The Tour – Family Historian

01Getting Started with the Focus Window

The Focus Window is the main workspace window. This view shows spouses and children for Ian Munro, with the Property Box on the right for data entry.

Family Historian's Focus Window showing spouses and children for Ian Munro, with the Property Box on the right. — Spouses and children for Ian Munro, with the Property Box on the right.

Four tabs switch between views of the same person — Spouses & Children (above), Parents & Siblings, Ancestors, and Descendants.

The Focus Window showing parents and siblings for Ian Munro. — Parents and siblings for Ian Munro.

The Focus Window showing ancestors of Ian Munro. — Ancestors of Ian Munro.

The Focus Window showing descendants of Charles William Smith Munro. — Descendants of Charles William Smith Munro, Ian’s great-grandfather.

02Pictures & Multimedia

Photos and documents are shared resources, not filed under one person. The Media Window shows every picture in the project as thumbnails, or one at a time.

The Media Window showing thumbnails of all images in the project. — All media in the project, shown as thumbnails.

Double-click a thumbnail to see it full-size, and link each person in a picture to their own face — as shown here for a family photo.

A single picture, with each of the five people in it linked to their own face. — Each of the five people in this picture is linked to their own face.

Open anyone’s Property Box and switch to the Media tab to see their pictures – either the full pictures or close-ups of their face (as shown in the example below).

Property Box Media tab showing close-up crops of Ian Munro's face. — Close-up crops of Ian Munro’s face, in the Property Box Media tab.

03Interactive Diagrams & Smart Trees

Diagrams are used for browsing, for data entry, and for creating charts to print or share. All Relatives, All Relatives + Indirect Relatives, and Everyone are three of the built-in diagram types — each one a Smart Tree that adjusts itself automatically as you work.

A Family Historian diagram showing several generations of the Munro family, with photos and dates. — An All Relatives diagram, with its own toolbar for zooming, adding people, and adjusting the layout.

Branches have buttons to expand or collapse them, and you can click-and-drag a box to add a relative on the spot — the tree reflows itself automatically each time. Here’s a branch expanding:

Clicking the button on a branch expands it, and the tree adjusts to make room.

You also have extensive control over the information displayed and how a diagram looks — orientation, colours, backgrounds and more:

A fan chart showing Christopher Munro's ancestors radiating out from the centre. — A fan chart, with ancestors radiating out from the centre.

A descendants chart with a dark grey background and photos of each person. — A descendants chart with a dark background and photos.

A numbered pedigree chart in a plain black-and-white style. — The same family as a numbered pedigree chart, in a plain black-and-white style.

04Data Entry with the Property Box

The Property Box (viewed briefly in previous sections) is the main data entry window. It is shown here with the Citation List pane displayed (yellow panel at the bottom).

The Property Box showing the Main tab for Ian Stephen Munro, with the yellow Citation List pane at the bottom. — The Main tab, with the Citation List pane at the bottom.

This is another view of the Property Box, with the Citation List pane hidden. It shows the Facts tab, where the events and attributes in the life of each person are recorded. You can optionally display extended family timeline facts too, as shown here. These are key events in the lives of close relatives (with a light-grey background).

The Property Box showing the Facts tab, with extended family timeline facts on a light-grey background. — The Facts tab, with extended family timeline facts shown on a light-grey background.

Entering accent characters is easy. If you press and hold any letter, when typing in any field in the Property Box, in the Note Window, or in the Automatic Source Citation pane, a popup window will appear just above the field, with a choice of accents for the letter in question. The choice of accent characters listed is configurable, and can include accent characters from any languages.

The Property Box is very configurable. You can adjust the text size, and resize or reposition the window. You can also adjust the relative size of panes within it. You can ‘dock’ it to the side of any workspace window or ‘float’ it in front. And you can customise which fields it shows and add new ones. The window below, opened from the Property Box’s gear menu, lets you choose which data items appear on the Main tab. You can even add your own custom tabs if you wish.

The Customize Property Box window, listing available items on the left and selected items on the right. — Choosing which items appear on the Main tab.

05Sources & Citations

Source templates allow easier and more accurate recording of source information, and make possible more professional-looking citing of sources in reports. Two collections of source templates are provided: an Advanced collection modelled on Elizabeth Shown Mills’ book Evidence Explained, and an Essentials collection, designed by Calico Pie with help and advice from the Genealogy Programme of the University of Strathclyde. Templates can be customised, and you can create your own. The program also supports generic and free form source citations if preferred.

The Citation Window for a book source, with the template fields on the left and the footnote, short footnote and bibliography forms of the citation on the right. — The Citation Window. The fields on the left follow the chosen template; the panel on the right shows how the same citation will read in a footnote, a short footnote and a bibliography.

Data entry assistant tools, each designed for particular source types, can greatly reduce the number of steps required in recording information from common sources — such as birth and death certificates or census entries — while also generating appropriate source citations.

The automatic source citation pane is another tool that makes citing sources faster and easier. It can be used with any type of source.

If you want to transcribe a source document that has a standard layout — such as a census document — it works best if you can transcribe it into a note that mirrors the layout of the original form. Family Historian comes with many pre-defined standard forms that you can insert into a note, for use with transcription; and you can easily create more if needed.

A Text from Source note with a standard form inserted for the 1870 United States Federal Census, showing labelled fields and a table ready for transcription. — A note with a standard form inserted, for transcribing an 1870 United States Federal Census entry.

06Smart Folders

Smart Folders are a major Family Historian innovation and, we believe, a genealogy world first. We are not aware of any comparable feature anywhere else. Smart Folders allow all of your data to be automatically organised into customisable folders, instantly surfacing the interesting and important information that it contains.

Every record listing — that is, every tab in the Records Window, and every record selector dialog — now has a pane for displaying Smart Folders, which you open by clicking an icon at the top left. Here, the Individuals tab has been organised by occupation, with each folder showing the number of people it contains.

The Individuals tab of the Records Window, with a Smart Folder pane on the left showing people grouped into an Occupations folder, each occupation with a count. — The Individuals tab, with a Smart Folder pane organising people by occupation.

Smart Folders offer valuable insights with records of all types, but are perhaps especially valuable with sources and citations. Here, sources are organised into folders by type.

The Sources tab, with Smart Folders on the left grouping sources by type, and the twelve civil registration certificates listed on the right. — The Sources tab, with sources organised by type. The selected folder, Civil Registration Certificate, lists its 12 sources on the right.

You can create your own custom sets of Smart Folders to display information organised in whatever way you want. Smart Folders can also be used in the Query Window, where any query type can be organised into Smart Folders — including not just records but also citations, witnesses (shared events) and facts.

07Word-processing Features in Notes

The notes you keep in Family Historian have real word-processing features: fonts and text styles, colours, bullets, tables, clickable links to websites and to any record, source citations you can click through to their full details, and spellcheck in several languages. You can even copy a table from a web page and paste it into a note as a table, and add hidden ‘hash tag’ asides that stay out of printed reports.

A note being edited, with formatting buttons above the text, headings, clickable links, numbered source citations and a highlighted hash tag. — A note being edited, with formatting buttons above the text, clickable links, numbered source citations and a highlighted hash tag.

Research notes are a separate note type for logs, plans, task lists, and so on. They also support full word-processing features, and can also contain links to any record — including links to other research notes.

A research note used as a log, with a title, type and description at the top and a table of research activities and results below. — A research note used as a log, with a table recording each research activity and its result.

08FamilySearch & Internet Data Matching

FamilySearch is a nonprofit organisation and website, and an important free global resource for genealogists everywhere. It has more than 1.7 billion individual records in its global family tree. Family Historian provides full FamilySearch integration in a dedicated window. You can search the global family tree, and import and copy information from it. You can also contribute to it if you wish.

The FamilySearch window, showing a person in the project on the left and the same person in the FamilySearch global tree on the right, with differences highlighted in yellow. — The FamilySearch window, comparing a person in your project (left) with the same person in the FamilySearch global tree (right), with the differences highlighted.

FamilySearch recently introduced the ability to have shared user trees. This means that you can create your own trees, public or private, and share them in a controlled way with whoever you wish. User trees are also fully supported within Family Historian. You can upload any project to FamilySearch as a user tree.

You can optionally choose to receive hints at any time about possible matches with FamilySearch records, in the Focus Window. These hints appear as little yellow-and-green circles you can click on. If you do so, a popup window shows more details and links you can click on to access the records.

As well as hints about matching FamilySearch records, you can also opt to receive hints about matches in the Findmypast and MyHeritage databases. The image below shows a hint about matches to 27 records in MyHeritage.

Click a hint to see the match on a web page, in the built-in Web Search Window or in your own browser. From there you can ‘clip’ what you need: drag text or a picture straight from the page onto the Property Box, and — if you have enabled automatic source citations — an appropriate source citation will be generated for you.

09Mapping Tools

Map the places and events in your family history. Choose any combination of people and events, filter by type of event, and mark them with the same or different markers — for example, your ancestors’ birthplaces in red and your spouse’s in green. Click a marker to see everything that happened there, and use the Time Slider to watch your family’s movements over time. Markers can also show addresses and text labels, you can view several sets of markers at once, and you can mark events within a set distance of a chosen point.

Version 8 lets you draw on your maps. Add lines, circles, areas and text to any map, highlighting a region without hiding the detail underneath. Shapes can be coloured, grouped and arranged one above another, and every change can be undone and redone. Text can be attached to a particular spot with a line pointing to it, and everything zooms in and out along with the map. You can lock shapes in place so they behave as part of the map, and unlock them with the Access button when you want to change them.

A map marking the area occupied by the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France, with notable graves flagged, including that of Jim Morrison, of the Doors. Details emerge as the viewer zooms in. A single top-level text box guides the viewer to the exact location of the cemetery.

Version 8 also adds overlays, which mark distinctive features on a map. Several come with the program, including the historic counties of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the boundaries of the former Soviet Union, the Roman Empire, and the United States at the start of the Civil War. You can make your own overlays from your shapes, import overlays created by other Family Historian users, or bring in overlay files from the Internet in a standard map format (GeoJSON).

A map of the western and central United States with a shaded overlay marking the boundary of the Louisiana Purchase, and a text box crediting the source of the map data. — An overlay marking the boundary of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, with a text box crediting the source of the map data.

Maps and overlays can be saved and used again. You can also save a map as a picture or a Media record, which makes it easy to put it into reports, books and websites.

10Reports

49 standard reports ship with the program, all configurable, exportable to PDF, RTF, HTML or plain text. There are five styles of narrative report, including the All Relatives narrative report, shown below.

Two pages of an All Relatives narrative report, with numbered entries, generation headings and photos of people alongside the text. — Two pages of an All Relatives narrative report, with generation headings, numbered entries, photographs and source citations.

11Create Books & Booklets

Create professional-looking family tree books and booklets, with a mix of auto-generated chapters and your own ‘free text’ pages and chapters. Add any reports, charts or diagrams to your books, as well as a title page, contents page, index page, and so on. Books can be saved in PDF format or in word-processor (Rich Text) format.

Here are four pages from a sample book:

Two book pages: an acknowledgements and copyright page on the left, and a contents page on the right listing the book's chapters, an address list, a place list, a bibliography and an index. — The acknowledgements page and the contents page.

Two pages from a chapter written in narrative form, with photographs of family members alongside the text. — A chapter in narrative format, with photographs alongside the text.

Two book pages showing a large descendants diagram embedded in a chapter, spanning both pages. — A descendants diagram, embedded directly in a chapter.

Two pages of an index, listing names, places, occupations and other topics with the page numbers where they occur. — The index, generated automatically from the book’s contents.

12Create Websites

Creating a website to display your family tree is easy. A wizard takes you through a few simple steps, and then generates your website for you. You can accept the default settings, or override them to configure the site as you wish.

An example family tree website page for Anthony Munro, with photos of him and his spouses down the right, and biographical text and links to his parents and siblings. — An example website page.

Visitors to your website can click on any picture or thumbnail image to see the full picture in a ‘popup’ window.

13Records & Queries

You can sort on any column in record listings, and configure columns to display whatever information you like. Use filters to quickly find the records you’re looking for.

The Records Window showing the Individuals tab, with columns for record ID, dates, birth place, relationship to root and last updated, and a filter bar above the list. — The Records Window, showing the Individuals tab.

Sometimes you want answers to questions like “which of my ancestors died of a heart attack?”, “who do I know who was born or lived in Glasgow?” or “which of my relatives may have been alive in 1914?” The query tool is designed to let you get the most from the data in your project and to answer questions like this. The program comes with 65 queries pre-installed, and you can create your own as needed.

The Query Window running a query named 'Estimated to have been alive in 1914', with columns showing each person's known and estimated birth and death dates and their estimated age range. — This query was used to find family members who may have been alive in 1914.

14Plugins & Language Packs

Family Historian includes scripting tools which can be used to automate repetitive tasks, make extensive one-off changes to an entire project, or to add more features and capabilities as plugins. Anyone can submit a plugin to the Family Historian Plugin Store to share with the community. There are currently 128 plugins in the store, offering all kinds of features, almost all written by Family Historian users and freely available for everyone to use.

The Family Historian Plugin Store website, listing plugins such as Add GRO Index Entries, Add Notes and Adjust AKA Names for Reports, each with a description and version history. — The Plugin Store, where you can browse and download free community plugins.

Free language packs from the Plugin Store let reports, books and diagrams be produced in other languages — French, German, Swedish, Dutch/Flemish, Norwegian, Danish, Portuguese and Romanian so far — either to show your data in its own language or to translate the output.

15Family Historian Mobile

Take your whole family tree with you. Family Historian Mobile is a free companion app for Family Historian 8, available now for Android (as a public beta), with an iPhone version in development. It gives you quick, easy read-only access to all your project data – people, relationships, events, dates, sources, citations, pictures and more – and you can view relatives in diagrams, and see events marked on maps.

Family Historian 8 can create a compact copy of your project especially for the app, with pictures scaled down to suit a phone, and keeping the app up to date is simple using a cloud drive such as Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive. To learn more, see Family Historian Mobile.

The Family Historian Mobile app home screen on a phone, showing the Import a File button and a recently opened sample project. — The app’s home screen, ready to import your project.

An individual's record shown in the Family Historian Mobile app, listing parents, siblings, spouse and children, photos, and a timeline of events. — A person’s record, with family, photos and a timeline all close at hand.

16AI Connector

The AI Connector lets you connect Claude, or another compatible AI assistant, to your project and put it to work. It’s not just advice: ask it questions about your family history, have it transcribe a certificate and record every detail with a proper source citation, or get it to find and fix inconsistencies across your whole project. When it has finished, it can give you a list of the changes it made, for you to check.

Claude, connected to a Family Historian project, listing the men who were of conscription age during World War I and explaining its reasoning. — Asked in plain English for the men of conscription age during World War I, Claude searches the project and explains its reasoning.

You have full control. Access is only enabled while the AI Connector is running, you choose read-only or read-write access, and if you allow changes, you can still undo all of them when you close it. The AI Connector is entirely optional, and needs your own account with an AI service such as Claude.