Family Historian 3 software

[Ruskie]

Does anyone use Family Historian 3? Would you recommend it? Does it have any pros/cons over other software?

I am interested in their "everyone" diagram facility and "smart trees" where you can move and resize boxes.

I am looking for a programme which will display many people at once, and is quick and easy to add people to.

Any suggestions and opinions welcome. Thanks.

[MaryA]

Personally I find that it does all I want and more.  I also use the Gedcom Census add-on and I find I can add people to the tree at the same time, if I discover somebody I hadn't previously known about, so yes it's easy to add people to also.

I would suggest that you check out the site http://www.family-historian.co.uk/ and download the demo and give it a go yourself.  There's also a comparison table of the features against other programmes.

There's an excellent User Group Site http://www.fhug.org.uk/cgi-bin/index.cgi where you can search the archives for any queries you may haveand if you subscribe to the mailing list there's always a good bunch of people to help solve any problem you come across.

[kerryb]

I have just bought it, an early Christmas present to myself and think it is brilliant.

I also use the add on that Mary mentions which was my main reason for buying the package.  I have stacks of census returns that I don't look at and when I do I find I have missed odd relatives and children.

Each person on the tree can have these 'Events' listed and attached and it just simply does so much more than the software I had before it is well worth it.

I had a look at both the software demo and the user group Mary mentioned which helped me make my decision.

Kerry 

[RJ_Paton]

I too use FH3 having used version 2 before ...... it is an excellent program and well supported by the author through the user groups. I'm sure that I've used only a fraction of the power of the program but it already does everything that I want.

Check out the demo, that's probably the best way to decide

[Gadget]

Like Falkyrn, I've used it from version 2 and updated to 3 when it was released. It certainly does everything I want and allows me to produce whatever diagram and report that I need.

I'm not sure whether I like it's website generation. I tried it as an excercise and it seems rather inflexible. I think you would have to redo it each time you updated. However, as I don't use this facility, it's not really a disadvantage to me.

Gadget

[Ruskie]

Brilliant, thank you very much everyone. I didn't know there was a demo - I will definitely have a look - thanks for that Mary A.

I WAS going to buy Family Tree Maker (you get the free Ancestry sub with that - tempting!) but I really want to be able to get lots of people on the one page and Historian seems like it might be more to my liking. For some people I have lots of facts, for others, virtually nothing - I need flexibility.

At the moment I'm mostly using paper and pencil but have a really old "from the sale bin" version of Personal Roots Deluxe which has been hanging around the house for years - I have entered a lot of info into this. Not too keen on it though for many reasons.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

[Berlin-Bob]

Does Personal Roots have a GEDCOM export facility ??
Does Family Historian have an import facility ??

If so, you can export all (most?) of what you've already entered in Personal Roots (as a GEDCOM file) and then import this into FH or any other Family history program.

This is also handy if you want to try various demo versions, without typing in all your data each time. As long as the software allows it, just import the same GEDCOM file into each, and compare results till you find the one you like best.

Bob

[Gadget]

You got there before me Bob 

FH does have a very good import facility 

Gadget

[kerryb]

I imported my tree that had been saved via Family Tree version 4 into Family Historian 3 via Gedcom. 

In the past Gedcoms generated and opened in Family Tree version 4 have lost a lot of my information so I was very pleased to find when I open the import in Family Historian all my notes were there. 

I believe that Gedcoms generated in FH3 take information from all boxes unlike my old package.

Kerry