Family Historian 7.0.24.1 x64

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The Web Search Window used outdated technology, and worked poorly as a result.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 current text limit on text in rich text fields was 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)