Personal Historian 2

Personal Historian 2 ; Published: 2011; Software; CD; Platform: Windows 7 / Vista / XP / 2000; Item RM07

Personal Historian is unique software that helps you write the story of your life and of other individuals. Overwhelmed with the thought of writing a personal history? It breaks this seemingly monumental task into small, manageable pieces and then reconstructs it into a complete, publishable document.

You sit down at your computer and open your word processor. A large, blank page glares at you-- daring you to blacken it with your keystrokes. Assessing the challenge, you enthusiastically begin typing. A single word, "Birth", appears on the screen. "So far, so good," you think to yourself. With a little less certainty, your fingers manage to type in a date, a place, and a few names. "Now what?" you ask yourself.

Suddenly the enormity of the task hits you like that foul ball in the 3rd grade. You fumble through a few more paragraphs before deciding that you would do better retreating, regrouping, and charging the enemy at a later time. Promising yourself that you will return someday, your hand defeatedly clicks on the "Save" button and the once-blank page, although scarred with a few sentences, triumphantly disappears.

Sound familiar? If so, you're not alone. Many people want to write a personal history about themselves or a family member but they just become lost or overwhelmed by the size and complexity of the project. That's where Personal Historian comes in.

Personal Historian takes the seemingly monumental task of writing a personal history about yourself or another individual and breaks it into small, manageable pieces and then reconstructs it into a complete, publishable document.

Personal Historian comes with an extensive library of LifeCapsules- timelines, historical events, cultural fads, and memory triggers covering a wide-variety of subjects. LifeCapsules add color and context to your history, giving you insights into what was happening in the world at any point in your history.

Personal Historian builds upon the work that you've already done. You can easily import word processor documents, photographs, and other data.

Personal Historian can even bring in events, dates, and notes from your genealogy software so that all the important events in your life and the life of your family are automatically there, ready for you to write.

From start to finish, Personal Historian is the quickest, easiest, and most enjoyable way to write your own personal history or that of another individual. You'll be amazed at how easy and entertaining it can be with Personal Historian!

Personal Historian Features

• General Features
• Runs under Windows 7, Vista, XP, and 2000
• Single-file database format
• Support for international character sets through Unicode integration
• Integrated backup and restore help safeguard your data
• Free technical support
• Easy to Learn and Use
• Easy file management
• Easy to use Explorer-like help system
• Sidebar on main screen makes filtering easy
• Use of Wizards simplifies tasks
• Organize Your Personal History

• Write unlimited stories
• View the list of your stories on screen
• Filter the list of stories
• Just double click story in list to edit the story
• Customize the story list layout
• Quickly add a journal entry story
• Edit random stories (great for writer's block)
• Story Editing

• Use multiple fonts in stories
• Use paragraph styles
• Add images to stories
• Wordwrap text about pictures
• Readability Analysis
• Full screen edit mode
• Spell checking
• Live spell check
• Thesaurus
• Adding footnotes
• Text-to-speech reads your story back to you
• Speech-to-text takes dictation
• Add new paragraph styles
• Import styles
• Export styles
• Story Organizing

• Organizer lets you create an outline for each story
• Brainstorm to add items to Organizer
• Add subitems to Organizer
• Easily rearrange outline items
• Copy outline to the word processor
• Search Features

• Search for text in the current story
• Search and replace in the current story
• Full text search across all stories
• Story Filters

• Filter the master story list
• Filter the stories included in the published book
• Save and reuse filters
• Publish Your Personal History

• Print to any printer connected to your computer
• Customize headers, footers, margins, and fonts
• Include any stories in your personal history
• Include cover and title pages, copyright, dedication, acknowledgement, preface pages
• Include index of people in the story
• Create multiple customized personal histories for each person
• Save books to PDF (Adobe Acrobat)
• Save books to your word processor (RTF)
• E-mail books directly from the print preview
• Include index of places in the story
• Tools

• Date calculator when entering dates
• Pop up calendar when entering dates
• Gazetteer to look up places
• Place name standardization and geocoding
• Display places on map
• Compatibility

• Direct RootsMagic import
• Direct Family Tree Maker import (version 16 and earlier)
• Direct PAF import (version 5)
• Direct Legacy import (versions 3 and later)
• GEDCOM import
• Import text data (tab or comma delimited)

"Personal Historian" Book Review

Personal Historian Quotes & Reviews

"You've done a magnificent job— so very well organized." - C.M., California

"I am using Personal Historian nearly every day and I love it! It is a beautifully designed program, far superior to any others I have seen. I have a terminal illness and want to write a personal history for my grandchildren who are too small to remember me after I am gone. I felt rather overwhelmed with the task until I started working in this program. I am thrilled with the progress I am making." - M.H., Ohio

"I have started to write my personal history several times, but each time has been a failure. I often have only a few minutes at a time to work on it, and it used to take almost the entire available time just to get things together and start to write. I usually felt it was not worth the effort, but with Personal Historian I am able to utilize even very small blocks of time. When I combine that with the ability to look at my life's events in relation to world and cultural affairs, I am making real progress for the first time." - G.B., Utah

"I think this is a great program. It has been a great help to me, and maybe I will finally get a decent start on my personal history." - W.S., Montana

"I am excited. I've already been typing a few things about my life history and this will be fantastic." - L.S., Utah

"I was just entering some information about a great grandfather that I found in the 1860 census into my Personal Historian. It is great! Because it organized all his information from my Family History files, the Personal Historian helped me see some facts that I hadn't noticed before. With the census record and the ease of writing in the Personal Historian, I was able to put into writing some of the things I remembered hearing about him and his family. I find it is a great program that can be used for quick moments of inspiration when something triggers your memory, so writing my own personal history or that of one of my ancestors is not longer a chore." - J.B., Utah

"I truly believe in Personal Historian. It makes an overwhelming task much easier." - L.H.

"Love the variety of ways to use Personal Historian. Today I primarily use it to document events and stories, like a timeline. This allows memories to be captured and then items pulled later for a more formal history." - T.D.

"I have found the prompts in Personal Historian 1 to be very helpful in recalling my life experience, and that (as I remember it) of my family. Working with your prompts, and history timeline, is a big help in recalling events and typing them into the computer is much easier, and far more legible, than writing them out by hand, or typing them on a typewriter." - S.G.