Installation

In Crossover create a new application ‘Bottle’ as usual.

To ensure that plugins work correctly a line needs to be added to the Family Historian bottle.

Open Crossover as usual in the Configure menu select Manage Bottles, select the Family Historian bottle, then in the dialog box that opens select Open C:drive. Finder will now open go up one level in finder and select the cxbottle.conf file and open it in a plain text editor. Scroll to the bottom of the file and you will find a section that starts after [EnvironmentVariables] at the bottom of this section add a new line:

“COMPUTERNAME”=”YOURNAME”

Replace YOURNAME with your first name.

Ensure that the quotes are normal ones and NOT smart quotes.

Save the file.

Installation of Add-Ons for Family Historian

Before attempting to install any add-ons at all to Family Historian check the file associations in your browser. Ensure that the file extension .fh_lua is associated with Family Historian. All other associations should be fine but if you have any problems installing any downloaded add-ons check the file associations in your browser.

If you have any problems installing plugins as a web download just save the plugin in your download folder. The in Family Historian go to Tools > Plugins > More > Import and browse to your download folder and import them.

If you have problems installing Fact Sets, Queries or Property Box Tabs then go to File > Import and select the appropriate file type there.

Plugins known not to work

• Ancestral Sources Data Entry – This plugin cannot find Ancestral Sources even if it is in the same bottle as Family Historian and whether it is running or not.
• Backup and Restore Family Historian Settings – This plugin cannot access the registry and therefore cannot save the Family Historian settings.

Non-functional Issues

• The in-built Family Historian PDF printer does not work. If you need a PDF printer that does work with Family Historian running on the MAC then use the free PDFWriter application. This installs at the MAC OS level and is available as a printer within Family Historian.
• Reports from the Publish menu do not display correctly on screen, they only show multimedia items and not the text. However, if you print to a printer or PDFWriter then both text and images are displayed.

Other Issues

The popular companion application Ancestral Sources can be bottled and works for data input. As stated previously thus cannot be run using the Family Historian Plugin.

If you do run Ancestral Sources on the same Gedcom file that Family Historian has open when you return from Ancestral Sources to Family Historian the normal ‘Gedcom has changed outside of Family Historian’ is displayed. The problem is that this dialog cannot be closed and so Family Historian cannot be used. The only way to get control again is by ‘Force Quitting’ Family Historian.

As a result ensure that Family Historian is not accessing the same Gedcom as Ancestral Sources.