Plugins are a way of extending the capabilities of an application - in this case, Family Historian.  Some applications support a kind of plugin that can only be written by software developers using special tools.  Family Historian plugins are not like that.  They are user-level plugins - which means that they can be written by anyone. Family Historian provides all the tools you need, and all the documentation - either in this Help file, or in linked websites.

Plugins can be used to access, analyze and manipulate Family Historian data in any way.  Family Historian plugins are stored in files, and can be shared between users in the same way that queries can.  You can download plugins written by others from the Family Historian Plugin Store, or from other sources.  Family Historian plugins are written using a language called Lua, which is simple to use, but also very powerful.  In order to access and update Family Historian data, a selection of functions and objects are provided by the Family Historian API  (Application Programming Interface).

What can you do with plugins?

The short answer is that using plugins, you can do just about anything with the data in your projects.  You can access all of your data, and make any changes you want to your data records. Plugins can be very small and simple, or very large and ambitious.  Here are just some examples of possible applications:

• Create a new search-and-replace tool for doing a special kind of search and replace on data throughout your file, perhaps using complex conditions
  
• Create a new tool for importing data directly from a spreadsheet or from some other genealogy program
  
• Make changes to data throughout an entire project to restructure the way data is organised within it
  
• Design new kinds of charts, queries or reports
• Create a new kind of website generator or family tree CD/DVD generator
• Build new data-entry forms, to make it easier to enter particular kinds of data
  
• Create a new tool for analysing data and/or presenting it graphically
• 'Clean up' data and resolve inconsistencies throughout a project
• and much more...