Family Historian

by Calico Pie (Simon Orde)
A new kind of family tree program with a design with strengths in its user interface, use of GEDCOM, graphics and picture handling. See their Design Goals & Philosophy page to see their ideas. They compare their program to RootsMagic and Family Tree Maker. It has a User Group.

Purchase • Windows • Full Featured • Builds Website
http://family-historian.co.uk/
9 Reviews, latest Aug 26, 2010
Enjoy Using It4.39 out of 54.39 out of 54.39 out of 54.39 out of 54.39 out of 5 4.39
Use It Often4.58 out of 54.58 out of 54.58 out of 54.58 out of 54.58 out of 5 4.58
Easy Input4.72 out of 54.72 out of 54.72 out of 54.72 out of 54.72 out of 5 4.72
Useful Output4.38 out of 54.38 out of 54.38 out of 54.38 out of 54.38 out of 5 4.38
Overall Rating4.46 out of 54.46 out of 54.46 out of 54.46 out of 54.46 out of 5 4.46
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9 Reviews of Family Historian     RSS 2.0 RSS

Family Historian Review by Graham Dodd,  Aug 26, 2010

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Great software but shame it is not produced in Mac I have become so fed-up with Microsoft despite using it since it was founded, that I have now purchased a Mac. Will buy CrossOver saftware to run FHv4 on Mac - Any body had experience of running FH over Mac via CrossOver.

Thanks

Biggest Pro: Flexible and can cater for beginners to professionals
Biggest Con: No Mac version

Family Historian Review by Patricia,  Aug 26, 2010

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The best ever. I’ve used many different genealogy databases over my 40 years of genealogy research. Having tried Family Historian, I wouldn’t go back to any of the others. It does take a bit of learning, but when you get into it the queries are not as difficult as first thought. The charts are brilliant and the support the best ever. Navigation is excellent.

Biggest Pro: Great for getting an overall view of your tree.
Biggest Con: None that I can think of.

Family Historian Review by Roger Quick,  Apr 24, 2010

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Family Historian is superb.
I used TMG, and tried various other programs over some years.
What I really wanted was a program which could display a tree diagram, and access individual records by clicking on the diagram.
FH does just that. Simple! For any individual I can with one click show their ancestors, or descendants, or both (hourglass tree), or all relatives. With or without pictures.

It has detailed facilities for data, research, input, and manipulation of data - lots of free add-ons from the users group, who play a really active role in suggesting developments - and these really do get listened to and incorporated in the next version.
I’m hoping to start a Family History club at my school. If I could get a slightly better deal for multiple copies than the one offered so far, I will certainly use FH.

One additional detail: without diminishing it’s usage for other ancestries, I have found FH to be far and away the best for data relating to UK families - especially when used with the additional (free) prog Gedcom Census.
And to be honest, I haven’t even (yet) upgraded to the latest version which came out earlier this year.
I can’t praise it highly enough.

Biggest Pro: Click-through diagrams to data
Biggest Con: Having to rack my brain here. Maybe more right-click functions; but for all I know that might be in the latest version.

Family Historian Review by Herman Munster,  Jan 30, 2010

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This is a rather flexible program, with multiple ways of inputting data, and the diagram charts are a major asset. There’s a good many ways to customise the information, but it comes at a price, namely, you have to learn what amounts to a programming language for such things as custom fact sets and queries. It’s not intuitive as it could be, but within those limits, it’s a powerful program.

Unfortunately, it has an extremely steep learning curve, and the help file is out of date. The tutorials included with the program are of some help, but the whole thing is written as if you were a programmer, and not a beginner. The cost of the program is in the upper deck range of prices, but it’s probably worth it if you take the time to learn the program.

The support for the product is spotty at best; although the user groups tries to be helpful. They don’t always succeed, but they garner points for trying. :) After employing it for several months, I decided the program wasn’t for me and jumped ship elsewhere.

Biggest Pro: Flexibility, adherence to the GEDCOM standard.
Biggest Con: Price, very steep learning curve, spotty support.

Family Historian Review by Irene Blackburn,  Dec 6, 2009

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I have used several programs over the years but I have bee using this one happily for some years now.

Biggest Pro: Easy to use, great user group
Biggest Con: some of the user group contributors :-)

Family Historian Review by Lars J W Holm,  Feb 18, 2009

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Very easy to work with.
Absolutely the best gedcom merge functions, also very easy to merge duplicates both persons and familys.

Biggest Pro: The merge functions
Biggest Con: Not multi language

Family Historian Review by Dr DBW,  Dec 31, 2008

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Very powerful and flexible package. Many ways of doing things, such as navigating and adding information, so you do it the way you find easiest. GED file follows the standard, so no stupid errors when you send it to someone else to view / use. Looking forward to the new version, which will have improved image handing, which is already pretty good.

I tried a number of different packages, and this one stood out on top as the best one for me. Others look way to “gimicky”.

Biggest Pro: Very flexible and configurable to give what you want
Biggest Con: Provided tree outputs for display not really polished

Family Historian Review by Benjamin S. Beck,  Sep 29, 2008

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Versatile, British based, strong basis in gedcom format. Some features struck me as not as intuitive as I’d like. Main reason I abandoned it and reverted to PAF was that there’s a limit on the size of the Notes field, and this limit is too small for my purposes.

Biggest Pro: Gedcom standard at the core of the program
Biggest Con: Limit to size of Notes field

Family Historian Review by Harvey Nyman,  Sep 26, 2008

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I have used FH since it was first published through all the considerable improvements of the various versions. I have tried some of the major competitors, but none seem to match it for flexibilty in reports and queries. The handling of diagrams is outstanding.

Biggest Pro: Handling of photographs and great User Group
Biggest Con: Fairly steep learning curve to get the best out of the program

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