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.

Buy Now: $29.95* Try It Free Buy Book

*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)
Personal Historian 3 product box

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.

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.

— June B., Utah

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 am making real progress for the first time.

— Gordon B., Utah

I am using Personal Historian nearly every day and I love it!

— M.H., Ohio

I have found the prompts in Personal Historian to be very helpful in recalling my life experience, and that of my family.

— S.G.

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

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 am excited. I've already been typing a few things about my life history and this will be fantastic.

— L.S., Utah

I truly believe in Personal Historian. It makes an overwhelming task much easier.

— L.H.

You've done a magnificent job—so very well organized.

— C.M., California

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.

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.

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