Personal Historian 3
Bring Life to Your Life Stories.
Personal & Family History Writing Software
Write and organize personal and family histories with prompts, timelines, and publishing tools.
*Existing users can upgrade for only $29.95$19.95!
Windows XP, 7 SP1, 8, 10, or 11
macOS 10.8 (Mountain Lion), 10.9 (Mavericks), 10.10 (Yosemite), 10.11 (El Capitan), 10.12 (Sierra), 10.13 (High Sierra), or 10.14 (Mojave)
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.
I am using Personal Historian nearly every day and I love it!
You've done a magnificent job—so very well organized.
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.
I am excited. I've already been typing a few things about my life history and this will be fantastic.
I truly believe in Personal Historian. It makes an overwhelming task much easier.
I have started to write my personal history several times, but each time has been a failure. ... I am making real progress for the first time.
I have found the prompts in Personal Historian to be very helpful in recalling my life experience, and that 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.
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 no longer a chore.
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.
Introduction
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!
Features
Personal Historian is software that assists you in writing a personal history
about yourself, another individual, or a family. Its many features will help you write a complete,
interesting, and entertaining life story.
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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.
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.
Videos
Getting Started with Personal Historian
Importing Genealogy Data into Personal Historian
Editing Stories in Personal Historian
Using the Organizer to Help Write Stories in Personal Historian
Using the Personal Historian Publisher to Create a Book
Using Styles in Personal Historian
Personal Historian: Bringing Life to Your Life Stories
Writing Your Personal History (and Living to Tell About It)
Installing and Updating Personal Historian
What's New in Personal Historian 2
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