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General => Technical Help => Family History Programs, Tree Organisation, Presentation => Topic started by: larkspur on Tuesday 08 August 17 13:13 BST (UK)
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I am trying to find the missing hundred people from my FTM tree to my newish FH tree.
Going through FTM index of people for an instance I have 7 Arthur "Bloggs" they are in the index through date of birth, oldest first, where as FH has Arthur in no particular order that I can see. births 1880, 1903, 1894, 1887 etc record Id 4897,9,7719,273 etc.
How do I get the index to show the people by their birth years? Is this possible?
Second question please
Once I have found the missing link ( ;D) person on FTM. I am then clicking on the father in FH and adding the relevant wife and children to the small property box- that opens once the name in the index is clicked, but I am not seeming to . as the wife and kids do not appear in the index.
Also with FTM once a name is clicked in the index, the whole of the details appear, I find this property box fiddly.
Sorry for being such a pest, I am still trying hard with FH, but it is not coming easily and I am not enjoying it very much!
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Date sort in index - click the "Dates" column title, albeit that it seems to order in descending order rather than ascending.
To get the spouse to appear in the index:
Right click one of the index column titles, select "Configure Columns"
Left side - scroll to bottom and double click <Other>
Opens up an "Add Column" window
Enter heading, eg Spouse
Click Insert Data Reference
Scroll towards bottom and select "Spouse" (has arrow to left of name not yellow box).
Click Add
On right hand column, click on Column name (eg Spouse) then click on up or down arrows below to move up list to where you want it to show in the index
Click OK.
This will then show the spouse against the individual
You can add "Child" the same way, but if you only add the column once it will only show the eldest child. You would need to add multiple columns and some variation of coding to get it to show more than one child (by default it only shows the eldest child) in the index and make the index very wide.
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I have the index columns configured to show "life" dates rather than "birth" dates, so includes birth/baptism and death/burial dates (baptism and burial dates show when there are no birth or death dates). Can't remember what the default is on installation, but you can do this the same way as with adding a Spouse. To remove a column, go to configure columns, click on the column heading on the right hand side and click the < arrow to remove it.
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Thank you for the replies.
"Date sort in index - click the "Dates" column title, albeit that it seems to order in descending order rather than ascending."
Done that one and all I get is a list of random names starting with the date 2016 and going down.... I want the surnames in alphabetical order, as they are now, but when I have 60 odd Williams with one surname I need to be able to find them easily and not have to search through a long list of mixed up dates!!!
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Date sort in index - click the "Dates" column title, albeit that it seems to order in descending order rather than ascending.
If you right-click on any column heading you can choose whether to sort in ascending or descending order. (Your reply came while I was typing - this should work with all columns, giving a vast choice of sort orders.)
Once I have found the missing link ( ;D) person on FTM. I am then clicking on the father in FH and adding the relevant wife and children to the small property box- that opens once the name in the index is clicked, but I am not seeming to . as the wife and kids do not appear in the index.
As well as Smudwhisk's point about configuring the columns, it occurred to me that you might mean that the new people aren't showing in the main left hand column. I think you'll find that new people are added to the bottom of the list, and you have to run the sort operation again to make them appear in the order you wish.
Also with FTM once a name is clicked in the index, the whole of the details appear, I find this property box fiddly.
It does take a bit of getting used to, as the interface is quite different from most other FH programs.
The property box is very flexible, and can be shown at the side of any window ("docked"), or "floating" in front instead. It's always visible, and as you move from one person to another in, say, the records window (the one with the list of names, places, sources etc, depending on which tab you pick), the property box simply changes to show whatever is selected. This is a lot quicker and easier than some programs I've used, where after viewing someone's details you had to close that window, then navigate to someone else and open their details window.
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Thank you everyone. I have now got the names in alphabetical order and the dates in decending order, for some reason when I try and put them in ascending order they vanish altogether :-\
I will keep on "playing" with it, but it does not come naturally and easily. Maybe just my age, I have been using FTM for years..... 8)
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I have now got the names in alphabetical order and the dates in decending order, for some reason when I try and put them in ascending order they vanish altogether
I also have FH6. When you have the dates in ascending order, the people with no dates recorded appear first. If you scroll down past those 'blanks', you'll see the people who do have dates :)
Carol
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Even when I right click the column heading for "Dates" it still doesn't order them in date order, seems rather random. :-\
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Puzzling ???
I've just right-clicked on 'Dates' and selected 'Sort ascending', then right-clicked again and selected 'Sort descending'. Both work perfectly.
Carol
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Blimey what chance do I have 8) ;D
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Even when I right click the column heading for "Dates" it still doesn't order them in date order, seems rather random. :-\
The "Dates" Column doesn't appear to treat the information as a formal date format but more as a text format which supports the flexibility of the program in allowing for date ranges, phrases & approximations etc . Because of this the program looks like it treats this column almost as if it was text and sorts in computer fashion rather than in a more human sense.
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Ah, that would explain it but I prefer to keep life dates showing in the index rather than separate columns for births/baptisms & deaths/burials so shall have to put up with it. That said, the filter option on both first and surnames is useful for reducing the number showing even with surname and first name variants so isn't that big an issue. ;D
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I've been using FH since V3. It's a very powerful program and will repay time spent in getting to grips with its capabilities, the same as with any other software like Word or Excel. There's a Getting Started with Family Historian book you can download and you get a sample database when you install the software. I'd seriously recommend using the book and sample data to play around with the software to get to understand what it can do. I wouldn't use anything else now. It's 100% GEDCOM compliant, which makes it easy to share information with other programs, Ancestry, FindMyPast, etc. There's a good support forum, just don't be put off by the sometimes very technical nature of some of the posts.
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I have looked for the book and it seems you have to purchase it, this I find very annoying. When I purchased FTM the book was included in the price.I would expect a product to come with the manual.
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I have looked for the book and it seems you have to purchase it, this I find very annoying. When I purchased FTM the book was included in the price.I would expect a product to come with the manual.
FH6 has an extensive built in manual - press F1 while using the program
The book you may be referring to is possibly the one entitled "Getting the most from Family Historian" it is not a manual but an additional source of information about the program
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I think you can still download a copy of the FH5 PDF manual for free. A lot of the functionality is the same as FH6, although there are some differences, but it should be some help depending on what you are looking for.
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The v5 book can be downloaded for free. It will cover most of the basic stuff and as has been mentioned previously the help in v6 is pretty good.
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Thank you I stand corrected 8)