Author Topic: Family Historian, am I thick? Gedcom disaster  (Read 14927 times)

Offline Beeonthebay

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Family Historian, am I thick? Gedcom disaster
« on: Monday 21 September 15 20:10 BST (UK) »
Hello, I had a LONG lay off from doing my family tree and I believe I had Family Tree Maker version 4 or something like that number from the dark ages.

So after a bit of research I decided to buy Family Historian a few months ago, 1) because it got very good reviews and 2) because it was British and not American.

However despite joining the FHUG and trying so hard to read up on it I just can't get my head around the whole programme.  Is there a Family Historian book for Dummies?   ::)  I did ask questions but felt so dumb when I didn't even understand the answers. :-[  I can't even figure out how to type in a marriage or baptism without the Ancestral Sources add on thing which I find even harder to use!!!

I uploaded my Gedcom saved file to FH and it gives many me so many errors, say for instance the census entries, instead of saying "Fred Bloggs appears in the 1891 census" it says "Fred Bloggs experienced census in the 1891 census"

When you look at the narrative for an individual it gives too much information in separate sentences so much so it over whelms you like this, copied and pasted from FH:

John PRITCHARD, son of UNKNOWN FATHER (c. 1840- ) and Martha PRITCHARD (1839- ), was born circa 1861 in
Liverpool, LAN. He appeared in the census on 2 April 1871 in Liverpool aged 10.1 On 2 April 1871 he was a Scholar in
Liverpool.1 He appeared in the census on 3 April 1881 in Liverpool aged 22.2 On 3 April 1881 he was a Dock Labourer in
Liverpool.2 He married Mary Ellen BROWN on 25 December 1883 in Liverpool, LAN, England. On 6 November 1885 he
lived in Liverpool.3 On 6 November 1885 he was a Labourer in Liverpool.3 On 29 November 1885 he lived in Liverpool.4
On 29 November 1885 he was a Labourer in Liverpool.4 He appeared in the census on 5 April 1891 in Liverpool aged 30.5
On 5 April 1891 he was a Labourer General in Liverpool.5 He appeared in the census on 5 April 1891 aged 29.6 On 5 April
1891 he was a Dock Labourer.6 He experienced Census 1891 in 1891 in 36 Hibbert Street, Everton, LAN; Census: Labourer
General, M, 30. He experienced Census 1901 in 1901 in 38 Hibbert Street, Everton, LAN; Census: Bonder's Warehouseman,
M, 38. In 1922 he was in Liverpool, LAN; Occupation: Wine and Spirit Warehouse-keeper. He died on 11 April 1922 in 67
Grey Rock St, Liverpool, LAN.



I have thought of starting again from scratch...eeekkkk  :o or re-exporting the Gedcom from FH to my desktop and importing it to another programme but all the free ones seem to be public and (long story) I'd like to keep it private just for my own use.

Can anybody offer me any advise please?  I am not a computer newbie but I fear family history/tree programmes have moved above and beyond my experience.  I feel overwhelmed by it all and have my newly found stuff on hold as I feel I am sinking into a quagmire of not knowing what the hell I am doing these days!!!!  I certainly don't remember it as being so hard when I used to whiz off my stuff into FTM or PAF back in the day.  ;D
Williams, Owens, Pritchard, Povall, Banks, Brown.

Offline AngelaR

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Re: Family Historian, am I thick? Gedcom disaster
« Reply #1 on: Monday 21 September 15 20:42 BST (UK) »
Hello Beeonthebay

I'm so sorry that I can't help but I really wanted to offer sympathy vibes because I've tried several new-style programs, all of which interpret gedcoms differently and have given up for the moment. I am STILL using PAF  :o because I can't find anything that suits me better. Sad, isn't it?

I am in the process of writing my own program but it's a long job...

I know sympathy doesn't really help but I thought you might like to know you're not alone.

I'm sure some kindly RCer will be able to point you in a helpful direction...

Angela
Any census information included in this post is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Especially looking for - Sealey, Rogers, Cannings, Box, Sheppard in Wiltshire; Virgin, Slade, Abbott, Saint, Harper, Silverthorn in Somerset; and Virgin, Tarr, Beer in Devon

And most especially the origins of William Cannings,  a Baptist, born abt 1791 in Broughton Gifford, Wiltshire

Offline smudwhisk

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Re: Family Historian, am I thick? Gedcom disaster
« Reply #2 on: Monday 21 September 15 20:44 BST (UK) »
They can be a little "technical" on FHUG if you're unlucky.

The census entries are not actually caused by Family Historian, but are a result of the format that Family Tree Maker had them in.  A distant relative of mine has had a similar problem.  The issue being that FTM wasn't using standard formating for gedcom, so when it exports to gedcom and gets imported into other programs you get the issues.  That's why you were getting a lot of errors reported when you imported the gedcom.  I had the same issues even with basic facts such as birth/baptism, marriage, death/burial.  I did find a way to sort out the census issue, with a bit of help from FHUG, a few months back for my relative but I'll have to have a dig about and see how I did it.  All is not lost.

I had a major argument with a couple of the "experts" on FHUG (note they are volunteers and have nothing to do with the software company) about the dual sentences for census (one for residence and one for occupation) as I said I didn't want separate sentences for these.  I now avoid adding occupation details in the occupation boxes in facts because of the way Family Historian treats these.  I have managed to get round it by customising the event/fact sentences templates but as I hadn't added Census facts into my trees until recently, its been easier for me as I'm only now adding census and other events/facts.  I've always had the information saved, just never bothered to expand the "tree" for narrative report purposes.

You definitely don't need Ancestral Sources for adding baptisms, marriages, etc, its much simpler not to.  I only use AS for census and I only add part of the information using it anyway because of the issue with it creating secondary facts for occupations.

If you see the screen dump I've attached to this posting, I tend to add baptisms/marriage/burial details on the right hand side.  I think by default it probably doesn't show all of these (its a while since I installed the software) but they can be added by clicking the wheel cog above the individuals name on the right hand side and selecting "customise data entry" and then adding the items you require.  If you click the Facts tab on the right hand side, you can also add facts details, such as baptisms, marriages, etc, there by clicking "add fact".

You may have to do a bit of editing to resolve some of the issues, but you definitely don't need to start again.  FH is great with some customisation but it can be a bit mind boggling to start with.  I've been using it for 2.5 years now and have only recently been able to work out how to customise the narrative reports to read the way I want and it took a bit of work.  But its enabled me to work out the best ways to create customised facts too. 

PS.  There isn't a Family Historian for Dummies book, only a book produced by the company which is for v5.  http://www.fhug.org.uk/programs/getting_the_most_from_family_historian_5.pdf
(KENT) Lingwell, Rayment (BUCKS) Read, Hutchins (SRY) Costin, Westbrook (DOR) Gibbs, Goreing (DUR) Green (ESX) Rudland, Malden, Rouse, Boosey (FIFE) Foulis, Russell (NFK) Johnson, Farthing, Purdy, Barsham (GLOS) Collett, Morris, Freebury, May, Kirkman (HERTS) Winchester, Linford (NORTHANTS) Bird, Brimley, Chater, Wilford, Read, Chapman, Jeys, Marston, Lumley (WILTS) Arden, Whatley, Batson, Gleed, Greenhill (SOM) Coombs, Watkins (RUT) Stafford (BERKS) Sansom, Angel, Young, Stratton, Weeks, Day

Offline AngelaR

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Re: Family Historian, am I thick? Gedcom disaster
« Reply #3 on: Monday 21 September 15 20:58 BST (UK) »
I hope that helps for Beeonthebay, but I certainly appreciate your explanation, smudwhisk. I shall go and have another look at my copy of FH armed with what you've said.... Thanks!
Any census information included in this post is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Especially looking for - Sealey, Rogers, Cannings, Box, Sheppard in Wiltshire; Virgin, Slade, Abbott, Saint, Harper, Silverthorn in Somerset; and Virgin, Tarr, Beer in Devon

And most especially the origins of William Cannings,  a Baptist, born abt 1791 in Broughton Gifford, Wiltshire


Offline StevieSteve

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Re: Family Historian, am I thick? Gedcom disaster
« Reply #4 on: Monday 21 September 15 21:12 BST (UK) »
Have you tried this?

http://www.family-historian.co.uk/tour/thetourvideo

The User guide for Version 5 is available at

http://www.fhug.org.uk/programs/getting_the_most_from_family_historian_5.pdf

While there are obviously changes in V6, hopefully it will help


For importing from another program, chappie on the User Group puts a lot of work into getting the best possible import into Family Historian from other programs so it really would benefit reading the relevant section here

http://www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=how_to:index

at the bottom of the page

I agree the import instructions look complicated which is not what you want when starting new software but I think that's the nature of the beast when you're trying to migrate various proprietary formats.


Yes, the Narrative report can get very repetitive but the various residence and 0occupation facts can be grouped together with a date range so you'd just have e.g.

From 1839 to 1901 he lived in Liverpool
From 1856 to 1870 he was a Dock Labourer


And, as opposed to smudwhisk, I like Ancestral Sources  :)
Middlesex: KING,  MUMFORD, COOK, ROUSE, GOODALL, BROWN
Oxford: MATTHEWS, MOSS
Kent: SPOONER, THOMAS, KILLICK, COLLINS
Cambs: PRIGG, LEACH
Hants: FOSTER
Montgomery: BREES
Surrey: REEVE

Offline [Ray]

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Re: Family Historian, am I thick? Gedcom disaster
« Reply #5 on: Monday 21 September 15 21:36 BST (UK) »
Hi

Before you do ANYTHING else . . . . .
. . .. . take multiple copies of the gedcom file(s) AND any other file you may have.
Keep them (complete "sets") on separate "drives".

Gedcom files are, essentially, just text files where each piece of data has a keyword.

So, rename (a copy of) a gedcom file to "same".txt then view it using Wordpad/notepad/word/etc.
This will placate you and ensure you breathe (a little bit ) easier.

Then come back and re-read what has been said here ( and elsewhere )

Ray






"The wise man knows how little he knows, the foolish man does not". My Grandfather & Father.

"You can’t give kindness away.  It keeps coming back". Mark Twain (?).

Offline smudwhisk

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Re: Family Historian, am I thick? Gedcom disaster
« Reply #6 on: Monday 21 September 15 22:06 BST (UK) »
For importing from another program, chappie on the User Group puts a lot of work into getting the best possible import into Family Historian from other programs so it really would benefit reading the relevant section here

http://www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=how_to:index

at the bottom of the page

I agree the import instructions look complicated which is not what you want when starting new software but I think that's the nature of the beast when you're trying to migrate various proprietary formats.


Yes, the Narrative report can get very repetitive but the various residence and 0occupation facts can be grouped together with a date range so you'd just have e.g.

From 1839 to 1901 he lived in Liverpool
From 1856 to 1870 he was a Dock Labourer


And, as opposed to smudwhisk, I like Ancestral Sources  :)

I think Beeonthebay has already had experience of dealing with the person you refer to. :-\  I know who you mean and often don't agree with his method of doing things.  That said, he has helped me a few times for which I am grateful.

As for Ancestral Sources, didn't say I didn't like it, just find it a bit too rigid in its way of doing things at times.  I use it to add Census facts for multiple individuals in the same family, but do not include the occupation because of the way it creates a separate occupation.  Instead, I then expand the note section for each individuals census fact to say who they were with and what their occuaption was, and anything else from the census I wish to include.  I also tend to use the Census (family) fact for couples, often amending the entries once I've added through Ancestral Sources, because otherwise you get rather a lot of repetition.  Now using Census (family) facts is apparently a bit of a "no no" because it isn't gedcom complaint, although it is a standard Family Historian fact, but as I'm not planning on moving my data to any other software at any time soon, I prefer to have better worded reports than gedcom-complaint data. ;D

Attached is an example of one of a census fact with a customised note to include occupation.  The full sentence reads "On 30 March 1851, the night of the census, Mary was resident at 3 Manchester Place, Chelsea, with her children Catherine, Emma, Martha and John.  Her profession is described as a laundress".  The reason the census reads this way is because I've customised the census template as "{date}, the night of the Census, {individual} was resident at {_place}, {note}".  For that matter, I've customised a lot of Family Historian sentence templates to read how I want them to read and try and remove some of the repetition that Bee refers to.

It really is down to how you wish to use the software and how you want to present it.  There is no right and wrong, even though I may disagree with how the "majority" think things should be done.  I don't like the way they display in Narrative Reports, but, as is the beauty of Family Historian, you can customs Fact sentence templates to display how you want and don't always have to use the default.

As Ray says, definitely worth keeping some backups of your gedcom, although the advice I've given on where to add baptisms, etc, isn't going to affect the gedcom, it is just one way of doing it. ;)
(KENT) Lingwell, Rayment (BUCKS) Read, Hutchins (SRY) Costin, Westbrook (DOR) Gibbs, Goreing (DUR) Green (ESX) Rudland, Malden, Rouse, Boosey (FIFE) Foulis, Russell (NFK) Johnson, Farthing, Purdy, Barsham (GLOS) Collett, Morris, Freebury, May, Kirkman (HERTS) Winchester, Linford (NORTHANTS) Bird, Brimley, Chater, Wilford, Read, Chapman, Jeys, Marston, Lumley (WILTS) Arden, Whatley, Batson, Gleed, Greenhill (SOM) Coombs, Watkins (RUT) Stafford (BERKS) Sansom, Angel, Young, Stratton, Weeks, Day

Offline smudwhisk

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Re: Family Historian, am I thick? Gedcom disaster
« Reply #7 on: Monday 21 September 15 23:32 BST (UK) »
I uploaded my Gedcom saved file to FH and it gives many me so many errors, say for instance the census entries, instead of saying "Fred Bloggs appears in the 1891 census" it says "Fred Bloggs experienced census in the 1891 census"

The reason it will say "experienced" is because the Fact/Event isn't a standard gedcom fact.  My distant relative had the same issue.  She had created a lot of custom Facts in FTM2006 named Fact1, Fact2, etc.  Often these were for things like witnessing marriages, death registration details, etc, and unfortunately these do not export to gedcoms correctly, hence the issue when imported into Family Historian.  If you look at the Facts tab on the right hand side of any individual's record view, it will show you what type of Fact FH things the details are for.  There is a plugin available to run in FH which allows you to change a custom fact into a standard one, which would remove the "experience" issue in the narrative.

As for the separate sentences for residence and occupation for Census, I'm assuming these have been added via Ancestral Sources?  As I posted earlier, unfortunately it will create two separate facts for these as there is no occupation field on any of the Facts apart from a separate Occupation Residence fact.  This is why I have been manually adding the occupation details to the note section of Census facts so that they read better in Narrative Reports.  As you mention you were using FTM4 I'm assuming you had added these via Ancestral Sources because, as far as I'm aware, any version of FTM earlier than 2008 didn't allow occupations to be added to Census facts.  I used to use FTM2006 and much of my data was exported to gedcom and imported in Family Historian, apart from some which was updated in FTM2012.  The earlier the version of FTM used, as long as no custom Facts were created, the less issues migrating over to another program, although you will probably still get errors on imports but that is often down to how FTM and FH treat individual's Notes (that's another issue but fixable :-\).
(KENT) Lingwell, Rayment (BUCKS) Read, Hutchins (SRY) Costin, Westbrook (DOR) Gibbs, Goreing (DUR) Green (ESX) Rudland, Malden, Rouse, Boosey (FIFE) Foulis, Russell (NFK) Johnson, Farthing, Purdy, Barsham (GLOS) Collett, Morris, Freebury, May, Kirkman (HERTS) Winchester, Linford (NORTHANTS) Bird, Brimley, Chater, Wilford, Read, Chapman, Jeys, Marston, Lumley (WILTS) Arden, Whatley, Batson, Gleed, Greenhill (SOM) Coombs, Watkins (RUT) Stafford (BERKS) Sansom, Angel, Young, Stratton, Weeks, Day

Offline Ruskie

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Re: Family Historian, am I thick? Gedcom disaster
« Reply #8 on: Tuesday 22 September 15 02:29 BST (UK) »
B, you are not alone. I purchased FH for the exact same reasons as you did.

I have had it for years and I still have no clue how to use it.

Smudwhisk's explanations are very helpful but I still find it hard to get my head around it.

I more or less gave up on trying to work my way around FH. It's kind of embarrassing if a new distant ancestor turns up (which they do sometimes) and I want to send them a copy of the information I have on a particular branch of the family, I generally end up typing it up rather than extracting the information from FH.

I did go through a stage of watching tutorials, reading the instructions and just ended up getting myself in a mess.

I have a low tolerance for anything complicated and tend to give up, so I'm sure this says more about me than the programme. I'm sure the newer versions would get me in even more of a muddle.  ;D