Tour of Features
Personal Historian is computer software that assists you in writing a personal
history about yourself, another individual, or a family. In this tour, we will
look at some of the major features of Personal Historian and how they will help
you write a complete, interesting, and entertaining life story.
The Main Screen
 Personal
Historian breaks the history down into small, manageable "topics"-- each with
its own title, date, written text, and even pictures. Topics make it easy to
work on your history whenever you have the time—whether you have 10 minutes or
10 hours. Personal Historian automatically saves your work and makes it easy to
start where you left off.
The main screen displays all of the topics in the project. If a topic has a
date, Personal Historian also displays the individual's age on that date. On
the main screen, it is easy to sort and filter your topics. "Back", "Forward",
"Home", and "Favorites" buttons behave much like your own web-browser, making
it easy to apply, remove, and reapply filters.
The timeline gives an overall view of the person's life showing how many topics
there are for each year. This makes it easy to see gaps in this history that
you may wish to fill-in. The timeline also makes it easy to pinpoint topics
from specific dates. By simply dragging the ends of the timeline, you can "zoom
in" and display only the topics that pertain to that range of dates.
Gathering Information
There is no need to start from scratch when you use Personal Historian as the
software can bring in events, stories, pictures, and documents from a variety
of sources.
Personal Historian imports names, dates, and even notes from your favorite
genealogical software and places them into your timeline.
The software also includes an extensive library of "LifeCapsules" on a variety
of subjects. LifeCapsules contain timelines, historical facts, cultural trivia,
and memory triggers that give color, context, and interest to the history.
Personal Historian also imports your word processor documents and photographs so
that your existing work can be effortlessly incorporated into your
histories.
Organizing Information
 With
Personal Historian, you don't need a "start from the beginning" approach to
writing a life history. You can choose any topic from the main screen (or add a
new, blank topic), work as much as you like on it, and save it for later.
Personal Historian keeps track of the status of each topic so you can see which
topics are complete, which topics still need work, and which topics you haven't
even started. You can even assign topics to "categories"—each with its own
icon, color and font style.
When writing about a topic, one of the most overlooked steps is to organize
facts and ideas before you begin writing. While this can normally be difficult
and frustrating, Personal Historian makes it a breeze to brainstorm and
organize your facts, thoughts, memories, and feelings.
The "Organizer" tool allows you to write down ideas as they come to you. Using
the mouse or keyboard, you can easily move the ideas into coherent groups and
logical orders until you have a working outline for your topic.
Writing Your History
 When
you're ready to actually write about a topic, Personal Historian contains a
built-in word processor that not only makes it easy to write, but makes it easy
to write well. The built-in spell check and thesaurus are just the beginning.
The readability check lets you know how readable and interesting your writing
will be to others. It lets you know if your sentences are too long, too short--
if your words are too simple or too complex, and even if you're writing in the
passive voice instead of the active voice.
Publishing Your History
When you're ready to publish your masterpiece, Personal Historian is still there
to help. It takes all of the topics that you choose and puts them together into
a finished, publishable document. You can publish your history directly to your
personal printer, to a PDF file that you can share with others, or to an RTF
file that you can read into your favorite word processor for additional
tweaking.
Conclusion
As you can see, Personal Historian is the most complete solution to writing a
personal history about yourself, another individual, or a family. From start to
finish, Personal Historian makes writing a life story fast, easy, and fun!
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