Version 7 Updates – Family Historian

7.0.22

A recent update to the technology powering the Web Search window has led to problems which could cause Family Historian to close unexpectedly. This has been fixed.
If you have multiple monitors the ‘Splash’ screen (little title window that appears briefly when you open Family Historian) now appears centred on whichever monitor Family Historian will open on.
Fixed an issue with report layouts which arose when the top margin was different in size to the left margin.
Previously, if you copied-and-pasted footnote text from the side panel of the Citation Window, into Word or Word Pad, the resulting text could start in italics, even if the original didn’t. This has been fixed.
Previously if you clicked the ‘Go To’ button for a witness or principal in the Citation Window, to display them the fact in the Property Box, the yellow citation pane did not necessarily update to show source citations for that fact. It now does.
The function ‘GetLabelledText’ now skips both spaces and tabs after the label (previously it only skipped spaces).
In the Advanced collection of source templates, a space has been added between the {URL} source template code (and other codes that refer to URLs) and the following colon. This is to prevent problems with hyperlinks not working in some contexts in which hyperlinks are automatically generated from text. This change only affects source template definitions. Any source templates that have already been imported as Source Template records will not be automatically updated.
In the Family Historian API for plugins, the ‘MoveTo’ method for item pointers handled some special metafield data references incorrectly. This has now been fixed, and the Help for the function has been updated.

7.0.21

Import from Legacy

The first line of addresses (the “address name”) was excluded from fact addresses. It is now included.
There is a new import option (enabled by default) to mark all ‘alt.’ facts (e.g. “alt. birth”, “alt. death”, etc) with the ‘Rejected’ fact flag within Family Historian. If enabled, event type names that begin “Disproven ” are also flagged as rejected (e.g. “Disproven birth”).
The ‘Description’ field is now always pre-pended to notes, if used with non-attribute fact types other than ‘Address’ or ‘Residence’.
For Residence and Address facts, the ‘Description’ field is now pre-pended to the address field.
Dates for media items (e.g. pictures) were not being imported. They now are.
Dates which specify periods (e.g. “1984 to 1986”) were not being imported correctly. They now are.
The ‘Privacy’ fact flag is now set on all facts which are marked as private either at the fact instance level, or at the fact type level.
Import of shared events (“witnesses”) has been made more efficient.
If a person is flagged as ‘Private’ or ‘Invisible’ in Legacy, they are now flagged as ‘Private’ in FH (record flag). Previously the flag was only set in Family Historian if they were flagged as ‘Private’ in Legacy (i.e. the ‘Invisible’ flag was ignored).
As well as the ‘Private’ record flag, if a person is flagged as ‘Invisible’ in Legacy, they are now also flagged as ‘Invisible’ in FH (this is a new record flag, added specifically for the Legacy import).
Previously the ‘Living’ record flag was not set correctly on import. It now is.
Previously if a person was cremated, they were recorded as ‘buried’ in FH. They are now correctly recorded as cremated.
FH now imports the last changed date and time for Individuals (this is by default, the last column on the Individuals tab of the Records Window).
In Legacy, you can specify whether you prefer the term ‘Christening’ or ‘Baptism’, and the same event will be differently labelled, depending on your option (this is option 3.10 in recent versions of Legacy). You can now optionally choose to import these events into Family Historian as either christenings or baptisms (these are two different event types in Family Historian).
There is a new option to import sentence overrides into Family Historian. Previously they were not imported.
If importing sentence overrides, there is also now a new option to convert Legacy sentence template codes into Family Historian sentence template codes. This feature is currently marked as ‘experimental’. You are encouraged to check the conversions and tweak them if necessary. Instructions are provided (see next).
There is a new web page, “Importing from Legacy” (https://www.family-historian.co.uk/support/legacy-import) providing advice for Legacy users on importing, such as tips to ensure the best possible import, and where to look for imported data post-import. Links are provided to this page both before and after a Legacy import. The page provides important information about creating fact definitions and sentence templates for sentence overrides, custom fact types, and fact types which are standard within Legacy, but not standard within Family Historian. Examples are given to illustrate the necessary steps. These tasks only ever have to be performed once, and only for certain fact types.

Advanced Features for Power-Users

Fixed an obscure bug which only arose if you created and deleted a record in the same plugin transaction.
The Family Historian API function, fhGetContextInfo, when called with the parameter “CI_PLUGIN_NAME”, was truncating the plugin name, after the last full-stop. This has been fixed.

Miscellaneous

You are now warned before the Family Historian sample project is replaced and upgraded. Nevertheless, you are still strongly urged not to keep any important data in this project as it may be upgraded on any update.
If you have multiple monitors, the Splash screen did not always appear where the main window would appear. It now appears centred on where the ‘restored’ (i.e. when not maximized) version of the Window will be.
The position of balloon hints is now automatically adjusted if necessary to ensure that they don’t extend outside the main application window.
Minor improvement have been made to the “Reset Branch Move” feature in diagrams, to make its behaviour more intuitive.
In diagrams, when ‘box & bar’ drag type is enabled, coloured bars are displayed. These could sometimes incorrectly overlap diagram “shapes”. Now fixed.
Fixed an obscure bug which could cause narrative reports to hang in certain circumstances.
Fixed an obscure problem with adding sources for witnesses, which only occurred if the Property Box is floating.
The “Short Heading” fields for chapters in books was not being used. It now is.
Fixed a bug which could cause Family Historian to crash when you expand the dropdown list of sources in the Automatic Source Citation Pane, and press a keyboard letter to jump down list.
If you right-clicked on web links in the Property Box or Citation Window, you were not always able to edit it. Now fixed.
Fixed a bug which could cause Family Historian to crash if you ran out of memory while opening a very large report.

7.0.20

Diagrams and Charts

In the Pictures tab of Diagram options, unticking the “Wrap text around picture” option could cause layout issues. This has been fixed.

Reports

The “Format for Dates” field, on the Format tab of Report Options, previously had no effect on how dates appeared in the body of narrative reports. It now does. So users are recommended to check, with all your narrative reports, that they are showing dates in the format you want, and adjust the setting if not.
Sentence templates that contained just {note} or {inline-note} did not work correctly in narrative reports (and also in the Property Box). Now fixed.
In rare circumstances, rich text in notes could affect the formatting of other parts of the report. Now fixed.
Sundry other minor robustness enhancements have been made to narrative reports.

Note Window

Previously automatic source citations (if enabled) were applied to notes when edited in the Property Box, but not if they were edited in the Note Window. Now they work in both contexts.
Formatting could be disrupted when you added or moved rows and columns in tables. Also, added rows did not copy the formatting of the row they were inserted above or below, and added columns did not copy the formatting of the column they were inserted next to. All such issues have been fixed.

RootsMagic Import

Family Historian now supports converting fact definitions for all facts used in a project (previously it only converted custom and unrecognised fact definitions). This is optional, but enabled by default.
Up to now, Family Historian has automatically converted RootsMagic rich text (bold, italics and underline) into the Family Historian equivalent rich text, when importing from RootsMagic 7. The conversion now also works correctly with import from version 8 and 9.

TMG Import

Previously, Family Historian put the Repository ‘Abbreviation’ in the Family Historian Repository Name field, and stored TMG’s “Name-Oth” value in the note field attached to the Repository (with label “Name: “). It now puts “Name-Oth” value in the Name field, and puts the “Abbreviation” in the Custom Id field. If there is no “Name-Oth” value, the Abbreviation is used as the Name.

Property Box and Citation Window

The “Sources For” field in the Citation List pane, has a dropdown list which normally appears below it, when you click on the field itself. But if there would not be sufficient room on the screen for the full list to be viewed, it now appears above the field instead.
If you close the Property Box at a time when the Citation List pane was floating, it will now reappear if you then re-open the Property Box (assuming it has the same docked/floating state).
If you changed Property Box options in Preferences, for the position of the Citation Window, at a time when the Citation Window was not open, its position could be temporarily messed up.
Pressing Ctrl-I on the “Text from Source” and “Media” tabs of the Citation Window, did not produce the correct results. Now fixed.

Miscellaneous

Various fields in the language pack header dialog, and in the New Language Pack Wizard, which previously did not support the accent character popup, now do.
The build now includes the latest version of the English language pack (1.1).
Most record lists now show a blue frame round a row item, if it is the currently active item but not selected. This makes it easier to see when the list has the keyboard focus.
Added text-from-source autotext for the 1921 UK Census.
Fact type names ending in a ‘#’ caused problems with custom fact definitions. Fixed.
With the function, =GetLabelledText(), record links were being excluded altogether. They are now rendered as plain text.
If a GEDCOM file contains an INDI.UID field, this is loaded into Family Historian’s Unique Id field, for the record in question.
There have been sundry updates to the Help.

7.0.19

Support for GEDCOM 7 and GEDZIP

Family Historian now supports importing from, and exporting to, GEDCOM 7. GEDCOM 7 is the latest release of the GEDCOM specification. To import a GEDCOM 7 file, click ‘New Project’ on the Project Window, choose the option to import a GEDCOM file, and select the GEDCOM 7 file. To export to GEDCOM 7, click on ‘Import/Export’ on the ‘File’ menu, and then choose ‘Export’ and ‘GEDCOM File’. In the Export GEDCOM File dialog, set the ‘Destination’ field to ‘GEDCOM 7’.
The specification of GEDCOM 7 also includes the specification of a method for storing a GEDCOM file, together with associated media files, in a single compressed, zip file, called a GEDZIP file. Family Historian now supports export to GEDZIP, as well as import from GEDZIP. To import a GEDZIP file, click ‘New Project’ on the Project Window, choose the option to import a GEDZIP file, and select the GEDZIP file. To export to a GEDZIP file, click on ‘Import/Export’ on the ‘File’ menu, and then choose ‘Export’ and ‘GEDZIP File (GEDCOM & Media)’. You can opt to include all media, no media, or a specific selection.
None of these changes affect the internal storage of data within Family Historian.

Query Window

The Query Window General tab now resizes the fields within it to fit the available space, if limited.

Reports & Books

If you hit ‘Restore Defaults’ in report options, and then cancelled, the options displayed incorrectly. Now fixed.
Fixed a problem with smart spacing in narrative reports.
When you rebuild a book, you now get a warning if files can’t be deleted.
The ‘Refresh’ button in the Edit Book dialog, now works even if the book is not already open.

Records Window

The menu that appears when you right-click on a record in the Records Window, has been reworked to make important commands more easily available. This includes ‘New Record’, ‘Configure Columns’ and ‘Record Window Options’. The ‘Add Field’ options have been moved to their own submenu.
The currently active row in the Records Window (and similar record selectors) now has a blue frame around it if it is the active row but unselected. This makes it easier to see when the window has the keyboard focus.

Diagrams

If you edit and change a text scheme which is not the current one, you are now asked if you want to make it the current one when you hit OK or Apply, so that you can see the effect of your changes.
Fixed-point moving did not work if there was a hidden proxy box between the branches you are trying to move. Now fixed.
Fixed a bug which meant that text could be chopped off at the bottom of a box in a diagram window, in certain circumstances
There is a new text clipping option with diagrams. Defaults to clipping at box level. Is accessed by clicking “Margins & Tabs” on the Text tab of diagram options.

Notes and the Note Window

If you pressed Ctrl-A and deleted an entire note, in a Note field in the Property Box, it switched the font to Segoe UI. Now fixed.
Pressing Ctrl + Spacebar on a rich text field in the Property Box, now opens the note in the Note Window.
The sample project had some sentence overrides which used {note}. All of these have been changed to {inline-note}.
Note-handling for Family facts was previously handled slightly inconsistently, compared to note-handling for Individual facts, with respect to citation listings and auto-citations. They are now handled consistently.
The Notes tab of the Property Box now reverts to the default sort order (record order) when you switch from one person to another.

Website Generation

If you added ‘Index’ to the table of contents in a website, it didn’t appear the first time you generated the website (although it did appear on subsequent generations ). Now fixed.

Language Packs

Added a new “Check-for-updates” button on the Language Packs dialog, which supports updating the language pack plugin, or spellcheck feature.
Fixed a bug which could cause problems when enabling language pack spellcheck dictionaries.

Advanced Features for Power-Users

Editing Rich Text in a plugin has been made much easier, thanks to the following changes: the Rich Text object’s “GetText” method now supports 3 new return values (Lua supports multiple return values). As well as the actual text, it now returns a boolean and 2 tables (or nil values) for the record links and citations (if any). See the documentation for details. The Rich Text object’s “SetText” method now takes 2 additional parameters. These are tables (or nil values) for Record Links and Citations. See examples in the Help.
Various improvements have been made to the Plugin Help, including more detail about how to create objects. The text documenting the “IsRich” method of rich text objects has been reworked and improved.
The function fhConvertUTF8ToANSI sometimes failed when the system locale was Japanese or Korean. This has now been fixed.

Miscellaneous

You now get a warning if you have unsaved changes if you try to logoff while FH is running.
Various improvements have been made to the appearance of the Add Missing Parent dialog. Also the tab key now works correctly.
There is a new option in advanced preferences to clear the Web Search window web browser cache.
Fixed a rare bug whereby a badly-formatted GEDCOM file could cause a crash when loaded.

7.0.18

Note Window

In certain circumstances, text and highlight colours, and other character styles (bold, underline, etc), were not saved correctly. This has been fixed.
Modifying a table by adding, deleting or moving rows or columns, could in certain circumstances cause character styles, and/or paragraph formatting, to be lost. Now fixed.
Pressing ‘Undo’ in the Note Window sometimes caused more changes to be undone than one would expect. This has been fixed.
If you copied text containing a weblink from MS Word into the Note Window, in some circumstances the within-page detailing of the web link could be lost. Now fixed.

Diagrams

The Diagram Window now uses an improved layout strategy (a new standard). The minimum and maximum box width settings, when combined with the ‘Excludes Pictures’ tick box, are now interpreted slightly differently. The Help page for the Dimensions tab of Diagram Options, has been updated to clarify the roles of the various fields, including this tick box.
Charts created prior to this release will continue to use the old standard, so that unwanted box size and position changes do not occur. If you want a legacy chart to use the new approach, click the ‘Advanced’ button on the Dimensions tab of Diagram Options and tick the option “Update layout to latest standard”. This check box will be greyed if the chart already uses the latest standard.
The Zoom Options dialog, which appears when you click the ‘Opts’ button on the Diagram toolbar, could sometimes be positioned past the right edge of the Diagram Window, when the window or screen is small. The dialog is now positioned to fit within the Diagram Window whenever possible.

Media

Clicking the black arrows on the toolbar below the media list, on the Media tab of the Property Box, to give a media item a higher or lower preference, caused the current selection to be lost. This has been fixed.
By default (i.e. for new users), the media list on the left side of the Media Window, now has a new column, “Keywords”, which shows a list of the Media record’s keywords. The same applies to the Media tab of the Records Window. Existing users who would like to see this column , should right-click on the column heading and choose “Configure Columns”. “Keywords” is now one of the listed item in the list on the left-hand side and can be added. Alternatively, clicking the ‘Restore Defaults’ button will also add this column.
The option to copy image metadata (“Image tag values”) to the Media record, when adding media files to a project, is now enabled by default (this is a setting in the Media tab of Preferences).

The Master Genealogist (TMG) Import

Family Historian occasionally failed to create a Family record for a couple who were treated as a couple in TMG. Now fixed.
Family Historian sometimes treated some TMG tag type as Individual fact types, when they should have been Family fact types. The new policy is that if a TMG tag type is associated with a standard GEDCOM tag for a Family event, it will be treated as a Family fact type when imported, even if it isn’t assigned that GEDCOM tag (which can happen if more than one tag type shares a GEDCOM tag, and the option to merge fact definitions is not chosen). If that does not apply, a tag type will be imported as a Family fact type if the tag type belonged to either the ‘Marriage’ or ‘Divorce’ tag type group, within TMG.
New fact names are derived from the “English (U.S.)” version of the tag type name in TMG. This can have the unfortunate effect that sometimes fact names may appear wrong or unfamiliar after import, if users are used to working within TMG exclusively in some other language (even “English (U.K.)”). The pre-import advice now says that users should check the “English (U.S.)” version of tag names, prior to import, to ensure that they have appropriate values. Also, if the language of the import is anything other than “English (U.S.)”, the label used for new fact types created during the import, will be set to the import language’s version of the tag type name. In practice, fact names are mainly referenced via their label, so even if a user neglects to check the “English (U.S.)” version of tag names, the fact names should still be familiar and recognisable.
Since the last release, Family Historian now has two sentence template codes – {note} and {inline-note} – where previously it just had one ({note}). When generating sentences and sentence templates for narrative reports, Family Historian will now use {inline-note} as replacement for the TMG memo code, [M], as this is the code that most accurately reflects the behaviour of the TMG [M] code. Note: If you have made any modifications to the code replacements file for TMG imports (see the ‘Code Replacements’ button on the TMG Import Options page, displayed prior to import), and if you want to incorporate this same change, you will need to either update the code replacements file yourself and replace {note} with {inline-note}; or alternatively, you can just click the ‘Reset’ button to the right of the ‘Code Replacements’ button, to restore the default version of the file (which includes the new code).
Various minor improvements have been made to the Help and to messages, relating to importing from TMG.

Miscellaneous

Some users reported getting incorrect messages that their licence had expired. This has been fixed and no longer happens.
Some users – especially Windows 7 or Windows 8 users – reported that if they click “Check for Updates” on the Help menu, and are told that there is a new version, and then click the ‘Upgrade Now’ button, a progress dialog appears but the progress bar never moves. This has been fixed.
The Merge/Compare tool sometimes failed to match source citations when it should have. This has been fixed.

7.0.17.1

Summary of Key New Features

Problems with the {note} code in sentence templates have been addressed. There is a new template code, {inline-note} which can be used in sentence templates, if you want to insert a note into a sentence, without treating the note as the start of a new sentence. The code {note} still exists but should only be used for notes which consist of one or more sentences.
Duplication is automatically avoided when media is added to a project
Keyboard shortcuts in record selection dialogs have been enhanced
Two new columns have been added to Media record lists
Citations are copied as footnotes when you copy notes into a word processor
The Internet Search dialog has its own Help pages, and has other improvements

Media

By default (i.e. for new users), the ‘File’ column in the Media tab of the Records Window, and in the Media List within the Media Window, has been replaced by two new columns: ‘Filename’ and ‘Folder’, which effectively split the ‘File’ information out into two columns, making both parts easier to see, and sort on. Existing users will not benefit from this change automatically. To use the new columns, existing users should open the Media tab of the Records Window (or view the Media List in the Media Window), right-click on the column heading, and choose ‘Configure Columns’ from the menu that appears. In the Configure Columns dialog, you can either click the ‘Restore Defaults’ button to benefit from the new defaults, or (if you wish to preserve other changes you may have made) you can manually add the two new columns yourself. The new columns are listed on the left side. If you add these two new columns (to the right side), you will probably wish to remove the ‘File’ column, from the right side list, as there is no benefit in having both.
If you add a picture or other media item into a project, Family Historian will now check for duplicates, skip unnecessary file copies, and avoid creating a new Media record if there is already a Media record for the item in question.
The column widths for the Media tab of the Records Window are no longer necessarily the same as the column widths for the Media list in the Media Window. The two are stored separately.
The “Paste Copied Media” menu command is now immediately visible on the menu that appears when you right-click on the list in the Media tab of the Property Box.
If you added or updated a person’s frame link to a picture, thumbnail images using that frame did not update immediately and automatically. They now do.
You can now copy fields in the Media Links tab of the Media Window. To do this, you have to expand the link and right-click on the field you want to copy. A menu will be displayed with the Copy command.

Internet Search Dialog

The Internet Search dialog did not add a page name, when you added a new bookmark. This has been fixed.
Bookmarks are now automatically sorted into the correct order, when you add a new one or edit one.
You are now also warned before deleting bookmarks.
The Internet Search Dialog now has two pages of Help.

Focus Window & Hints

Links in the “View Match Details” window did not work when clicked on them. This has been fixed.

Keyboard Shortcuts in Record Selection Dialogs

You can now press the Tab key, and Shift-Tab, to move around main controls and buttons, on most record selection dialogs. Previously pressing the Tab key did nothing if a record list had the keyboard focus.
Some record lists support filtering, using filter fields that display above the list. You cannot use the Tab or Shift-Tab keys to move the focus to the filtering fields. To do so, using the keyboard, press Ctrl-D (or Shift-Ctrl-D to move the focus to the filtering fields, and sort on the first column at the same time). Pressing F6 will toggle the focus between a record list and its filter fields.
Within single record selection dialogs, pressing Enter when a record list has the focus, and one or more rows are selected, acts like a click on the OK button at that point. Pressing Esc acts like Cancel (closes the selection dialog).
Within multiple selection dialogs, pressing Enter when the left-side record list has the focus, adds the selected records to the current selection (list on the right side) but does not close the dialog.

Note Window and Rich Text

When you copy text from the Note Window into a word processor, web links now work correctly, record links (which have no meaning in the context of a word processor) are converted to plain text, and citations become citations to footnotes (with word processors that support footnotes).
Previously, if you made changes to a table in the Note Window by adding or removing rows or columns, or by splitting the table, record and citation links were converted to plain text. This is now fixed.
You are now allowed to insert web links into autotext.
Tab characters in notes were not being rendered correctly, as tabs, if you saved a report in Rich Text Format (for use with an external word processor). This has been fixed.

Reports and Books

Wide tables, which would otherwise be wider than the available space, are now automatically compressed, when a report is saved in Rich Text Format.
An issue which could cause reports to be truncated when copied into MS Word 365, has been resolved.
Family Historian no longer adds a full stop at the end of sentences in narrative reports, if the sentence already ends in a full stop. This happened most commonly when a place name happens to end in a full stop (as “U.S.A.” does, for example).
There is a new template code, {inline-note}, which can be used in sentence templates, if you want to insert a note into a sentence, without treating the note as the start of a new sentence.
The template code {note} was treated inconsistently when viewed in the Sentence field of the facts tab of the Property Box, and when the same sentence was viewed in a narrative report. This has been fixed.
Previously if you used a template code to insert a note into a sentence, in a narrative report, Family Historian would correctly recognise that the note had been added, and not add it again, even if the report option specified that fact notes (notes for events or attributes) should be included. However, it did not do this if you referenced the note using a data reference. Now it will avoid the duplication, even if you use a data reference to refer to the note.
The template codes {spouse/her/him} and {couple} did not work correctly with family facts, in the Advanced template for Fact tab listings. This has been fixed.

Advanced Features for Power Users

The module, fhFileUtils, has been updated to fix a problem with copyFile and moveFile. Also, it now allows folder specifications to work with or without a trailing path separator, except in the case of copyFolder and moveFolder where the trailing path separator is mandatory on a destination folder (to distinguish it from a destination file).
The built-in function, GetLabelledText, did not always work correctly if the label you search for started with the ‘<‘ character, or if the data started with a ‘<‘ character. This has been fixed.
A new built-in function “FilenamePart” has been added. This is used to enable the two new columns in the Media tab of the Records Window, and in the Media List within the Media Window (see earlier).

Miscellaneous

Some people reported network errors when attempting to login to Family Historian (most commonly from Windows 7 or Windows 8). This has been addressed.
The appearance of menus in Windows 11 has been improved.
A problem with customizing the Property Box has been fixed. Some valid expressions could wrongly be reported as invalid. This no longer happens.
The separator part of the short date format Preferences option was not being saved if it was dash (-). This has now been fixed.

7.0.15

Media

You can now rename media files from within the Media Window. To do this, open the Media Window, select a Media record, and click “Rename Media File” on the Media menu (the top-level menu that is only visible when the Media Window is active).
When viewing an image in the Media Window, or in the Media tab of the Property Box, you can now zoom in and out on it, by using the mouse wheel, if you have one. If you zoom in so that only part of the image is visible, you can move around the image by clicking-and-dragging on it. This also applies when you view the image in the Media Viewer. It does not apply to thumbnails. This behaviour is similar to, and consistent with, zooming and scrolling in the Diagram Window and the Map Window. Note: there may be a short delay when zooming in on large or very large images.
There is a new option in the Media Window, to find and filter on media with “broken file links” (i.e. media, where the media file cannot be found on the hard drive). To do this, click the ‘Find’ button on the ‘Media List’ tab (left side of the Media Window) and choose “Broken File Links”.
The Media Window now remembers column widths if you change them.

Reports and Books

There is a new option “Compress Wide Tables” (enabled by default), in the Page Layout tab of Report Options and Book Settings. If ticked, and if a table would otherwise be too wide to fit on a page, the columns of the table are made proportionately narrower, so that the table fits within the page margins.
Previously, if a table was too wide to fit on a page, the text from the table could overflow into the page margin. If the table is now too wide (which it will only be if ‘Compress Wide Tables” is not ticked – see previous) it is now truncated at the margin.
A new option in the Note Window now allows wide tables to be split vertically (see “Note Window” below). This can be another way of solving the problem of tables that are too wide to fit on a page in reports.
An empty bibliography sections could cause errors with books. Now fixed.
Previously, ancestor reports did not include ancestors of same sex parents. Also, sometimes the sex of a parent was rendered incorrectly (for example, “Father” where it should have been another “Mother”). Both issues are now fixed.
Fixed a minor display problem with charts in books.
In specific circumstances, untranslated notes were not being coloured correctly in reports which are translated into other languages. Fixed.
Fixed a bug which could mean that Family Historian incorrectly left a blank space above source listings.
Duplicate fact images (same picture and caption) are now automatically removed from reports.
Fixed a minor problem with LDS Ordinance sections in reports.

RootsMagic Import

Support for RootsMagic qualifiers in sentence templates, has been improved. For example, [ThisPerson:Given], which uses the ‘Given’ qualifier, was previously not converted; and nor was [Date:plain] which uses the ‘plain’ qualifier. Both are now converted automatically to Family Historian equivalents. Please note this change only applies to new imports. If you have previously created a system-level fact set for imported RootsMagic fact types, you will either need to delete it and re-create it, or manually update it yourself. Also, if in previous imports from RootsMagic, new roles were added to standard Family Historian fact types, you made need to manually update the associated sentence templates yourself, if they contain unconverted RootsMagic qualifiers.
A problem with importing empty sort dates has been fixed.
When an event in RootsMagic has a date range with an identical sort date, Family Historian would previously create a sort date for the event as the start of the range, when importing the event. It should have not given the event a sort date at all in that situation. And this is what it now does.
In RootsMagic 8, source citations can be shared. This was largely handled correctly except that media attached to shared citations was previously only attached to one of the citation copies after import. This has been fixed.
Non-biological relationships (e.g. Step) were not being preserved on import from RootsMagic. Now they are imported from RM7 and RM8. FH will import Step, Foster, Birth, Adopted and Sealed relationships correctly. The last will only work if both parents are sealed.
‘Double dates’ are dates where the year is specified twice, representing both the year of the calendar of the time, and the year as it would be now. A problem with importing double dates from RootsMagic has been fixed.
Sort dates that were marked as “after” a given year, and where the month and day were not specified (such as “after 1993”), were sometimes imported incorrectly. This has been fixed.

Note Window

Wide tables in the Note Window can now be split vertically (i.e. along a column boundary), into two narrower tables. There is a new command “Split Table Vertically at Column” on the ‘Modify Table’ menu that appears when you right-click on a table (it is also available on the Note Window’s toolbar menu button). The split command will automatically either duplicate the first column, or (optionally) add a new column to both parts of the split table, with line numbers. This is so that corresponding rows in the 2 resulting tables can be easily identified. These columns can be deleted if not required. There is also a new command, “Merge Table as Columns” which can be used to merge two tables which have been split in this way.
If you click “Locate this Note in Property Box” on the cog menu of the Note Window, it will now only float the Property Box if the option to float the Property Box when you click on links, is enabled. Previously it always did it.

Research Notes

Previously, when displaying the “Research Notes” report, tables in the research notes sometimes overflowed the margin on the right-side of the page, or were truncated. The new report option (“Compress Wide Tables”), mentioned above, automatically fixes this problem.
7 new queries have been created for research notes. These are:
(1) Research Notes
(2) Research Notes for Individual
(3) Research Notes for Place
(4) Research Notes for Media Record
(5) Research Notes for Source
(6) Research Notes for Repository
(7) Research Notes for Listed Records
All of these queries allow filtering by type (log, task, plan or all) & status (open, closed, or all). To access these queries, click on the ‘Queries’ button on the main application toolbar. The queries can all be found listed under a new submenu, called “Research Notes (logs, tasks, plans, etc)”.
The “Research Notes” report (listed under “Miscellaneous Reports” when you click on the ‘Publish’ button on the main application toolbar), now assumes by default that a multiple research note selection will be required (previously it assumed that the report would normally only display a single selection). Click on the ‘Select…’ button to select the required research notes. If you click on the “Add Using Query” button on the Selector dialog, you can use any of the new research note queries listed above, to select research notes for the report.
When viewing the results of a research note query, you can now select any of the research notes in the Result Set, and easily view it in the Note Window. For more details, see “Queries and the Query Window” below.

Queries and the Query Window

7 new queries have been added (see “Research Notes” above).
You can now specify the alignment (left, right or centred) for any column in a query. This is specified using the new ‘Align’ field, on the Columns tab. The default is left-aligned.
Some queries prompt you to specify parameter values when you run them. Previously to specify a text value, you had to type it into a field. Now, you can alternatively specify that the text must be chosen from a dropdown list of values. The same list can also have entries which match ‘all values’ or ‘no value’. This feature is implemented on the Rows tab of the Query Window, using a new field which shows the type of the parameter (if the filter takes a parameter). The parameter type might be ‘text’, ‘date’, ‘number’, ‘record’, etc. The Type field appears immediately to the right of the label for the parameter, at the bottom of the Rows tab. With text parameter values only, you can click on this field and specify a dropdown list of values, to be displayed in the parameter window, when the query is run. This new feature is used in the new research notes queries, for selecting the required type and status of research notes.
Three fact queries have been modified so that they now exclude all facts which have been flagged as ‘Rejected’. These are: “Fact Date Warnings”, “Events Near Place” and “Individual Timeline”.
The “All Events” and “All Facts” now have 4 new columns each, that show the fact flags that have been set for the various facts. These queries do not exclude ‘rejected’ facts (but the fact that they have been flagged as rejected will be shown by the fact that they have a ‘Y’ in the ‘Rejected’ column).
If you right-click on a column heading, in the Result Set tab of the Query Window, a dropdown menu appears with the options “Sort Ascending” and “Sort Descending”. The previous mechanism (click to sort ascending or alt-click to sort descending) still works.
On the Columns tab, the “Show Qualifiers in List” option (bottom of the Field list, on the left-hand side) did not add qualifiers to the list for any branch which had been opened and was now closed. This has been fixed.
Previously you could jump from any data-linked cell in the Query Window, straight to the relevant field in the Property Box (or view the relevant record). Now, if a data-linked cell is associated with a field that can be displayed in the Note Window, you can also opt to view it in the Note Window. This works not only with cells that represent fields that contain values that can display in the Note Window, but also with Note records and Research Notes, and fields that link to Note records or Research Notes. The “View in Note Window” menu command will be available, for appropriate cells, when you right-click on the cell (on the context menu that appears), or if you select the cell and click on the Query menu (last button on the Query Window toolbar).

Miscellaneous

User-specifiable fields in template-based Source records and associated citations, are known as metafields. Previously these did not sort in accordance with their data type in the Record Window and elsewhere (for example, a date metafield did not sort as a date). This has been fixed.
There is a new colour selection dialog for selecting multiple colours (in contexts in which multiple colour selection is required – such as when selecting diagram colours). The new selection dialog is simpler and easier to use than the old one. It also has the advantage that it allows colour values to be easily copied and pasted between items.
If you click on “Gedcom File Tasks” on the File menu, the submenu that appears includes a list of recently-opened files. Files with long file names were displayed differently from files with shorter file names, which seemed inconsistent. The system can now handle much longer file names, in a consistent manner.
Files in the same list that no longer exist, are now automatically removed.
Improvements have been made to the validation of expressions (data references or functions) in all contexts.
Fixed an issue which could, in rare circumstances, cause Family Historian to crash when displaying a list of source citations.
Fixed an issue with filtering in the Records Window.
Adding a spouse for a person who had no sex, or sex ‘unknown’, was not handled correctly. Now fixed.
The Historical Maps feature has been removed for the time being. This feature had stopped working when the service it used was withdrawn. For more information about historical maps, please see the Notice Board.
Clicking on the column headings of the top panel of the Named Lists pane (options pane on the right side of the Records Window), previously did nothing. It now causes the list to be sorted in the usual manner (or press ‘Alt’ while clicking to reverse the sort).
Various minor improvements have been made to the Family Historian Sample Project
The Help has been updated to include descriptions of the new features, described above.
Improvements have been made to the Plugin Help

Advanced Features for Power-Users

A new ‘built-in’ function has been added: IsLinkedFromList. This is used in the new query, “Research Notes for Listed Records”.
The Family Historian API (used when writing plugins) has been updated as follows:
(1) The function “moveFile”, in the fhFileUtils module, could crash if the file already existed in the target folder. This has been fixed.
(2) The functions “fileGetContents” and “filePutContents” in the fhFileUtils module, have both been enhanced to support file names in UTF-8 format.
(3) The function “readTextFile” in the fhFileUtils module, previously had a size limitation which has now been removed.
(4) The “calcBirth” function in the fhUtils module, has been updated to handle ages in Years and Months.
(5) The Help for the fhSQL module has been updated to clarify that the module requires that UTF-8 must be enabled.

7.0.11

Following the last update, the “Save Report as” button in the Report Window, and the “Save Book as” button in the Book Window, both stopped working. They are now working correctly again.
Support for name qualifiers with some role codes (in sentence templates for narrative reports), was added in a recent release, but was not working as intended. Fixed.

7.0.10

Reports and Books

The panels on the right side of the Report Window and Book Window, have been enhanced to use space more efficiently, if the window is resized, or if font sizes are changed. Also, if there isn’t room for all of the buttons, a ‘More’ button will appear with a dropdown menu, making it easier to access the missing functions.
Images in reports and books were not always rotated correctly, using the internal EXIF rotation data. They now are.

Media Window

When selecting media to display in the Media Window, if you opted to include media linked to facts, media linked to witnessed facts were not included. They now are.
The behaviour of the Media Window following an undo/redo was sometimes unintuitive. This has been addressed.

Property Box and the Citation Window

If the Citation List pane was floating, it could become docked as a side-effect of customizing the Citation Window, and in other situations. Fixed.
In some situations, the wrong source information could be displayed in the Citation List pane. Fixed.
The Notes tab of the Citation Window did not previously show links from the citation to Note records (if any). It now does. Also, you can now create links to Note records for citations, if you wish to, on the same tab.
The position of the cursor was not always retained if you were editing a note, and switched to another application and back. In some cases, the cursor would move to the start of the field. This no longer happens.
If you enabled automatic source citations and added alternate names and titles in the ‘More Names’ dialog, the automatic source citations were not applied to the alternate names or titles. Fixed.

Direct Import from Legacy

The direct import from Legacy now correctly handles Legacy quarter dates.
Descriptions for events are now copied to the start of the note field (for attributes they become the attribute value).

Direct Import from The Master Genealogist (TMG)

Line-breaks inside URLs were not being handled correctly. They now are.
Fact definition processing with respect to sentence templates, previously assumed that each fact definition would have no more than 50 expressions. In fact some users exceeded this limit. This issue has now been addressed.
Media items flagged as primary were not necessarily highest preference after import. They now are.
If place parts begin with a hyphen in TMG, the hyphen is removed on import, as it has no role in Family Historian.

Miscellaneous

Some non-English accent characters were not being capitalised correctly. Fixed.
Family Historian backup files now have their own file type (“Family Historian Backup File”) and file icon (a filing cabinet icon).
It is possible to specify a column expression that is valid in some projects but not in others. This situation was not being properly supported. It now is.
Application startup should now be faster.
Various minor cosmetic improvements.
Various additions and improvements have been made to the Help

Advanced Features for Power-Users

The text returned by some built-in functions (like ‘GetLabelledText’) was sometimes truncated if long. This has been addressed.
The fhSaveTextFile and fhLoadTextFile API functions now both support ‘ANSI’ as a file format.
Various minor improvements have been made to the Plugin Help – e.g. to clarify the role of strings with the fhLoadTextFile and fhSaveTextFile functions.
Family Historian could crash when certain data types were cast as boolean values. Fixed.
The ‘TextPart’ function could give incorrect results if used with a language pack. Fixed.

7.0.9

Family Historian is continuously being enhanced with new features and improvements to existing features. The latest upgrade contains 46 new and improved features, and 7 bug fixes.

Summary of Key New Features

Screen fonts can now be easily scaled to make them bigger. Each user can now adjust the text to a size that is comfortable for them (for details see Screen Font Scaling below).
Record lists and other data lists now use full row selection by default, making it easier to see which columns are included in the selection (see Full Row Selection below).
The direct import from The Master Genealogist (TMG) has been substantially reworked and much improved (see Direct Import from The Master Genealogist (TMG) below).

Detailed List of New & Improved Features

Screen Font Scaling

Added ‘Screen Font Scaling’ option on ‘Display’ tab of Preferences, which allows screen fonts to be scaled. Scaling works with all workspace windows (insofar as they use screen fonts – i.e. it doesn’t affect diagrams and the report viewer part of the Reports Window, which use their own fonts and which can already be zoomed in and out as required in any case), and with most dialogs. Exceptions (i.e. dialogs which still use the default system font) include the automatic source citation pane (see next), standard message boxes, font selection dialogs, colour selection dialogs and file save/open dialogs. Menus and windows captions are also not scaled.
The Automatic Source Citation pane now uses the Property Box ‘Text’ font which is set on the ‘Property Box’ tab of Preferences. The default size for this is 10 pt which is a touch bigger than previously. To set this back to the size it was previously, if required, set the size to 8 pt, and use font scaling as needed to scale other dialogs. You will need to restart Family Historian to see the change in the Automatic Source Citation pane.
Also added a new button on ‘Display’ tab of Preferences (next to “Screen Font Scaling”) called ‘Reset Screen Font Sizes’, which can be used to reset all screen fonts to their default sizes. This is for the convenience of users who may have already changed some screen font sizes. It is a useful way of getting them back into proportion relative to one another (which typically you might want to do, prior to scaling them). This button is greyed if screen fonts already have default sizes.

Full Row Selection

Previously you had to click on the text in the first column of many lists (e.g. record lists), to select that item. Now by default, you can click on any text in any column and the whole row displays as selected. Some lists, such as record lists, have a little ‘+’ in a box which allows details to be expanded. “Full row selection” only applies to unexpanded rows. Users who preferred the old way, can revert to it by unticking a new option ‘Prefer Full Row Selection’ (ticked by default) in the ‘Advanced’ area of the General tab of Preferences.

Direct Import from The Master Genealogist (TMG)

The ‘last-updated’ date for Individual records (displayed by default in the last column in the Records Window) is now set from the TMG ‘last edit’ date, on import.
Conversion of sentence templates used for narrative reports (both in TMG “tag types”, and in TMG “local sentences”) has been improved to produce more accurate conversions. A few TMG codes that previously were not converted are now also converted. A few new codes and code qualifiers, have been added to Family Historian, to support the new code conversions (see “Advanced Features for Power-Users” below).
Embedded source citations in TMG memos are now converted to embedded citations in Family Historian notes.
Text marked as hidden in TMG memos, is now marked as hidden in Family Historian notes.
The import now creates source templates (that is, Source Template records, with their collection specified as “TMG Import”) to correspond to all source types used in a TMG project. This in turn has made possible a number of improvements to import of sources. All source record fields are now imported, and (thanks to source templates) the field labels in Source records now match those in TMG.
The TMG templates used for source citations are now converted to Family Historian equivalents.
Source record ids in Family Historian now match TMG source record ids.
Family Historian now only creates fact definitions for tag types that are actually used, substantially reducing the number of fact types that need to be created and checked. By default, these will be created in a project-level fact set called “TMG Import”. If you wish, you can choose to create them in a system-level fact set called “TMG Import” instead. See the Help for TMG options for more on this.
The method used for matching TMG tag types to Family Historian fact types has been improved, and the rules relating to this have been clarified. In general, you are recommended to only associate any given GEDCOM tag with at most one TMG tag type. The exception is if you wish to merge fact types on import (there is a new import option that supports this – see the Help for the TMG Import Options page, in the import dialog box, for more details).
Previously “Citation Details” for a source citation, were being imported as ‘Text from Source’ fields. They are now imported to a new ‘Citation Details’ field, in each source citation.
TMG allows you to have different sentence templates for males and females. Support has been added for 2 new sentence template codes in Family Historian, which enable the same distinction: <male:> and <female:> (use explained in the Help). These codes are now used when importing from TMG.
On import, a person is no longer added as a witness to an event, with role “Principal 2”, if they already have another role with respect to that event.
Media for citation and places are now linked to the citations and places.
If you previously had customized code replacements used for TMG imports, your customizations will be saved to a backup file and can be retrieved if needed. A new code replacement file will be used by default, which has many more code replacements than previously, and support for nearly all TMG codes.
All repositories linked to Source records are now imported.
In TMG source citations and notes can be attached to relationship facts (e.g. “Father-Biological”). By default, Family Historian will import these, using the Family Historian method for attaching notes and source citations to relationships – which in most cases is to use witness details. For example, if you want to provide a source citation for the fact that X is the father of Y, you add X as a witness to a birth fact for Y, and attach source citations and notes to X’s role as father. Family Historian will now automatically import relationship fact source citations and notes in this way (there is an option to disable this feature if required).
For more information, please see Importing from The Master Genealogist.

Direct Import from RootsMagic

Added RootsMagic option which allows you to choose between saving new fact definitions to a fact set called “RootsMagic Import”, at the project-level, or at the system-level.
“Reference number” (Ref#) values were not being imported. They are now imported as Custom ID values. These are visible in the ‘All’ tab of the Property Box (or you can customize other tabs to show this value).
Added new “Alternate Names” option for the RootsMagic import which allows you to import alternate names as names or facts or both (and more details are imported).

Languages and Language Packs

The German Language Pack can now translate ‘from’ and ‘to’ differently depending on whether the context is a place or an email. Additional context information has been provided with the FH_GetMiscellaneousText entry point (in the ‘Context’ table supplied as a parameter) to enable this distinction. Note: The latest version of the German Language Pack (1.2) now makes use of this distinction when generating source citations for sources that use the ‘Email(s)’ source template. To install the updated language pack, click on ‘Language Packs’ on the Tools menu, and then click the ‘Import’ button and choose ‘From Family Historian Plugin Store’. Downloaded language packs are installed alongside existing language packs and do not replace them.

Reports & Website Generation

When a person has a partner and no family event has been defined, a default sentence is generated in a narrative report like Descendants by Generation. Between the personal pronoun and the remaining sentence there was a double space inserted instead of a single space. This has been reduced to one space.
If you export a report in Rich Text Format (RTF) any clickable links (e.g. web links) within the report (which aren’t clickable in a report context ordinarily), are now exported as clickable links in RTF.
Report options in the website wizard now include a Language tab.
Place Report now supports Privacy and Living options.

Note Window and Note Fields

Right-click menu on Note Window now includes “Add Link” even when text is selected. When adding a web link, the display text is pre-populated with the selected text.
The cursor position is now retained in note fields if you click on another window and then switch back.

Internet Data Matching (Hints)

Family Historian now uses the services more efficiently, and unnecessary calls have been eliminated.
The Focus Window now shows a ‘+’ in the hints circle, if the hint is open in the Web Search window. If you hover over the hint, the displayed information will include the information that the hint is “Open in Web Search Window”. These features only apply if hints are being displayed in the Web Search window. If you use an external web browser to display hints, you may need to manually refresh hints in Family Historian, to bring them up-to-date after accepting or rejecting matches.

Miscellaneous

Updated “File Statistics” on File menu, to add new record types, and some other values. Also data is now presented in a table, as rich text.
The last-used export folder is now saved between sessions.
If you are viewing a GEDCOM file in standalone mode, the “Project Specific” flag is now greyed out.
Updating a media record title now causes the thumbnail caption (if displaying in the Media Window) to be immediately refreshed.
The last column of ‘Work with Data’ dialogs shows the number of times that the item type has been used. This was right-justified for Place and Address previously (only). Now is right-justified for all Work with Data dialogs.
The left-side pane of the Merge/Compare dialog had 5 columns which previously had ‘Y’ in them, if true. They now have a green tick instead.
Added new JSON File Export option (accessible from the File menu). This feature has been added in anticipation of future use by a third party product. Use of this feature is currently not recommended as no existing products use the generated file format.
The Log files window now has extra column to indicate whether each displayed log file is ‘Project’ (current project specific) or ‘System’ (not project specific).
Family Historian now automatically updates the expression for the ‘Date’ column in the Records Window tab for Research Notes (the updated version does a proper date sort which the previous expression did not), when upgrading if the previous version was earlier than 7.0.9.

Advanced Features for Power-Users

When plugin scripts are opened, the program now automatically ensures that line-endings are made consistent (and correct) throughout the file.
Family Historian now supports name qualifiers which can be used with role codes in witness sentence templates, and a new “{others}” role code has been added. See the Help for details.
The behaviour of the “EstimatedAgeAt” built-in function has been modified so that the results more closely match user expectations.
The MoveFile function in fhFileUtils now has improved error reporting when passed a parameter referencing a non-existent folder.
The documentation for fhSQL now references the fact that SQLite integration does not handle ‘blobs’.

Bug fixes

A ‘bug’ is any feature which does not work as intended. The upgrade includes the following bug fixes:

Use of <caps> and </caps> in Source Template Formats, to start and stop forced uppercase, was not working. Fixed.
Report options, column widths of standard queries, and standard text schemes were being incorrectly reset when a new upgrade to Family Historian was applied. Fixed.
In the TMG import, relationship to parents (biological or adoptive) was not being handled correctly. Fixed.
Family Historian could sometimes crash if you edited a note or other field in the Property Box and immediately clicked on the button to open the Parents Window. Fixed.
If you display a report with a language pack selected for output and untick all marks within the Language tab for report options, you shouldn’t see any text marked with a distinctive background colour, but that was sometimes happening nevertheless. Fixed.
Double-clicking on a file in File Explorer, with a .fhlang suffix, could cause Family Historian to hang. Fixed. You now get a message telling you how to import language files.
In diagrams, the diagram icon size option value was not being saved. Fixed.

7.0.8.2

Direct Import from RootsMagic, Legacy, and TMG

‘Direct Import’ means that you import directly from another program’s database file (no need to first export a GEDCOM file, or any other kind of file). Direct import is almost always better than import via GEDCOM – and often much better.

Added comprehensive direct import from the latest versions of RootsMagic (7 & 8). Version 8 of RootsMagic has not yet been officially released. It is currently only available as a “community preview release” for beta testers. For instructions on using the new import, see: https://www.family-historian.co.uk/support/faq-importing. For more details about the RootsMagic import, see https://www.family-historian.co.uk/support/rootsmagic-import. Note that Family Historian already supports direct import from most versions of RootsMagic prior to version 7, although use of the new version 7 & 8 import is recommended wherever possible, as it is much more comprehensive.
Added support for new direct import from Legacy 9 and other recent versions (again, see https://www.family-historian.co.uk/support/faq-importing).
Improvements have been made to the direct import from The Master Genealogist (TMG):
* Name variants were not being handled correctly in the TMG import. Fixed.
* Added support for importing Research Logs from TMG.
* If in TMG you changed the label in the Tag Type Definition for the “English (U.S.)” version of a tag type (e.g. changed “Birth” to “BIRT”) this would prevent the fact being correctly identified as a Birth fact (or whatever type it is) and it would be created as a new custom fact type instead. Fixed.

Property Box

Some users reported that when they pressed the tab key after entering a date in the Facts tab of the Property Box, the focus did not move to the next field as it should, but instead jumped back to the fact list. This only happened with a minority of users who had taken certain specific options. Now fixed in any case.
When editing a note in the Property Box or the Citation Window, you can now use Ctrl+B to enable/disable bold, Ctrl+I to enable/disable italics, and Ctrl+U to enable/disable underline. This was previously only implemented in the Note Window.
Various Property Box satellite dialogs have been modified to use the standard Property Box font (e.g. a large font if that is what you choose).
If you clicked on the “Names & Titles Dialog” (the floating window which displays when you click on the ‘More…’ link, to the right of the Name field in the main tab of the Property Box, for Individual records) the yellow citation pane should show the sources for the current field item (that is, the field you have just clicked-in or tabbed-to, or the list row you have selected). This worked if you clicked on Name fields. It didn’t work for ‘Alt Name’ rows in the list below, unless you had previously clicked on a Name field. Now it will work correctly whichever you click first.
If you clicked “Edit Sentence” in the dropdown menu that appears when you click on the button to the right of the Sentence field in the Facts tab of the Property Box, sometimes nothing happened. Fixed.
It was possible to resize the second column of the Citation List pane, so that the first column was not visible at all. A minimum size for the first column is now enforced to prevent that happening.

Citation Window

The way the Repository field works has changed, in the Citation Window. If you click on it once, the dropdown (cog) menu is displayed. If you double-click on it, the Repository selector is displayed. If you tab to the field, the menu is not displayed, but if you press the space bar, the menu will appear and you can use the arrow keys to move up and down the menu (that part is not new). Note: This changed behaviour applies to any link field that works the same way as the Repository field in the Citation Window.
If you double-clicked on the Source Template field in the Citation Window (when viewing a templated source) it would open a Source Template selector. This was not correct behaviour. Now it drops down the menu as if you’d clicked on the cog menu button (which allows you to go to the Source Template record only).

Note Window

If you click ‘Ignore spelling’ when you right-click on a possible spelling error in the Note Window (indicated by a red squiggly line under the possibly misspelled word), the word is stored in a file called a custom dictionary. This file was being cleared whenever a minor upgrade of Family Historian was applied, which meant that you had to start again, after every minor upgrade, re-marking spellings to be ignored. This problem has been fixed. The custom dictionary file is no longer cleared after minor upgrades.
If you click on a record link in the Note Window it no longer forces the Property Box to float if it’s not already floating. Instead, if the Property Box is docked, it makes it flash briefly after updating it. However, there is now an option in the ‘Note’ tab of Preference to force the Property Box to float in these circumstances, if preferred.
When embedding record links to family records (in ‘auto’ mode – i.e. when using default record text for the link) the text previously began “… of ” followed by the name of the spouses. Now these links display as “Family of ” followed by the name of the spouses.

Charts & Diagrams

Various events and attributes were not displaying correctly in some family tree diagrams. Fixed.
In rare circumstances, lines could overlap in a layered ‘All Relatives’ tree, in the Diagram Window. Fixed.
When you add an Immigration or Emigration item text item to a diagram text scheme, you could see an error message and the text item and template for it could be blank. This has been fixed. Tip: If you have any text items in text schemes with a blank template, these items should be deleted and reinserted.

Reports

If you added items to the Family Member Main Items list in the Family Group Sheet report, they did not get source citations. They now do.

Miscellaneous

If you click on the ‘Date’ column in the Records Window, when viewing Research Notes, the rows will now sort correctly as dates provided that you are using the default column settings. Tip: to force the column settings to revert to the defaults, right-click on any column heading in the Research Notes tab of the Record Window, and click “Configure Columns”. Then click the “Restore Defaults” button, and finally press the ‘OK’ button.
Updated the Witnesses topic in the Help (General Topics area) to add a section on “Witness Priority vs. Principal Priority” and to explain how this works
The “Hide all private facts” option in Step 1 of the website wizard was not working. Fixed.
A new task has been added to the “Work with Identifiers” tool which allows Unique Id values (tag = _UID) to be generated for any Individual records which do not already have one. Unique Ids can be viewed on the ‘All’ tab of the Property Box. Every Individual record can have an unlimited number of them. Unique Ids are also included in the RootsMagic direct import from versions 7 & 8 (see above).
The keyboard mnemonics (letters you can press, while pressing the Alt key to select a menu option, using the keyboard) have been updated for the View menu.
The default location for hints in Preferences has been changed to “Web Search Window” (was “External Web Browser”).
Fixed a bug that arose when you compared and/or synced a source template definition with a Source Template record when one or both contained multi-paragraph descriptions.

Language Packs

In certain circumstances, a singular pronoun could appear for a couple, where a plural pronoun should have been used. Fixed.
Certain values (such as ‘Male’ and ‘Female’) were not being translated in the main section of the Individual Summary report (and in similar contexts in other reports), if the project language was the same as the output language, and neither of them were English. Fixed.
The phrase “… had the following children” was not being translated correctly in language packs because the ‘plural’ flag was not being set correctly when Family Historian calls into language pack plugins. Fixed.

Power-User Features

Family Historian now comes with an SQLite ODBC driver. It also includes a new plugin utility module, fhSql.fh_lua. With these new tools, plugin authors can now access Sqlite3 databases, as well as any other ADODB databases that have suitable drivers. The new fhSql module is documented in the Plugin Help (“The fhSQL Module” in “The Family Historian API” area). To open Plugin Help, click on the ‘How to Write Pugins’ button in the Plugins Window, which can be accessed by clicking ‘Plugins’ on the Tools menu).
The fhFileUtils.fh_lua module now has two new functions:
* fileGetContents (strFileName) – Loads the content of any existing file into a string.
* filePutContents (strFileName, contents) – Saves the content a string to a file.
The (Plugin) Help for fhUtils.fh_lua has been updated and improved.
You can now cast any text expression as a date (using the =Date() built-in function). This new built-in function is used with the Date column in the Research Notes tab of the Records Window by default (see first item in the Miscellaneous section above) – which means that these dates will now be displayed in a standardized format and will sort correctly as dates.
The UTF8 library has been enhanced. It now has improved support for lower and upper case conversion.
The ‘Code’ field in a field definition (field definitions are Source Template record fields) was previously hidden. Now these fields are visible (e.g. in the ‘All’ tab of the Property Box, when viewing a Source Template record) but read-only.
You can now use field codes and source template format text generally as text arguments to functions in Source Template formats (e.g. “{=LeftText([“{author}”],3)}”. The Source Template format code can even include calls to built-in functions and other expressions. To force a text string parameter to a function to be treated as Source Template format text (and parsed accordingly with field code substitution etc), put square brackets around the string’s quotation marks. This is documented in the Help.
The rules for handling boolean data types as parameters to built-in functions have been tightened up. You can now pass text fields as function arguments where a boolean parameter is expected. A text string is deemed to be true if not blank, and false if blank. If you pass a data reference to a function that expects a boolean, it will be deemed to be true if it is a flag (i.e. if the flag exists at all). Otherwise it will deemed to be true only if it has a value of some kind – i.e. is not blank.
Style codes (e.g. <i>) in Source Template formats could cause unwanted extra spaces to be added. Fixed.
Minor corrections to the Plugin Help (e.g. to eFtf syntax and IUP.GetParam).
Corrected minor errors in the documentation for FH_GetPersonText in the Plugin Help (language pack plugin entry-point function). The change relates to how a plural pronoun is signalled.

7.0.7

This section lists all new and improved features that have been added since 7.0.5, as most users will be upgrading from that version. A small number of users however will previously have installed 7.0.6. To learn more about that version, and the changes added since then, see the note at the end of this section.

New Web Search Window

The Web Search Window previously used outdated technology, and worked poorly as a result. It has now been replaced with a new version that uses the latest Microsoft technology.
The main Web Search Window toolbar has been replaced with a new one, which includes a bookmark button, a button for the Search the Internet dialog, and a menu button (3 dots). The dropdown menu that displays if you click on the menu button has been reworked and improved.
You can now specify the default start page for the Web Search Window in a new “Web Search Window” tab in Preferences.
You can also specify a preferred default Zoom level for the Web Search Window (same tab in Preferences). The default Zoom level is only applied when you open a new instance of the Web Search Window. It has no effect on instances that are already open. (Tip: press-and-hold the Ctrl key, and then use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out on an existing instance of the Web Search Window).
The toolbar address box uses the Property Box font by default (you will have to close and re-open the Web Search Window if you change this, to see the change).
The main application toolbar now has a button for the Web Search window, with a suitable dropdown menu.

New Notice Board

There is now a new “Notice Board” web page on the Family Historian website, which displays news and other notices that are likely to be of interest for Family Historian users. This is the default page for the new Web Search Window (and there is an option for it in Web Search Windows dropdown menu). You can also access it from the Family Historian Help menu.
The new notice board will be used for important announcements relating to Family Historian in the future. All users are encouraged to check it out from time to time.

File Load/Save

Loading and saving project files is now faster. There is also improved support for loading GEDCOM files in a variety of different formats (ANSI, ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16LE, UTF-16BE, and ANSEL).

Notes and the Note Window

The text limit on text in rich text fields was previously about 64,000 characters approximately. This has now been increased very substantially, so that although there still is a theoretical limit, in practice, it shouldn’t be hit with real world data.
Copied citations can now be pasted into notes. There is a ‘Paste Citation’ on the dropdown menu that appears when you right-click on text in a note. The menu item will be greyed if there is no copied citation.
Inserting a source citation into a note did not work correctly in Windows 7. The superscript number for the source citation did not display. This has been fixed. In Windows 7, however, source citations do not automatically renumber themselves, when a new source citation is inserted, to keep them all in correct number order (they do this in Windows 8 and later); but they will renumber themselves if you close and re-open the note.
Inserting autotext into a note also did not work in Windows 7. Fixed.
Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when you click on links in Research Notes.

Language Packs

The install of Family Historian now includes version 1.1 of the German language pack. This is only applicable if you don’t already have a version of the German language pack installed. If you do, you can download version 1.1 from the Family Historian Plugin Store, in the Language Packs Window.

Reports and Books

Substantially increased limits relating to generated sentences for narrative reports, so these should no longer be hit, even by very long sentences and sentence templates.
It is no longer necessary to do a full rebuild after adding a diagram to a book.
If narrative reports include sentence templates which contain line-breaks, a space could sometimes be inserted at the start of the following line. Fixed.
Narrative reports sometimes left extra blank lines if you had line-breaks inside a private note and there was rich text formatting in the note (e.g. yellow background). Fixed.
Some images were not displaying in reports even though they displayed correctly elsewhere. Problem was due to corrupt metadata, but it should not have prevented the images displaying correctly. Fixed.
The “Include Notes” option for the Individual Timeline report did nothing. Fixed.

Property Box

When you change the date of a fact in the Facts tab of the Property Box, previously you had to refresh the tab or click on the ‘Date’ column header, to see the facts in date order. Now the Facts tab will automatically adjust when you change a fact date.
The Facts tab of the Property Box sometimes shows calculated ages as negative values (e.g. -22 – -23). The policy on this has changed slightly. It now only shows ages as negative if this is a clue to show that some dates entered cannot be correct. If the entered dates can all be correct, ages will never now be shown as negative e.g. a calculated age that would previously have displayed as “-1 – 0” will now be displayed as “0”.
Improved the text of improbable date warnings to make the meaning clearer. Improbable date warnings are displayed when you enter a date which seems unlikely or impossible, or implies that another date is wrong. For example, you will get an improbable date warning if an entered burial date is earlier than the person’s death date.
The Media icon in the yellow Citation List Pane could get hidden behind the vertical scrollbar if there was one. Fixed.

Records Window

Field icons (e.g. blue or red dots) could sometimes appear in the wrong column area within the Records Window, if you made the first column very small. Fixed.
If you resized columns in the Records Window, sometimes the window would scroll vertically. Fixed.
The Sources tab of the Records Window had a column named ‘Citations’. This has now been renamed to ‘Links’ in the default settings for the Records Window. Existing users will have to restore defaults to see the new column name. To do this, open the Records Window and select the ‘Sources tab. Then right-click on an unused part of the window and choose ‘Columns’ on the dropdown menu that appears. Then click the ‘Restore Defaults’ button in the ‘Configure Columns’ window.

Other Improvements

The text length in Navigation Bar buttons (left-hand side of main application window) was overly short, especially in hi-res displays. This has been fixed. Also, you now have an extra text length option in Preferences (‘Display’ tab): “Very long”.
In the ‘Record Links’ window (accessible from the View menu), if you selected a Family Record and clicked the ‘Go To’ button, it took you to the husband’s record as an Individual, in the Property Box. It now takes you to the Family record.
Both “Find” and “Find and Replace” did not let you select “Fact Values” as the only option for a search. Fixed.
The 4 main diagram types (Ancestors, Descendants, Ancestors & Descendants, and All Relatives) no longer have buttons on the main application toolbar by default – even for existing users. However, you can get them back, if required, by ticking “Include Key Diagrams on Main Toolbar” on the Display tab of Preferences.
It was possible to get Family Historian to lock up if you dropped GEDCOM files onto the main application window, when no project was open and the Project Window was closed. Fixed.
Drag-and-drop from other applications into Family Historian did not work if you tried it the first time you ran Family Historian after an upgrade (even though it ran OK thereafter). Fixed.
Various minor corrections have been made to the main application Help.

Changes of Interest to Power-Users

FhFileUtils.fh_lua has been updated to support reading of writing of ASCII, UTF-8 and UTF-16 (previous version did not support UTF-8).
FhUtils.fh_lua has been updated. Minor fix to getParam values for display.
The index page for Functions in the Plugin Help did not mention fhPromptUserForRichText. Fixed.
Fixed an error with the “MoveNextSpecial” method for item pointers (Family Historian’s Lua API).
A new function fhExhibitResponsiveness has been added. This is designed to help plugin authors write plugins which do not get the “Not responding” message appearing in the caption bar, when the plugin is in fact still working.

Notes for Users Upgrading from 7.0.6

As stated above, most users will be upgrading from version 7.0.5, so the issues listed above, which are described as 7.0.7 improvements, include all features added or improved since 7.0.5. However, most of these changes were originally added in 7.0.6, although that version was not made available to many users. Features which are in 7.0.7 but which were not also in 7.0.6, are these:

A fix to a bug that was introduced in 7.0.6 which had the effect that attribute values disappeared immediately after being entered in the Property Box
The ability to paste a copied source citation into a note
The fixes for Windows 7 users relating to inserting a source citation, or autotext, into a note
The fix to the Timeline report (the ‘Include Notes’ option)
The fix to the problem of drag-and-drop from other applications into Family Historian not working if you tried it the first time you ran FH after an upgrade
The new fhExhibitResponsiveness function for power-users
The update to FhUtils.fh_lua (again, for power-users)

7.0.5

Reports and Books

Source citations in translated reports were sometimes truncated, with 3 trailing dots, and an extra full stop was added on the end. Both problems now fixed.
The progress indicator which displays in the status bar when you are opening or refreshing a book, has been improved so that it is more informative and gives a better reflection of progress made in book generation.
Improvements have been made to the appearance of charts in books – on-screen, when printed, and in generated PDFs (only applies to Windows 7 installations if the Platform Update for Windows 7 is installed, and ‘Enhanced Print/PDF’ is enabled – see Windows 7 Users in the 7.0.3 section below).
If you saved a report to PDF, the page size and/or orientation did not always match the current page size and/or orientation. Fixed.
Deleting books did not always work correctly. Fixed.
The option to combine identical source citations was incorrectly being affected by the short footnote template, even if short footnotes were not being used. Fixed.
Previously the Report option to combine identical source citations did not treat citations as identical if either of them had displayable pictures. This is no longer the case. It will now treat citations as identical, and combine them, if they have displayable pictures and these are identical.
By default, books no longer auto-refresh when you make a change to them in the Edit Book dialog. There is a new check box in the Edit Book Dialog (“Auto-refresh Book”, bottom-left) which you can tick if you want the Book Window to auto-refresh (if open) when you make changes to the book. Otherwise, there is a new button ‘Refresh Book’ in the Edit Book dialog which you click to manually refresh the Book Window (again, if open). In general, users are recommended to not tick the ‘Auto-refresh Book’ check box, because some books can be quite big and slow to refresh, so it makes sense to only do this when you need to.
When you view or refresh a book, you can now choose either a ‘Standard Build’ or ‘Full Rebuild’. The latter only will completely refresh any charts in the book. If not refreshed, charts will display as they did when last rebuilt. Refreshing a book that contains charts can be slow. Where that is the case, users are recommended to use a standard build most of the time, and only do a ‘Full Rebuild’ from time-to-time, as needed, to keep charts up-to-date. If auto-refresh is enabled, it will do a standard build. For books that do not contain charts, there is no difference between a standard build and a full rebuild.
- Known issue with this release: if you add a diagram to a book that has never been opened or refreshed using the new ‘Full Rebuild’ option (see above), the diagram pages could be blank. If this occurs, doing a single full rebuild will fix the problem. This issue will be fixed in the next update.
Fixed a bug which could prevent reports and books from displaying at all, in specific circumstances.
Various changes have been made to improve support for large reports, large books, and books which contain numerous charts and chart pages.

Charts and Diagrams

By default the four key diagrams (Ancestors, Descendants, Ancestors & Descendants, and All Relatives) no longer have their own buttons on the main application toolbar. Instead they are the first four items on the dropdown menu that appears when you click on the ‘Charts and Diagrams’ button. This change only affects new users. All users can choose in any case to override the default on this (see the option “Include Key Diagrams on the Main Toolbar” in the Display tab of Preferences).
In rare circumstances, the All Relatives diagram could generate branches with overlapping lines. Fixed.
In rare circumstances, diagram images were not appearing when a diagram was saved to PDF, even though the rest of the diagram appeared correctly. Fixed.
The Pedigree Chart now automatically checks for duplicated ancestral branches. Duplicated branches are replaced with an arrow pointing to the chart page that continues the branch. This can significantly reduce the number of pages required.
The display of large charts, when zoomed in, is now faster (that is, the window refresh is now faster).
If you point the mouse at a particular box and zoom in using the mouse wheel, it now zooms in on the specific thing you’re pointing at (as it already does with the Map Window). Zooming out works the same way.

Property Box, Citation List Pane, and Citation Window

Certain edits in the Citation Window could cause the Citation List pane to update itself in such a way that it, in turn, caused the Citation Window to switch to displaying a different citation. Fixed.
Check boxes for flags in Property Box were sometimes inappropriately small if displayed in a high resolution monitor. Fixed.
The ‘Preferred’ fact flag was not being honoured for child (and other relative) facts in the Facts tab of the Property Box. It was also not being honoured with respect to children displayed in the Child Grid of the Property Box. The flag is now honoured in both contexts.
The ‘Sources For’ field in the Citation List pane (a dropdown list) did not always update correctly in response to changes. When this happened, it meant that the Citation List pane displayed citations for the wrong item. Fixed.

Miscellaneous

It is now possible to force the generation of titles for one or more Source records, using the program’s automatic Source record titling capability, when a GEDCOM file is loaded, or reloaded. This was added for use by Ancestral Sources, at the request of its author, Nick Walker.
When referenced in various contexts, it is sometimes necessary to show a truncated version of long text fields, rather than the full text. For example, if a long text field is referenced in a query, a truncated version of it will be displayed, usually ending in 3 dots, to show that the text has been truncated for display purposes. These truncations were sometimes unduly harsh (i.e. overly short). The truncated versions are now longer.
The built-in function LeftText now takes an optional third parameter ‘ELLIPSIS’, which causes an ellipsis to be added if the function will truncate the text.
When importing a GEDCOM file, several Media records could sometimes be generated unnecessarily for a single imported media image. This happened particularly with imports from RootsMagic. Fixed.
The built-in function TextPart has been enhanced so that it now removes trailing spaces within a text part (section within commas) and reduces a sequence of multiple spaces to a single space.
It is now possible to prevent the Family Historian installation program from installing PDF support. To do this, download the file fhinstallconfig.ini and place it in the same folder as the installation program. When this file is present, the installation program will prompt you to ask if you want to install PDF support.
When you select a row in the Column table of the Columns tab of the Query Window, previously you had to click on the text in the first column and only the first column showed as selected. Now you can click on any text and all text shows as selected. The equivalent change has also been made to the Rows tab.
The FhUtils.fh_lua module has been updated. The IsSet function now returns false if you pass in a boolean which is false.
A new Lua plugin module FhFileUtils has been added to support extended character set names for files and folders. See FhFile Utils documentation for more information.
When you apply a minor upgrade, the default project setting was being cleared (i.e. you no longer had a default project). This no longer happens.
Fixed two bugs which could cause Family Historian to crash in rare circumstances.
Fixed bugs relating to inserting and working with OLE Objects.
Various corrections have been made to errors in the Help.

7.0.3

Following a Windows 10 update (KB5000802), report printing and PDF generation stopped working. This problem is now fixed in 7.0.3. Apparently Microsoft have also released a fix for this issue, KB5001567, as the problem did not just affect Family Historian; however there is no need to either apply KB5001567 or avoid KB5000802 once you have upgraded to 7.0.3.
The ‘External File Links’ tool (accessible from the tools menu), sometimes reported ‘no broken links found’ incorrectly. Also, the Refresh button did not work correctly if displaying broken links only. Both problems now fixed.
Some users reported problems with large reports or books. The problem could affect the display of reports or books. The problem was due to the way that images were being handled. The method for handling images is now more efficient. An option to “Enable Smooth Scrolling” in Preferences has been removed. Instead there is an option in Advanced Preferences (see below for how to access this) called “Report/Book Image Caching” with 3 options: “Cache on load” (the default), “Cache on view”, and “Don’t cache”. Use “Cache on view” for slightly faster load performance. Use “Don’t cache” only if you need to – that is if, despite the changes, you continue to have problems with large reports or books.
Some users reported problems with printing reports and books and also with the generation of PDFs from reports and books – especially from large reports or books. Reports and books sometimes didn’t print correctly. Generated PDFs sometimes showed blank pages. These problems may in some cases have been due in part to the previous issue relating to image handling. But there was also a separate issue due to the way that printing was handled, and PDFs were generated. There were also 2 additional issues specific to PDFs, which were that generated PDF files tended to be very big, and you couldn’t select text in them, using your PDF reader. Related to the latter issue was the fact that you couldn’t use your PDF reader to search the PDF files for specific text. A new method of handling printing and generating PDFs is now supported which should solve all of these problems (whether or not you can search for text will depends on which PDF reader you are using – but at least you can now do it if your PDF reader supports it). The new method of PDF generation is now used for Windows 10 and Windows 8 users. Windows 7 users do not automatically get the benefit of these changes. If you are a Windows 7 user, the old method of handling printing and generating PDFs will continue to be used by default. If you want to get the benefit of these changes, please read the section Windows 7 Users Only below.
Books which contained a large number of charts and diagrams could sometimes be slow to load and if you had enough of them, or if they were sufficiently big, could in some cases fail to display or print. Charts and diagrams are now handled more efficiently in books, to resolve this problem. You may notice slight differences in display. If, for example, lines connecting boxes appear to be be faint, try zooming in to inspect them. If the lines are still faint when zoomed in, or when printed, consider making them thicker. The thickness of lines around boxes can be set in the Boxes tab of Diagram Options. The thickness of connecting lines is set in the Lines tab of Diagram Options. If you can enlarge the chart as a whole, consider doing that. Note: Windows 7 users who have not installed the Platform Update for Windows 7 should benefit from doing so, with respect to this issue, in addition to other benefits mentioned elsewhere. See Windows 7 Users Only below.
If you inserted multiple fan charts into a book, they could all display the same fan chart ‘root’. Fixed.
The ‘Use Note as Caption’ option for images was not being correctly honoured in the Media tab of the Property Box. Fixed.
If you clicked on a table row in the Note Window using the right mouse button, and then clicked on ‘Delete Row’ in the ‘Modify Table’ submenu, this could cause Family Historian to crash in some circumstances. Fixed.
Most of the standard diagrams printed in black-and-white by default. Now the default for all of them is to print in colour. Previously a few of them also printed the background by default. Now, the default is that they do not print the background.
Various cosmetic improvements have been made to the display of text in the Plugin Window.
If you changed the “Sources for” value in the Property Box’s yellow Citation List pane, and then tried to add or paste a citation, it did not work correctly. Fixed.
During an upgrade to version 7 from an earlier version (i.e. version 6 or earlier), Family Historian automatically changes the extension of files with a .fh_lua or .dll extension in the installed plugins folder, to make them distinguishable as potentially out-of-date versions. Now it also does the same with files with a .lua extension. This relates to version incompatibilities between Lua 5.3 (used in version 7) and Lua 5.1 (used in version 6).
You can add any record to a named list, but if you added Research Notes or Source Template records to a named list, they were not stored persistently between sessions. Fixed.
When you add an Adoption event in the Facts tab of the Focus Window, you should be able to select the family that the person is being adopted into. The Family selector button was not working. Fixed.
When displaying names in the Focus Window, using certain fonts (e.g. MS Trebuchet) could cause names to be displayed in a truncated form (with 3 dots on the end) even when there was no need for this, because there was space for the whole name. Fixed.
Colour-selection dialogs allow you to choose up to 16 custom colours. Previously, the custom colours were only remembered between sessions with some of these dialogs and not all. Now custom colours are shared between all colour selection dialogs, and always saved between sessions.
If you edited the note for a Place record, in certain circumstances the edit got lost and was not saved. Fixed.
The “SetLabelledText” function (Family Historian API for plugins) caused a whole note to be cleared if the label did not exist and the value was NULL. Fixed.
If you chose custom contents for Pedigree charts, you couldn’t previously include family facts (such as marriage or divorce). Now you can.
The “GetFact” built-in function could cause Family Historian to crash if the referenced fact owner was NULL. Fixed.
Copy-and-paste, and drag-and-drop into the Note Window, did not work correctly when running Family Historian 7 under Windows 7. Fixed.
Various corrections have been made to errors in the Help.

Accessing Advanced Preferences

To access Advanced Preferences, click on Preferences on the Tools menu, and then click the Advanced button on the General tab

Windows 7 Users Only

As mentioned above, a new method has been added for handling printing reports and books and also for the generation of PDFs from reports and books, and this solves a number of problems (see above). This new method is used for Windows 10 and Windows 8 users. It is not automatically used for Windows 7 users. By default, when Family Historian is run under Windows 7, it will continue to use the old method. If you are a Windows 7 user and you wish to benefit from the enhanced printing and PDF generation, you need to do two things: first, you need to install a Microsoft update called Platform Update for Windows 7. To install this update you must be on Windows 7 SP1 (Service Pack 1). At time of writing, the update is available for download at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36805. Once you have installed the upgrade, you then need to open Family Historian and tick a new option called “Enhanced Print/PDF” in Advanced Preferences (see above for how to access this). Ticking this option if you do not have the Platform Update for Windows 7 installed, will have the effect that the Report and Book windows will be blank if you try to display a report or book. However, if that happens, you can simply untick “Enhanced Print/PDF” in Advanced Preferences to correct the problem. Note: an alternative to installing the Platform Update for Windows 7 (if you want the enhanced printing and PDF generation), is to upgrade to Windows 10. You could also upgrade to Windows 8, but if you are upgrading from Windows 7, Windows 10 is the recommended operating system upgrade.

7.0.2

The installation program for previous versions could sometimes cause a PC restart at the end of the installation, without prompting the user first, or even if the user was prompted and took the ‘No’ option. Fixed.
Added a fact definition for the “Residence (family)” fact (new in GEDCOM 5.5.1).
Diagram icons include number labels for 2 digit numbers, from “01” to “99”. Have now added number labels for “00” (these numbers are often used as year identifiers – e.g. for census years).
If you had 2 or more citation notes, you couldn’t re-order them in the Notes tab of the Citation Window. Fixed.
In the Citation List pane of the Property Box, you could change the size of the second column (Source record), but the size change was not remembered or preserved. It now is remembered (but a minimum column size is enforced).
If, in the Note Window, you used the ‘Delete Row’ command to delete a row in a table (using the right-click menu) in a note which contained an ’empty’ record link (that is, a link to a record that no longer exists), this could cause Family Historian to crash. Fixed.
Corrected some spelling errors in the Advanced collection of source templates.
Fixed various layout and font style issues with reports. Also fixed related issues when reports were saved as web pages or in word processing (RTF) format.
In some cases, tables in notes did not have borders when displayed in reports. Fixed.
Various corrections have been made to errors in the Help.

7.0.1.3

The ‘Blood Relations Only’ checkbox on the How Related dialog was not being correctly repositioned if you resized the dialog. Fixed.
The option to include embedded images when exporting a GEDCOM file was not working correctly. Fixed.
When you import a GEDCOM file into a new project, embedded images are now automatically converted to project media files.
If you open a project that contains embedded images or local media objects, you will be prompted to run Validate (e.g. File > Validate). The Validate process now checks for media issues and has an extra option to correct media issues found. ‘Media issues’ means local media objects or embedded media. The Validate process will report on both. If the option to correct media issues is ticked, local media objects will be converted to use media records, and embedded media will be converted to project media files.

7.0.1.2

If a GEDCOM file contained invalid characters (characters that are not allowed in a text file), this could cause the file load to be terminated prematurely. The load process has been made more robust so that it can now cope with invalid characters.
Where the date field for media is stored in a field that uses the _DATE tag (leading underscore), it was not being handled correctly. Fixed.
URLs were not being included when you copy-and-paste from a source in Rich Text Format. Fixed.
During the conversion to GEDCOM 5.5.1, the ‘Title’ field for local media objects was not included within the conversion. Fixed.
During program startup, the words “LIMITED FUNCTIONALITY” could sometimes be briefly seen in the title bar. Fixed.
Some accent characters were not handled correctly in notes. Also, in some cases a question mark would be inserted after certain accent characters. Fixed.
Embedded images were not always loaded correctly. Fixed.
In certain circumstances it was possible for lines to overlaps boxes in All Relative diagrams. Fixed.
When you generate a ‘package’ using the Websites and Family Tree CD/DVDs tool, vertical gaps between paragraphs in the ‘Welcome Text’ were lost, and any leading spaces on each line were also lost. Fixed.
The “Save Diagram” command, which was the first menu command on the Diagram in version 6, has been reinstated, and works as before.
In Family Group sheet reports, size specifications for child pictures was being ignored. Fixed.
If you formatted boxes in a saved chart (e.g. to change the box background colour), you weren’t prompted to save changes when you closed the chart. Fixed.
The Lua UTF8 library has been updated for Lua 5.3.
The fhutils library now has the ability to handle multi-line fields in data entry assistants.
Various corrections have been made to errors in the Help.

7.0.1.1

Lua socket files were not being installed in the correct folders. Now fixed.
In rare circumstances, a Text from Source field could wrongly be created as a second instance, instead of a first instance. Fixed.
In rare circumstances, you could get an error message when trying to add a source citation to a new fact. Now fixed.

7.0.1.0

The sentence template code <para> did not start a new paragraph. Also <br> did not break a line. Fixed.
The sentence template code {note} inserted a note, but removed all formatting. Fixed.
The button for adding a data reference to a research note (for example, when customizing columns) did nothing. Fixed.
It was sometimes possible to get pictures and tables to overlap in some reports. Fixed.
When logging in your Family Historian account, or when creating a new Family Historian account, if an error occurs, the program now provides much more detailed information about what went wrong.
Opening and closing a note could result in a prompt to save changes when you close an unchanged project. Fixed.
Note-only source citations could cause a GEDCOM export to fail. Fixed.
The ‘Marriage’ heading in the Individual Summary report was not being translated into other languages, if you enabled a language pack. Fixed.
Various corrections have been made to errors in the Help.
In certain circumstances, data references for custom events and attributes were not being handled correctly in diagram text schemes. Fixed.
When you change the name of a fact set, the program was not correctly taking into account the project-specific flag when validating the name. Fixed.
The dialogs used for adding and editing names and titles in the “Names and Titles” dialog, did not use the main Property Box font. Fixed.