, the entire option set) used by these 4 custom diagrams.  To do this, click on the Charts button  on the main toolbar, and choose "Choose Preferred Look for Standard Diagrams" from the dropdown menu.  Then select whichever standard diagrams you wish to update (there is a choice of six, and by default they will all be already selected) and click Copy Option Set.  You will be prompted to select a diagram type.  Select any of the 4 custom diagrams.  It doesn't matter which you choose as they all use the same option set. 

When you change the option set for standard diagrams, this has no effect on any open charts or diagrams, or on any saved charts or book charts.  It only affects any new diagrams you open.

Restoring Property Box Customizations from Version 6 or Earlier

If you are not upgrading from a previous version of Family Historian, or if your previous version was version 7, you can ignore this section.  It does not apply to you.  This section is only relevant if you are upgrading from version 6 or earlier and have previously customized the Property Box.  In that case, when you upgrade to version 8, your customizations will appear to have gone.  In fact they haven't gone.  They have just been temporarily suspended, and you can restore them.  They were suspended because in version 7 new features were introduced which were not fully backwardly compatible with previous customizations in all cases.  Consequently, if you do wish to restore your customizations, we recommend that you first look carefully at how some Property Box tabs now look, and decide if there are aspects of these that you wish to retain (such as Note fields that can now extend over a specified number of rows).  We also recommend that after restoration, you carefully check each restored Property Box tab, to make sure that it is working as expected.

There are also some important special issues that apply specifically to Property Box tabs for Source records:

1. Property Box customizations for Source records are  shared with the new Citation Window.  So if you restore your Source record customizations, you will also be making changes to the Citation Window, which we strongly recommend that you don't do unless and until you have worked out how it works and how therefore you want to use it. 
2. Source records, unlike all other record types, now have three 'Main' tabs: one for generic Source records, one for free form Source records, and one for templated Source records.  If you restore your custom Source record tabs they will effectively remove the settings for two of these tabs. 
3. You can now configure not just Source record fields, but also source citation fields.  These citation fields are ignored when a Source record is displayed in the Property Box, but they are used when a source citation is displayed in the Citation Window.  If you simply restore all your old Source record customizations, again these settings will also be removed.
4. The Main tab for templated Source records ("Main (template)") uses a special item type "<Template Fields>" which was introduced in version 7 and which will be missing from your legacy tabs.

In practice this means that although you may wish to retain some aspects of the way you customized the Property Box for Source records in the past, you are not advised to simply restore them and leave it at that.

How to Restore Property Box Customizations from Version 6 or Earlier

To restore old settings, open the Property Box, click on the menu button on the Property Box toolbar, and select Customize Property Box from the menu that appears.  This opens the Customize Property Box window.  For each record type, click on the Old Versions button at the bottom. This will show a menu with all the old versions of the settings for this record type, that you can restore.  The menu will be empty if there aren't any (if, for example, the current version has not changed).  Restoring an old version is not the same as importing an exported tab.  When you export a tab, you will only export that tab.  When you restore settings, for a given record type, you will restore all tabs that were previously customized for that record type - which is to say, the Main tab, and any new custom tabs that you previously created.  You can revert to the default settings for the record type, at any time, by clicking the Restore Defaults button.

Despite the remarks about Source record settings above, you may want to restore your Source record Property Box customizations, at least temporarily, so that you can remind yourself about how they worked, in case you want to reproduce some aspects of the way they worked in version 6 or earlier.  Having restored the old settings and made a note of how they worked, you can then revert to the version 8 defaults by clicking on the Restore Defaults button.

Upgrading from Version 3 or Earlier