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Change History for Family Book Creator on Windows

This page lists the latest changes and enhancements of the Windows version of Family Book Creator. There is also a Mac version.

Family Book Creator is continuously being enhanced with new features and improvements to existing features. You may find information about how to use those changes here as well.

Family Book Creator 2019 has been recently released and is now the latest major release of Family Book Creator! It is compatible with Family Tree Maker 2017 and Family Tree Maker 2019 on Windows. Please review "What’s new in Family Book Creator 2019?" to learn about the many features introduced in Family Book Creator 2019.
Please check "How do I upgrade from a previous version to Family Book Creator 2019?" in case you would like to upgrade to the latest edition.


Build 2435 (Available soon...)

  • Fixed (FBC 2019): In some very rare cases, while saving the document structure in DOCX format, the following exception was thrown: Compressed or uncompressed size or offset exceeds the maximum value. This issue has now been fixed. Now there is no limit to the size of files that can be included in a DOCX file, the total number of files in a DOCX file, or the total size of the DOCX file. If necessary, Family Book Creator will now use a file format extension when the 4GB or the file count limitations of the previous file format are exceeded. This fix theoretically allows you to create files that are 2^64 bytes (16 exabytes) in size, but you will not find a version of Microsoft Word that can handle such large files.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): FBC_PhotoAlbum_HighFidelityImageResolution now allows the inclusion of full resolution images for images which had been scaled to a specific width by using the media categories FBC_PhotoAlbum_FullWidth or FBC_PhotoAlbum_P%OfFullWidth.
  • Fixed: There may be an unwanted blank paragraph before a section break. In some rare cases this would result in empty pages with headers and footers. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Including content from certain word processing documents, which use linked images that are linked to Web sites that are no longer available, could slow down or corrupt the end result so that Microsoft Word could not process the document correctly. Images from inserted documents were missing, and it was very slow to navigate in the document. After changes are made, Microsoft Word could not save the document, or it appears that Microsoft Word has frozen. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): In some cases, after creating a document, the Index of Places pane on the Indexes tab would be disabled. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Chapter names were missing in the headers or footers of documents about descendants when the "Organized by families" sorting option was used. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): Family Book Creator 2019 is now compatible with FTM 2017, FTM 2019, and FTM 2024. Note: You will need to uninstall and reinstall your current version of Family Book Creator 2019 (using the latest FBC 2019 installer package) to be able to launch Family Book Creator 2019 from within Family Tree Maker 2024.
    Please also check: "Is Family Book Creator compatible with Family Tree Maker 2024?"
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Family Book Creator now correctly prevents the system from going to sleep while a book document is being created. Note: It is still allowed to automatically turn off the display.

Build 1700 (October 2023)

  • Fixed: Inserting text before fact notes or using document and text formatting tags in label fields for Name fact types did not work as expected. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In some very rare cases, sorting media items in photo albums by date did not always work as expected when only month and year were specified. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In some very rare cases, while creating a document about relatives of the starting individual, a crash occurred ("Index was outside the bounds of the array."). This issue has now been fixed.

Build 698 (September 2023)

  • Fixed: When location information was found in a shared fact with an "unknown spouse", a crash occurred ("Object reference not set to an instance of an object"). This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2017 and FBC 2019): The status bar showed "Creating Document: …" for a very long time and the application seemed to hang. The problem of slowing down when creating a document containing a large number of chapters has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In books about relatives, the content was sometimes different for chapters that should be the same when using different degrees of relationship. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): A problem with missing border lines for paragraphs in embedded documents has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (Spanish): Some grammar and wording issues have been fixed in foreword and introduction.

Build 696 (August 2023)

  • Fixed: A typo in the name of the style sheet "Child Section (Research note)" has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): All Open File and Save File dialogs allow you to open an integrated preview pane. You can now preview PDFs, Office-related documents, text files, and images within the dialog.
  • Fixed: The layout of multiple consecutive spaces was not handled as expected. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: The after paragraph spacing of the last child paragraph displayed in the list of children could be incorrect if family headers were omitted and spouse or partner information was included for the last child in the list. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In some very rare cases, the Family Book Creator application crashed after a report was successfully created and FBC was closed and reopened again after some data in your FTM tree has been modified. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: If the 'Use single sections per relationship' option was not selected, ancestry reports using the Sosa-Stradonitz system would not include a family chart for the starting individual's family. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 694 (June 2023)

  • Fixed: When the 'Use single sections per relationship' option was not selected, descendant reports would include only the primary individual's preferred relationship. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2017 and FBC 2019): In some rare cases, index entries containing color-coded values based on the circled 8 in pink were missing from the index when the color-coding style "Filled circled digits" was used. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed (FBC 2019): Creating page numbers with hyperlinks to index entries is now optional for page numbers in the Index of Places and Index of Individuals. By default, the 'Create page numbers with hyperlinks' options (located on the 'Book Items', 'Indexes' tab) are unchecked because creating these hyperlinks when outputting to PDF or EPUB file formats drastically increases the time required for the "Updating all fields..." steps in some scenarios.

Build 691 (May 2023)

  • Fixed: If the Marriage fact type was not selected for inclusion, it could result in broken links ("Error! Bookmark not defined") because the record with the marriage details was always missing. This problem is now fixed.
  • Fixed: In some very rare cases, only blank footnotes or endnotes were included. While the reference numbers were displayed, the actual reference note text was missing. This problem is now fixed.
  • Fixed: A problem related to em-dash characters in notes has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: There was an issue related to unwanted family sections for individuals with spouses but no children. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In some rare cases "Updating all fields" was very slow while processing large documents. This performance issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: If you selected to display only used fact types, the 'Person ID' and 'Relationship ID' fact types were not displayed in the list of facts on the Items to Include tabs, even though these numbers are automatically assigned by Family Tree Maker. This problem has been fixed.
  • Fixed: Some foreign characters were not always displayed as expected in the table of contents. This problem has been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): Previous versions of Family Book Creator assumed that surnames were entered into FTM with proper case. Some FTM users prefer uppercase surnames for various reasons, but would like to see mixed case results. Family Book Creator will now convert upper case surnames to mixed case if needed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): While the plugin is running, the 'Family Book Creator' window is now always displayed before the 'Family Tree Maker' window. This already worked with FTM 2019 version 24.0, but now it also works with FTM 2019 version 24.1 and later.
  • Fixed: In books about descendants, duplicated families (due to common ancestors) were not always shown as expected. Sometimes the phrase "This family is duplicated because of common ancestors. See person reference number A on page B." was missing, or the details (such as the list of children) were not shown in the first appearance of the duplicated family, but appeared later in the document. This problem is now fixed.

Build 686 (February 2023)

  • Fixed (FBC 2017 and 2019): In some cases, Microsoft Word displayed the message "This document contains fields that may refer to other files. Do you want to update the fields in this document?" when a document created by FBC was opened. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (English): A spelling issue in the user interface ("Number of columns:") has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): Family Book Creator now remembers the last used folder for FBC setting files. This allows you to use separate folders for documents and configurations without the need to always reselect the folder needed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): If unexpected characters are used in improbable names for individuals and places, the Index of Places and Index of Individuals in documents created in PDF and EPUB file format were truncated. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): In some rare cases the "Updating all fields..." step crashed. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): In some rare cases "Updating all fields" did not complete and seemed to "hang". This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): In some rare cases "Creating document…" did not complete and seemed to "hang". This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): Family Book Creator now shows the progress in percent while the "Updating all fields" step is running.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): Inserting content from word processor files needs additional computing resources and processing time. Family Book Creator now shows the progress in percent for each file, while content from these word processor files is being inserted into the book document.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): In some rare cases the Table of Contents showed "Error! No bookmark name given." messages. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In some rare cases we may see invalid links in spouse or partner sections ("Error! Bookmark not defined." messages in the document). This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Multiple columns in the first section of default text elements (like Title Page, Colophon, Dedication, Foreword and Introduction) were not retained while creating the book document. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Family Book Creator crashed in cases of invalid Name records being used in FTM (for example Name facts with date or place information). This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In cases where "Ancestral Loops" were present in your FTM tree, FBC/FTM crashed while creating "Relatives of" books. This issue has now been fixed.
    NOTE: It is still a good idea to  remove "Ancestral Loops". The term "Ancestral Loop" is used for loops caused by incorrect relationships recorded in your tree. For example, a child is his/her own parent. Or even more complex, a grandchild is identical with one of the grandparents. Unfortunately, FTM does not provide a check for "Ancestral Loops", but the data error report may help you find these kind of issues.
  • Fixed (Spanish): Some grammar issues had been fixed in the introduction chapter.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Assigning a starting number to be used for the starting individual did not work as expected if 'Sequential Number' was selected as the numbering format for books about ancestors. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In some rare cases details like child section and photo album section for a family were not shown. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2017 and 2019): FBC 2017 and FBC 2019 are now compatible with the upcoming maintenance release of Family Tree Maker 2019 (Version 24.2).

Build 670 (October 2022)

  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Geometric symbols and chess symbols did not appear in PDF files as expected. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): In the built-in text editor, bullet points of bulleted lists become bold after setting the bold formatting for a paragraph range. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In books about ancestors, the family chart for the family of the starting individual was missing, if the option 'Include only preferred partner' on the 'Individuals to include' tab page is selected. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (Spanish): A spelling issue in the statistics section ("1 hombre promedió") has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In some rare cases images are shown in squished columns inside photo album sections. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Improved (FBC 2019): The PDF rendering engine that is used to create documents in fixed page formats (like PDF and images) has been improved. Now, tables and table cell borders are rendered more accurately.
  • Fixed: In some rare cases Family Book Creator did not work as expected and the error message "The file exist." was shown. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): If EPUB file format was used, Color Coding symbols were not included in the 'Index of Places' and 'Index of Individuals'. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): All page numbers inside the 'Index of Places' and 'Index of Individuals' are now hyperlinks in documents in PDF or EPUB file format. You may just click on the page number to navigate to the index entry on that page.
  • Fixed: Creating documents in PDF/A-1b format did not work as expected. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 660 (July 2022)

  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Page breaks from documents inserted by utilizing the media category FBC_HandleStoryAsText were not retained. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Some style names changed in the built-in text editor. As a result, the number 1 was added to some style names and the Introduction chapter was not included in the Table of Contents. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): All file open and file save dialogs now display Quick Access, where you see a list of the folders you browse most frequently. (You may learn here how to pin, remove, and customize the Quick access folder)
  • Fixed: If the formatting option 'Include in narrative (FTM style)' was used, an unwanted comma might be shown at the end of the sentence. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed: If the formatting option 'Include in narrative (FTM style)' was used together with {dateOnly} the date value inserted for {dateOnly} may have started with a prefix. This has now been changed so that just the date is used to construct the sentence, based on the FTM sentence template.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Location/Place details (specified during Resolving Place fields in FTM) did not show up in sentences created for Occupation and Employment fact types. This issue has now been fixed.
    Note: This requires that the option 'Use place details always as place segments' (found on the 'Main part', 'Options' tab page) is cleared. (See also "Standardizing locations in Family Tree Maker")
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): In some rare cases "Updating all fields... (Pass 1 of 4)" did not complete and seemed to "hang". This issue was caused by an endless loop in the page layout engine if a huge number of footnotes and cross-references to footnotes were used. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): The plugin could crash if a user tried to incorporate content from a word processing document with invalid document structure (for example a floating shape inside a textbox). This issue has now been fixed.

Build 656 (June 2022)

  • Fixed (FBC 2019): When trying to create or open a file with an invalid file name, the application could crash. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: It was not possible to include only the table of contents or only the foreword chapter in a book created with the previous build (#632), without also including the title page. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): In some rare cases past tense has been used for sentences about living couples. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: A decimal separator in the footnote text size could cause the application to crash (FormatException). This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): The page number on odd numbered pages was incorrectly positioned in cases where the number should have been shown centered in the page header. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Using the image quality as specified, did not work for output in PDF file format if these settings were changed on the 'Preferences', 'Images' tab page in the same session. They would only apply after restarting the plugin. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (Italian): There was an unwanted line feed in the Dedication section. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): JPG or JPEG images with EXIF orientation flag were not properly rotated. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): FBC now allows the inclusion of media items in JPEG 2000 format (JP2, J2K and JPF) in Photo Albums.
  • Changed: Individuals who died before they reached an age of 18 years are no longer mentioned in the statistics ("The longest living female/male was…").
  • Fixed (English): The possessive form for names ending with the letter 's' was incorrect in the introduction sentence for multiple relationships ("Here are the details about Surname's second marriage…"). This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): A memory issue upon updating all fields has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): An issue (Unexpected part type exception) while updating all fields has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): The "Use multicolor" checkbox was not properly cleared or set, based on the current settings. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: A singular/plural issue in the statistics text has now been fixed for all supported languages.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): An issue (NullReferenceException while Update Fields is running) has now been fixed.
  • Enhanced (FBC 2019): The macOS Edition and Windows Edition of Family Book Creator now share the same word processing code!
  • Enhanced (FBC 2019): Family Book Creator 2019 allows the inclusion of information from AlbumWALK mini-documentaries (.tap files) in photo albums. This allows you to include the images together with transcribed text and also marks individuals with circles. This feature is only available while using Family Book Creator with Family Tree Maker 2019 version 24.1 or higher. (Visit www.albumwalk.com) for the AlbumWALK app availability and pricing.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): The integrated help system and the User Guide in PDF file format are now up to date and cover the latest product changes and enhancements up to Build 656 of Family Book Creator 2019.
  • Fixed: In some rare cases a null pointer exception occurred. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Individuals with unknown given names are not always properly shown in the index of individuals. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 632 (April 2021)

  • Fixed (Swedish): An unwanted space character in the introduction for shared facts and events ("Fler delad fakta och evenemang för ...") has been removed.
  • Fixed: If the option 'Include spouse or partner details' is selected, children from unknown spouses were not shown. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Improved: The performance of the method used to format a document into pages and update all page number related fields (like Table of Contents, Indexes, Figure numbers, Cross-references) in the document has been improved.
  • Fixed: Under some rare circumstances the plugin could crash while compiling family information. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Under some rare circumstances wrong headers and footers are shown for odd and even numbered pages in PDF files. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: An initialization issue caused by invalid system fonts has now been fixed.

Build 626 (February 2021)

  • Fixed (FBC 2019): When including content from word processing documents using the FBC_IncludeStoryAsText media category, Footnotes or Endnotes from these word processing documents did not always use the font style specified in FBC. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed: If the starting individual has had multiple relationships, but only the children from one of these relationships are known, the title for books about descendants now also includes the name of the preferred spouse.
  • Fixed: Person identifiers had been assigned for spouses/partners in an alphabetical family register, but these numbers were not shown. This issue has now been fixed. Additionally, person identifiers for spouses/partners are now also included in an alphabetical family register.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Including content from word processing documents in landscape layout did not work as expected. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): In some cases, there were two empty paragraphs before new sections. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: If the Master- and Subdocument feature is used, there were some unwanted empty paragraphs at the start of each subdocument. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed (FBC 2019): The 'Family sections' area does now allow you to specify which individuals are going to have their own family sections in an 'Alphabetical family register'. You may select to create family sections for 'All individuals' in your FTM file or you may reduce the number of family sections by selecting to create family sections only for individuals who have children or spouses (partners). In cases where your FTM tree includes individuals who are not related to anybody else, these individuals will always be assigned their own family sections.
  • Changed (Swedish): The Swedish translation used for showing the number of children (for example 'They had one son') has been changed.
  • Fixed: If Ancestral Lines are shown the spouse name was missing from the heading of the first line. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: If Ancestral Lines are shown, the family chart was not shown for the starting couple in the first line. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In some rare cases the family heading did not match the couple shown in the family chart. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In some rare cases a negative age at death was reported. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): Creating documents in PDF file format has been improved. Now the page layout and page pagination will appear almost exactly as if the PDF file has been created by Microsoft Word 2016.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Spouses and partners were not included in the "Index of Places" in cases of shared facts (like Marriages, Divorces). This issue has now been fixed and both individuals are visible in the "Index of Places".
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Including content from word processing documents before or after a family chart did not work as expected if the option 'Show enlarged images first in Photo Album' was enabled. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): It is now possible to specify the generation number and the person number of the start person for outputs. By default, the starting individual is treated as being in generation zero and starts with the number one as person identifier. However, some publication formats expect the starting person's generation to be referred to as Generation 1. You may now adjust these settings as needed in the new 'Numbering' area on the 'Preferences', 'Report Style & Format' tab page.
    Numbering
  • Changed (FBC 2019): The combo boxes used to specify the item style for items in the list of facts and events displayed the currently selected item using black text color on blue background. This was hard to read and has now been fixed by using text in white color on blue background.
    List item styles
  • Changed: The method used to format a document into pages and update all page number related fields (like Table of Contents, Indexes, Figure numbers, Cross-references) in the document is now done in four steps (rather than two steps) to display some additional progress. Additionally, in some rare cases "Updating all fields... (Pass 3 of 4) Please be patient!" is shown. In this case, additional time is needed to update the page numbers in the table of contents. Please be patient and wait until this step is completed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): An unwanted empty line before the table of contents heading was created. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): Family Book Creator now allows users to omit headers and footers from being shown on the first pages of new sections inside the main part of your book document. It is also possible to restart page numbering for the main part at page number 1. The options are available in the new 'Header and footer' area on the 'Main part', 'Options' tab page.
    Header and Footer
  • Fixed: Under some rare circumstances the page numbers shown in the Table of Contents are off by two pages. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In Ancestor reports we may see invalid links to spouse sections ("Error! Bookmark not defined." messages in the document), if the spouse appears multiple times in the document. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Depending on the selected fact item options you may get just "[AttributeFactLabel]: " in the output for couples with a relationship status such as Divorced, Annulled or Separated. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Media items linked to a couple did not appear in the correct family section of the couple in an Alphabetical Family Register. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (Spanish): The decimal separator used for output in Spanish language now uses the decimal separator symbol specified in the regional number format settings of your Windows operating system.
  • Fixed (Swedish): The wording used for Departure facts has been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019, Swedish): Some strings are cut off on the 'Individuals to include' and 'Items to include' tab pages. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 617 (December 2020)

  • Fixed: For books about relatives some issues related to individuals who have complex relationships to the starting individual and are included multiple times in the book document are fixed now.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): The integrated help system and the User Guide in PDF file format are now up to date and cover the latest product changes and enhancements up to Build 617 of Family Book Creator 2019.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): When including content from documents in Portable Document Format (PDF) using the FBC_IncludeStoryAsText media category, some paragraphs with inline images used wrong line spacing settings and were followed by multiple empty lines. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): When including content from Word documents using the FBC_IncludeStoryAsText media category, some empty paragraphs did not use the proper font settings of the original Word document. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): When including content from Word documents using the FBC_IncludeStoryAsText media category, some section break settings did not properly transfer to the result. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed: Now, we only use one fractional digit for values shown in the statistics paragraph. Additionally, only individuals who lived at least one day are included in the average age statistics. The values shown are now similar to the average lifespan statistics shown in Family Tree Maker.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): The header and footer on odd numbered pages incorrectly positioned the chapter name or book title when 'inside edge' was selected, and the page number when 'outside edge' was selected. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Under some rare circumstances the plugin could not create a book document and the message "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process." appeared, even in cases where the document did not exist at all. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 606 (October 2020)

  • Changed: Family Book Creator now uses the number of days individuals lived to calculate the average lifespan and to determine the longest living individual. Before this change, the application used the number of years, which in some cases was not accurate enough.
  • Changed: The amount of data shown for duplicated families, in cases where Ancestral Lines are used as numbering and sorting system, has been reduced. Note: The parent family of the starting individual is always duplicated and in case of pedigree collapse (also known as Implex or Ahnenschwund) you may see other duplicates as well.
  • Fixed: In FTM, when you select a country to be excluded from resolved place names you expect that this country is always omitted from any output. If you are using place details together with the option 'Use place details always as place segments', suppressing the country from being shown did not work as expected and the country information was still listed in the narration and in the index of places. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Some bibliography entries based on Family Tree Maker’s source templates were shown incorrectly inside the bibliography chapter. The author’s name might have been duplicated and either used the wrong font style or the publisher information was missing. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: If the 'Ancestral Lines Pairing System' or ' Patrilineal/Matrilineal Lineages' styles are used for books about ancestors the chapter name shown in the header or footer for the first ancestral line did not include the line’s name in the chapter name. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: The sentence shown in cases where a couple has had no children always used present tense. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): A memory management issue while creating images from PDF files could cause the application to slowdown and crash. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (English): A grammar issue has been fixed in the introduction sentence used in cases of multiple spouses or relationships. A comma has been added to make it clear that a spouse or partner is for example the 3rd partner and not the third try at that particular relationship.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): Writing dates in English can now be done in a variety of ways. FBC now allows users to specify the output date format for reports in the English language.
    Available date formats
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): There is now a new 'Relationship notes' area on the 'Items to include', 'Partner' tab page which allows you to specify if and how relationship notes should be included.
    Area to specify options for relationship notes
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Chapter names in headers of even numbered pages in default text elements (like Title Page, Colophon, Dedication, Foreword and Introduction) were not correct. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): When including content from media files in word processing file format using the FBC_IncludeStoryAsText media category, the position of rotated images with a relative size to the original size was not always properly shown in PDF file format. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhanced (FBC 2019): The privacy of deceased individuals without a given birth or death date is now not always automatically protected if privacy protection options are used. Before this enhancement it could happen that deceased ancestors for example from the 18th century had been privatized just because there were no birth, marriage or death dates recorded in your FTM tree for them, their parents and children.
  • Fixed: Changing fonts on the 'Preferences', 'Fonts & Styles' tab page could result in wrong font settings and also lead to an application crash. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (Swedish): A spelling issue in the status message 'Kontrollera inställningarna på "Privat" och "Personer att ta med"' has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): If the media category FBC_IncludeStoryAsText was used together with FBC_IncludeAllPages to include contents from a PDF file as text, the content was included multiple times (one time for each page of the PDF document). This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): The 'Configure Media Filter' dialog was not properly displayed on some systems with scaled font settings. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (Spanish): There was a syntax issue in the introduction sentence used in cases of multiple relationships. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Under some rare circumstances the plugin could not be properly initialized and would hang, or the application would crash, on startup. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Under some rare circumstances, the content in default text elements (like Title Page, Colophon, Dedication, Foreword and Introduction) leads to crashes. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In the case where a partner or spouse is included multiple times as a partner or spouse of different primary individuals, without having a family section on their own, the details about this person could be duplicated. This issue has now been resolved. Details about this person are now only displayed when they first appear in the book document.
  • Fixed: The latest enhancement which allowed specification of a numeric value between 10 and 100 for the percentage P, within the media categories FBC_PhotoAlbum_P%OfFullWidth, was not robust enough. Additional characters before or after such a media category caused the application to crash. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: For some custom fact types is was not possible to select the output format (Formatting option). This issue has now been fixed.

Build 596 (July 2020)

  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Family Book Creator in some cases was not able to save a file to a network folder and displayed a message that permission is required. This issue has now been resolved.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): The new 'Header & Footer' tab page now allows the page header and footer to be customized. You can specify the content and alignment of the text shown. Appearance options allow you to select if lines below or above header and footer should be included. Additionally, you can now specify the page number position. The new 'Page number' item at the bottom of the 'Fonts and Styles' list allows you to specify font settings just for page numbers.

    'Header and Footer' tab page
  • Fixed: In the case where a partner or spouse is duplicated due to common ancestors and also appears in his or her own family section, it could happen that details about this person were duplicated. This issue has now been resolved. Details about this person are now only displayed in the family section of the respective person.
  • Enhancement: The family chart now shows up to 21 children. If more than 15 children are to be shown, a third row for children is used. If that family chart does not fit on a single page, the generation of the grandparents is omitted from the chart.
  • Fixed: In the case of duplicated families in books about descendants it could happen that cross-references to duplicated sections used incorrect page numbers. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In the case of RTF files with updated fields the hyperlinks from the table of contents to the actual pages did not always work as expected. Additionally, the font and paragraph styles used were not properly assigned to the table of contents. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: A privacy protection issue related to individuals with no birth and death dates has been fixed. Now the application always looks at the data of the individual’s children to determine if the data of that individual needs to be protected.
  • Changed: The error message in cases where a book document would not include any individuals has been improved. Now, the message mentions that you might need to check the settings on the 'Privacy' and 'Individuals to include' tab pages.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): The output of PDF pages as images has been improved. Annotations in PDF files (like text boxes, highlighted text or images, strikethrough text and underlined text) are now retained in cases where pages from PDF files are embedded as images by utilizing the media category FBC_HandleStoryAsImage. Additionally, more complex PDF documents according to the PDF 1.7 specification are now properly rendered to images.
  • Fixed: In the section about the spouse or partner, the wrong name format was used when the name was mentioned repeatedly. The format "Name Format" was always used twice. First in the sentence about the couple and then again in the sentence with the birth details of the spouse or partner. This problem has now been fixed and the name format "Repeated mention of the name" is now used for the repeated mention of the name of the spouse or partner.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): For some tab pages inside the 'Preference' area the application-integrated help system was not able to open the specified help page. This issue has been fixed.  Now you should be able to open the proper help page after you select a tab page in Family Book Creator and then press the function key F1.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): Images from word processing documents included with the help of the media category FBC_HandleStoryAsText, with a width larger than the width of the current text area, are now downscaled to fit to the width of the text area.
  • Changed (English User Interface): The checkbox 'Include reference numbers' on the 'Items to include', 'Family chart' register page has been changed to 'Include person identifiers' to avoid confusion with FTM’s 'Individual reference numbers'.
    Note: Person identifiers are based on the current genealogical numbering system and are unique in your book document. They are not equal to the reference numbers you may use for Person ID’s and Relationship ID’s in FTM.  
  • Enhancement: Birth-Order numbers in the list of children are now right-justified.
  • Enhancement: It is now possible to specify a numeric value between 10 and 100 for the percentage P within the media categories FBC_PhotoAlbum_P%OfFullWidth, which can be used to increase or decrease the size of images listed inside photo album sections.
    You may now assign for example the media category FBC_PhotoAlbum_30%OfFullWidth to reduce the size of your images. This may allow you to show more images on a single page as well.
    By default, images are sized so that two items can be displayed next to each other within the vertical margins of the page. That’s the default behavior in case no FBC_PhotoAlbum_P%OfFullWidth (or FBC_PhotoAlbum_FullWidth) media category is assigned. If you are using a media category with 50% or higher just one image is shown in a single row. If you are using a media category with 49% or lower, two images are shown in a single row.
    Media category Size Images per row
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_FullWidth 100% of text width 1
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_100%OfFullWidth 100% of text width 1
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_95%OfFullWidth 95% of text width 1
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_90%OfFullWidth 90% of text width 1
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_85%OfFullWidth 85% of text width 1
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_80%OfFullWidth 80% of text width 1
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_75%OfFullWidth 75% of text width 1
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_75%OfFullWidth 70% of text width 1
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_65%OfFullWidth 65% of text width 1
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_60%OfFullWidth 60% of text width 1
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_55%OfFullWidth 55% of text width 1
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_50%OfFullWidth 50% of text width 1
     (default behavior) 48% of text width 2
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_45%OfFullWidth 45% of text width 2
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_40%OfFullWidth 40% of text width 2
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_35%OfFullWidth 35% of text width 2
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_30%OfFullWidth 30% of text width 2
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_25%OfFullWidth 25% of text width 2
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_20%OfFullWidth 20% of text width 2
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_15%OfFullWidth 15% of text width 2
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_10%OfFullWidth 10% of text width 2
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): FBC’s internal text editor has been improved. It is now possible in default text elements to insert TC field codes to mark all the entries you want to use in a table of contents.
    Note: TC field codes define the text and page numbers for entries in a table of contents. You may insert a TC field immediately after the text you want to include in the contents.
    Currently, the table of contents is not just based on the heading style used in your document, but you must also use the appropriate heading style as well. However, the styles for headings (Heading 1-9) can only be assigned while you are using the full screen mode of the text editor. Each heading is followed by an invisible TC (Table of Contents Entry) field. The TC field is formatted as hidden text and displays no result in the document. To view the TC field entries used in Microsoft Word or the built-in text editor, the hidden text needs to be made visible. If hidden text is not visible, press Ctrl+Shift+8 or press the Show/Hide button on the Standard toolbar, which is the one that looks like a paragraph icon (¶).
    BTW: The best way to create your own table of contents entry after a heading is to copy an existing one and modify the parameters as needed or position the cursor at the end of a heading and press CTRL+F9 to insert field braces and enter the required field code.
    Example:
    FBC-HasFamilySection
    { TC "Statistics" \l 2 } defines the text Statistics as a level-2 table of contents entry, and applies the built-in style 'Heading level 2' to be used to display the text on the page and implicitly assigns 'TOC 2' (Contents 2) to that entry in the table of contents.
    Please have a look at the different levels of TC entries used and look how the \l switch is used to specify the level as needed. If no level is specified, level 1 is assumed. (Some more details about TC field codes may be found here: https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Field-codes-TC-Table-of-Contents-Entry-field-01e5dd8a-4730-4bc2-8594-23d7329e25c3).
  • Fixed: The hyperlink to the starting individual from the name in the list of children of his/her parents’ section did not always work properly in books about ancestors. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In the case of unmarried couples (relationship type set to something other than 'Spouse') in ancestor books the person identifier for the partner was not shown. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In the case of pedigree collapse it could happen that the person identifier for a child was not properly shown in family charts, while the number in the list of children of the individual’s parent was correct. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In the case of alternate names it happened that the hyperlink to an individual pointed to the name given inside the sentence for the alternate name fact. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement: For books about relatives and descendants it is now possible to generate family sections even if the individuals have no children and no spouse, without having to generate family segments for all individuals: It is possible by using a custom fact type with the label FBC_HasFamilySection to create family sections also for individuals who would not get their own family section (individuals with no children and no spouse) by default.
    FBC_HasFamilySection
    You need to add this custom fact type to the fact list of each individual who should be included with his or her own family section. This may make sense if the individual has photos attached, which you would like to show inside a photo album. Another scenario would be single individuals with a lot of notes or details, which you do not want to include inside the list of children of the individual’s parents’ section. You may now just create additional family sections for these individuals.
    Note: FBC_- fact types do not affect the operation of FTM and you may mark the fact type as private by default, so that they do not show up in reports, lists and charts created by FTM by default.
    FBC_HasFamilySection
  • Fixed (German and Swedish User Interface): The image resolution label was not translated. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: The application could crash with an IndexOutOfRange exception in cases where Occupation facts with place details recorded in FTM’s place field, but with no occupation specified and the option 'Use place details always as place segments' was disabled. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): It is now possible to include content from media items in HTML format by utilizing the media category FBC_HandleStoryAsText (as described in the soon updated FBC 2019 User Guide).
    Note: Some characters do not properly transfer from Ancestry to FTM, but FBC fixes these character issues.
  • Fixed (French): In cases where there is a female couple with children, the sentence with the number of children started incorrectly. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): Footnotes and endnotes from embedded documents are now using the in FBC specified font style for footnotes and are converted to footnotes or endnotes depending on your settings for Source Citations on the 'Preferences', 'General' tab page.   
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): FBC’s internal text editor has been improved. You may now specify text wrapping around tables, table alignment and offset by using the new 'Table Positioning' dialog.
    Table Positioning
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): FBC’s internal text editor now displays footnotes and endnotes from loaded documents. When you load a Word document footnotes and endnotes are now retained and will be part of your book document.
    Note: The editor does not offer the functionality to create footnotes or endnotes.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): FBC’s internal text editor now allows character formatting options. You can now specify spacing, position, kerning threshold and a horizontal scale on the new 'Advanced' tab page of the font dialog.
    Font Advanced
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): FBC’s internal text editor has been improved. Copy and paste from Microsoft Word to the text area of the built-in editor now retains field codes (like Table of Contents (TC fields) and Index entries (XE fields)).
  • Fixed: If a sentence ended with an abbreviation followed by a period an extra period was also added. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 586 (May 2020)

  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Under some rare circumstances an error message was displayed shortly before the generated document was finished. The application stopped working and crashed. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Under some rare circumstances the application could not be started successfully. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 584 (May 2020)

  • Fixed (Swedish): When building the index of individuals or places, special letters of the Swedish alphabet (like Å and Ø) were not properly sorted at the end of the index. This issue has been fixed now.
  • Fixed: Under some rare circumstances, if family sections start on new pages in books about relatives of the starting individual, distances for page headers and footers might be incorrectly shown. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Non biological parent-child relationships were mentioned incorrectly in cases of same sex couples with children. For example, when there is a biological mother and an adopted mother in FTM, FBC listed the adopted mother as the adopted father. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: If multiple relationships are shown within a family section, the preferred relationship was not always used to create the family heading and to display the family chart. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement: Family Book Creator creates hyperlinks to parents, children or additional spouses in your document. Now in Microsoft Word, the name and lifespan of the target individual appears as a ScreenTip when you rest the mouse pointer over the hyperlink in your Word document.
  • Fixed: In books about relatives of the starting individual, hyperlinks to parents, children or additional spouses sometimes did not work as expected. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Under some rare circumstances in books about relatives of the starting individual, family sections could be duplicated when the direct ancestors have relationships with [unknown spouse]'s in your FTM tree. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): The feature for including content from word processing documents by using the media category FBC_HandleStoryAsText has been enhanced. Now additional media categories allow you to specify where the first section with content from the word processing document begins. The following media categories are supported:
    • FBC_HandleStoryAsText_NewPage
      Starts the new section on the following page.
    • FBC_HandleStoryAsText_EvenPage
      Starts the new section on the next even-numbered page.
    • FBC_HandleStoryAsText_OddPage
      Starts the new section on the next odd-numbered page.
    • FBC_HandleStoryAsText_Continuous
      Starts the new section on the same page as the previous section.

Using one of the above categories also retains all following section breaks from the embedded document as needed. When only the media category FBC_HandleStoryAsText_KeepSections is assigned, the default behavior is to start the new section on the following page.

  • Fixed: Under some rare circumstances, in books about relatives of the starting individual, in family sections about direct ancestors who had multiple relationships, media items were missing. If single sections per relationship were used, the media items were missing in photo albums of the primary individual and also in the first spouse or partner sections. Media items linked to both individuals of the couple had always been included. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (Spanish): The Spanish conjunction "y" (meaning "and") was not properly handled in multiple parts of the generated content. This issue has now been fixed. The spelling is now based on the word that follows. "y" becomes "e" when it precedes a word that begins with the "i" sound.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019, British English): If a color assigned to individuals is listed in the color-coding legend, the British spelling “Individual colour for” is now used.
  • Fixed: If a fact note had a single space at the end, an unwanted additional space followed by a dot was added at the end of that fact note in the output. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2017 and 2019): A compatibility issue related to loading and saving settings in FBCS file format has been fixed. FBC 2017 and FBC 2019 are now compatible with the upcoming maintenance release of Family Tree Maker 2019 (Version 24.1).
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): Content from media files in word processor file formats is now optimized for better results. Images, shapes and text boxes with a fixed vertical position relative to the top page border are now assigned a vertical position that is relative to their anchor paragraph. This allows smarter embedding and helps to get better results.
  • Fixed: If preferred birth facts for individuals are marked as private in FTM and alternate birth facts are also available, previous versions of Family Book Creator did not combine the individuals’ names and data from alternate birth facts into single sentences. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement: Family Book Creator now uses alternate birth and death dates to show lifespans for individuals in family charts and index entries in cases where the respective preferred birth or death facts are set to private in FTM and alternate data is available.
  • Changed (English): The wording used for couples with a relationship type other than "Spouse" has been improved ("partnered to" has been changed to "partnered with").
    Note: To specify a relationship type in FTM: Open the Relationship View ('People' workspace, 'Person' tab, select the Relationships view, by clicking on the 'Relationships' button), select a partner. Click on the Relationship drop-down menu and select the relationship type as needed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): After restarting Family Book Creator, default text elements (like Title Page, Colophon, Dedication, Foreword and Introduction) were sometimes not properly shown. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Paragraph borders in content from files in word processor file formats were omitted in the FBC document. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): If OpenOffice Writer was used to open RTF files, the statistics paragraph and content from media files in word processor file formats used an unwanted engraved font effect. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Change: Because LibreOffice Writer is not supported by Family Book Creator the application is no longer included in the list of target word processing systems on the 'Preferences', 'General' tab page. Additionally, OpenOffice Writer is now correctly found on your system even after LibreOffice has been installed.
  • Fixed: A leap year issue prevented Family Book Creator from running as expected on February 29. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): If your book did not start with one of the default elements (like Title Page, Colophon, Dedication, Foreword, Table of Contents and Introduction) the book document started with two blank pages. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): The button bars and text editor controls were not disabled when the respective text element was not part of the book project. This issue has now been fixed. Now all controls on text editor tab pages (like Title Page, Colophon, Dedication, Foreword and Introduction) are only enabled if the respective element is going to be included.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): The internal text editor has been improved. The currently selected "Show/Hide Formatting and Hidden Characters (¶)" and "Show/Hide table gridlines" states are now retained when using the full-screen text editor.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): FBC’s internal text editor has been improved. Fields used to define Table of Contents (TC fields) and Index entries (XE fields) are now displayed or hidden when the "Show/Hide Formatting and Hidden Characters (¶)" button is enabled or disabled.
  • Fixed (FBC 2017 and FBC 2019): Cropped portraits (also known as profile pictures) were not handled properly in photo album sections. If a profile picture is assigned without any cropping, the include 'Images which are set as portrait' option works as expected. However, if FTM’s new profile picture-cropping tool was used the original image was always included by default even when the include 'Images which are set as portrait' checkbox was cleared. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): If your trial edition has expired, it is now possible to start another free trial period by entering "JUST-H0N0-RY0U-RFAMIL-YHIST0RY" (without the quotes) into the serial number field.
  • Enhancement (FBC 2019): Family Book Creator 2019 now allows you to include multiple word processing documents before or after family charts.
  • Fixed (FBC 2019): Under some rare circumstances, content from word processing documents included before or after family charts was duplicated in the output. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Change: On the first startup, after updating to a new FBC build, the startup time needed to launch the plugin is recalculated.
  • Fixed: On some systems, endnotes extended about one line below the bottom margin of the page when Microsoft Word 2013 or later was used. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (Spanish): There was a spelling issue in the Spanish translation of the word "four". This issue has now been fixed and the proper translation "cuatro" is used.

Build 569 (January 2020)

  • New major release: First public release of the new Family Book Creator 2019 edition. Please review "What’s new in Family Book Creator 2019?" to learn about the many features introduced in Family Book Creator 2019.
  • Fixed: Some style sheet names with Unicode characters did not appear properly in the style selector inside Microsoft Word. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: On some systems, Microsoft Word was not found even it was installed. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: When automatic individual reference IDs were assigned to "unknown partners" in FTM, the application could crash in cases where these reference IDs should have been included in the book document. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (FBC2017): When including color-coding values, yellow color was always substituted with gray. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Change: Portable Document Format (PDF) files created with Family Book Creator do now comply with the PDF 1.7 standard. It is highly recommended that Adobe Acrobat Reader be used to open and print your PDF files. Please install the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (https://get.adobe.com/reader/) to open and print PDFs.

Build 564 (September 2019)

  • Enhancement: Family Book Creator 2017 is now compatible with Family Tree Maker 2017 and Family Tree Maker 2019. Note: You need to uninstall your current Family Book Creator 2017 version and install again (using the latest FBC installer package) to be able to launch Family Book Creator 2017 from Family Tree Maker 2019.
    Please review as well: "Is Family Book Creator compatible with Family Tree Maker 2019?"

    For compatibility reasons with upcoming Family Tree Maker releases the following changes are done:
    • Family Book Creator 2017 no longer stores text used for default text elements (like Title Page, Colophon, Dedication, Foreword and Introduction) in your FTM Tree. (Note: Previous versions of Family Book Creator used custom fact types to store text as mentioned in the chapter "Default book items" in the Family Book Creator User Guide). Starting with Family Book Creator 2017, Version 23.14 the text elements are part of the Family Book Creator configuration and are saved, together with all other settings when you close the plug-in, or manually by using the 'Save Settings' button found on the 'Preferences' tab page.
    • Family Book Creator 2017 now supports two different file formats (also known as file types) for configuration information.
      • Family Book Creator Setting files (File extension: .fbcs):
        This format is used to store all settings together with all text elements in a single file. This is now the new default file format used to store everything.
      • Book Creator Setting files (File extension: .bcs):
        This format is available for compatibility reasons. You may use this file type to load configurations stored by previous versions of Family Book Creator or to store your preferences without storing default text elements. This allows you for example to change settings without changing the default text elements, because these text elements are not reset to default text when you load a configuration from a .bcs file.

You may open or save settings by using the 'Save Settings' button or 'Load Settings' button found on the 'Preferences' tab page and selecting the file type as needed.

    • A new 'Restore text' button is at the top right corner on the built-in text editor tab pages for default text elements (Title page, Colophon, Dedication, Foreword and Introduction). It allows you to restore the default text of the respective element.
    • Text stored in fact notes (as mentioned in the chapter "Default book items" in the Family Book Creator User Guide) is not automatically loaded and used. If such text elements exist, it is possible to import the text by using the new 'Import text' button. Note: This button is only visible when the current starting individual has stored text in a fact note for the respective text element.
  • Fixed: There was an issue related to missing text from person, research or fact notes, where these notes contained some unexpected text formatting tags. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Fractional font sizes (like "6.5", "7.5" or "8.5") could cause program crashes. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed: The last line of a footnote or endnote might break at the end of a page and continue to the next page. This behavior has now been changed.
  • Changed: The text style used for footnote or endnote text has now been changed. Now, after paragraph spacing is used.
  • Fixed: "Person ID" or "Relationship ID" facts using automatic reference numbers could not be included. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement: For PDF output, footnote or endnote numbers are now hyperlinks leading to the corresponding note entry.
  • Changed: Endnote separator lines are no longer being shown in the endnotes section.
  • Fixed: Names with carriage returns or new line characters (line feeds) could cause exceptions when updating all fields. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Left or right double quotation marks did not show up properly when creating index entries. This issue has now been fixed and left or right double quotation marks are now replaced with regular double quotes for index entries.
  • Changed: Protecting only living individuals from being included in your book is now easier. The new 'Use privacy protection options only for living individuals' check box allows you to protect only living individuals, which means that deceased individuals are always going to be included in your books.
  • Fixed: The past or present tense did not work properly for individuals having future events. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Initializing the plugin sometimes gave the "System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Count cannot be less than zero" error. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Name fields or “Also Known As” facts containing single slashes or backslashes sometimes produced errors. This problem has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: If a living person has a time period for an occupation fact, the present tense was used. This problem has now been fixed by using the past tense.
  • Fixed: The Master and Subdocuments feature caused two errors. First, moving the files to a different folder did not work because the subdocuments could not be found by the master document. Second, Microsoft Word on a Mac could not find the subdocuments. This issue has been fixed now.
  • Fixed: Under some very rare circumstances it could happen that the biological parents of a person are not included in the output. This issue has been fixed now.
  • Changed: Style sheets used for headings had been changed. Subsequent paragraphs of headings now use "Floating text" style instead of the "Normal" style.
  • Changed: The style sheet used for paragraphs following one of the styles "Title page", "Colophon", "Dedication", "Foreword" or "Introduction" has been changed from "Normal" style to the proper style of the text element.
  • Enhancement: It is now also possible to include parenthetical lineage lists as back-references to the starting individual for privatized individuals. This feature may be enabled or disabled by using the checkbox 'Include parenthetical lineage lists also for privatized individuals' found on the 'Preferences', 'Privacy' tab page.
  • Enhancement: In case you are using the Color Coding feature of FTM 2017 it is now also possible to include these colors for privatized individuals. This feature may be enabled or disabled by using the checkbox 'Include colors assigned by color coding also for privatized individuals' found on the 'Preferences', 'Privacy' tab page.
  • Fixed: Under some very rare circumstances in books about relatives it could happen that you get error messages (Error! Bookmark not defined.), instead of proper cross-references. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed: The output for calculated dates has been adjusted. In case the calculated date is a specific date (with a given day) the output has been changed.
  • Fixed (German): The sentences created in German language for the 'Burial' fact types have been improved.
  • Changed: The style sheet used for paragraphs of the styles "Title page", "Colophon", "Dedication", "Foreword" or "Introduction" has been changed. Now these paragraphs are not kept together with previous paragraphs.
  • Changed: Present tense is now always used for sentences created for Title fact types, except in cases where the individual is already deceased or the Title was used in the past.
  • Fixed: Under some very rare circumstances it could happen in partner paragraphs, inside the list of children for a couple, that after references to source citations a space character was missing. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case an individual is marked to be hidden (FBC_PrivacyProtection = Suppress) this individual is now handled like it does not exist at all in your database. Before this bugfix it could happen that this marked individual still showed up as 'Living…' or 'Deceased ...' in family charts or reports.
  • Fixed: Under some very rare circumstances, it could happen that family information (Family Chart, List of Children, Photo Album) in descendant reports was missing. This only happened for couples in cases where family sections were ordered by families and the couple had pedigree-collapse because they were sharing the same ancestor and this ancestor was also part of the book. This issue has been fixed now.
  • Fixed: In case a middle name has been recorded in FTM by just using a single character, it could happen that the first character of the first given name was used as the middle initial inside index entries for AKAs or nicknames. This issue has been fixed now.
  • Fixed: In case date ranges should be shown in a list of facts and events (using table list style) it could happen for long dates that they always used two lines. This issue has been fixed now.

Build 529 (December 2018)

  • Changed: Now always present tense for the sentence "They have/had n children" is used except in case: both parents are deceased, one parent is deceased or one child is deceased.
  • Fixed (German): The sentence created in German language for the fact type 'Christening (adult)' for females had an issue. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed: The application does now display an error dialog after it has been restarted in case the file save dialog crashed immediately after pressing the 'Create Document' button and a computer system manufactured by Dell is used. Reason: There is a known compatibility issue between Family Tree Maker 2017 (Version 23.1 and 23.2) and older versions of "Dell Backup and Recovery" applications which leads to crashes in case a file save or open dialog is shown.
    Solution to resolve this issue:
    You may uninstall "Dell Backup and Recovery" to fix your FTM and FBC crash issues. Only particularly old versions of the tool were having such an issue - any Dell Backup and Recovery applications of version 1.8.2 (or higher) will have it fixed by Dell. If you need to re-install this tool, here's the download link for the latest version (1.9.2.8) from their website: https://www.dell.com/support/home/ua/en/enbsdt1/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=GX7TX
    With it installed, FTM and FBC should still be working normally.
  • Fixed: In the case of same-sex relationships between females, it could happen that those individuals were missing from books using the alphabetical family register style. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed: Now always present tense for sentences created for Occupation or Employment fact types is used, except in case the individual is already deceased or the event has happened in the past.
  • Fixed: In case text elements used for "Title page," "Colophon," "Dedication," "Foreword" and "Introduction" included text style information (for example copied from a Word document), it could happen that this text element did not get included in the book document. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case FBC_PhotoAlbum_FullWidth is used to increase the size of images included in photo album sections it could happen, that an additional blank page did follow the image. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case the available width for text on a page was less than 17 centimeters it could happen, that portraits included in family charts did not fit into the available space. This issue has now been fixed. Now the images are scaled down to fit to the size of the boxes in the family chart.
  • Fixed/Enhancement: When you add a source citation to your database, FTM does suggest including the citation text and the web address in reference notes populated by FTM for this source citation. As a result you may get very long footnotes or endnotes included in books created by Family Book Creator, because previous versions of FBC did just always use the complete reference note. This has now been changed: Now including pre-selected citation texts and web addresses for footnotes or endnotes created by Family Book Creator is optional. They are only going to be included in footnotes or endnotes, if the options 'Include pre-selected citation text' or 'Include pre-selected web address', in the 'Source Citations' area on the 'Preferences' tab page, are selected. If the appropriate check-box is unselected then pre-selected citation text and web addresses are going to be omitted.
  • Fixed: Under some very rare circumstances it could happen on 32-bit systems, that huge images are not properly scaled to the desired output size. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case an individual without a recorded name should be included in a book document the plugin showed an error message and stopped working. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In previous versions footnote or endnote reference numbers used for references to source citations were not always properly sorted inside the brackets following the text to which they belong. This issue has been resolved. Now footnote or endnote reference numbers are always sorted in ascending order.
  • Change: When footnote or endnote reference numbers are used they may now be shown using ranges rather than just a list of individual numbers in case these numbers form a continuous series of numbers. For example you may see now [1–5] rather than [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] for five consecutive citations.
  • Fixed: The paragraph formatting tags (<p> and </p>) used in Label fields for fact notes did not work as intended if the fact notes were output within a list of facts and events. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Regardless of the selected output format for source citations (footnotes, endnotes, embedded or omitted) it was always mentioned in the introduction chapter that source citations are included as footnotes. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: There was an inconsistency in the user interface. If the sort option "Sorted by families" was selected for persons in books about descendants, the checkbox control "Use a separate section for each relationship" is disabled as well. Unfortunately, this control has not been enabled again when the book type was changed. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case no "carried forward" indicators (plus signs in the list of children) should be used to identify individuals who have their own family sections also individual reference numbers had been omitted. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Under some very rare circumstances it could happen for books about relatives of the starting individual that the section for the starting individual was not included. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case of books about relatives, it could happen that information was duplicated. This only happened in cases where multiple spouses or partners of ancestors of the starting individual had been included. This issue has been fixed now. In case duplication is detected Family Book Creator now includes the information only once in the book document and creates cross-references to make the reader aware of where additional information about an individual or couple could be found.
    Note: To avoid such duplication it is required to create single sections for every couple by selecting 'Use single sections per relationship' on the 'Individuals to include' tab.
  • Fixed: In case an individual is marked to be hidden (FBC_PrivacyProtection = Suppress), this individual is now handled like they do not exist at all in your database. Before this bug-fix, this marked individual still showed up as 'Living…' or 'Deceased ...' in family charts or reports.

Build 505 (September 2018)

  • Fixed (English-UK): Before this fix, "baptized" was always used in English sentences generated for the ceremony of baptism. This issue has been fixed. In the case where "English (UK)" is selected as the output language, the preferred spelling has now been changed to "baptised" for those outside North America.
  • Fixed: A button with the German text "Fertigstellen" could appear during the installation or update of FBC. This issue has now been fixed and the button has been translated to English language.
  • Fixed: On some Windows 10 systems, the product installation did not work as expected and the error message "VSSetup. Windows Installer Bootstrapper has stopped working." was shown. This issue has now been fixed in the current Family Book Creator 2017 installation package.
  • Fixed: In case the formatting option 'Include Fact Notes as paragraph' was used together with Source Citations as footnotes or endnotes, an unwanted space character was shown in the generated text before footnote or endnote reference numbers. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case the formatting option 'Include in narrative (FTM style)' was used and the FTM fact sentence template did contain a space character before the fact data placeholder {placeOnly}, this space was omitted from the output. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (English): The wording used for legally separated in Family Charts was wrong. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Media elements which were only linked to name facts had been only included in the photo album section when the option 'Include only images linked to included facts or source citations' was unselected. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed: The option 'Use numbered figures' on the 'Photo Album' tab page is now always selected as the default setting in case the options to 'Avoid duplicate images', and 'List related images' are selected as well.
  • Fixed: In case text elements used for "Title page," "Colophon," "Dedication," "Foreword" and "Introduction" included text using subscript or superscript as character formatting, the output produced was incorrect. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: The font size used for footnote/endnote reference numbers did not always match the selected font size. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case names for individuals or places did contain special characters (like hyphens or quotes), it could happen that the generated index of places and index of individuals is in the wrong alphabetical sort order. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: The Family Chart and Name Index output contained birth and death years which are marked as private in FTM. This issue has now been fixed to exclude them.
  • Fixed: The Family Chart included shared facts like Marriage or Divorce even when these facts were marked as private in FTM. This issue has now been fixed to exclude them.
  • Fixed: In case an individual should be suppressed based on privatization settings, the surname for this individual was still shown. This issue has been fixed, and now all details of that person are omitted.
  • Fixed: The option to include only preferred shared facts (like Marriage or Divorce) did not work. This issue has been fixed and it is now possible to include just preferred shared facts.
  • Fixed: The option to include only preferred facts did not work for custom fact types. This issue has been fixed and it is now possible to include just preferred custom facts.
  • Fixed: The option to not include private facts did not work for custom fact types. This issue has been fixed and now it is possible to hide privatized custom facts.
  • Enhancement: It is now optional to include calculated ages for brides and grooms and for deceased individuals. These new options are available now in the 'Calculated Ages' area on the 'Preferences', 'General' tab page.
  • Enhancement: The algorithm used to check if a person needs to be privatized based on the individuals' age has been enhanced. If no birth date is known, but a wedding date is available, the check now uses the wedding date to perform the check. If the year of the wedding is before 1920, the person is not going to be privatized. If this still does not help to decide if the person should not be privatized, the person is going to be privatized by default. If you do not want this to happen, please record an estimated year of birth for the person that should not be privatized.
  • Enhancement: A new numbering format for person reference numbers has been introduced to be used in books about your ancestors which are ordered by generations using the Sosa-Stradonitz (Ahnentafel) style. Now two numbering formats are available. The preexisting "Kekulé Number" format (also known as Ahnentafel numbers) and a new "Sequential Number" format.
    - Kekulé numbers are calculated on the position of a person inside the pedigree and may use a high number of digits for persons in higher generations. In this schema, the number of any person's father is double the person's reference number, and a person's mother is double the person's reference number plus one.
    - Sequential numbers are not calculated numbers. They are continuously assigned in the order the persons are included in your book document.
    These numbering formats are available in the 'Ancestral Style' area on the 'Preferences', 'Style/Format' tab page in case 'Sosa- Stradonitz System' has been selected as current ancestral numbering style.
  • Fixed: If an individual’s privacy was protected, then the media elements linked to his or her partner were also not shown in the photo album section of that family. This issue has been fixed. Now just media elements which are linked to the protected individual are omitted from the output. Media elements linked just to the partner, but not to the protected individual are now included.
  • Fixed: If the list of children is going to be included inside family sections, it is optional to include or omit sentences with the number of children known inside partner paragraphs. In case the option 'Show number of children' was unselected, the introduction line used before the list of children was wrongly not included as well. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: If an individual’s privacy should be protected, the marriage sentence still included some details about the protected individual. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case of alphabetical family registers, just the headline of the introduction chapter was included and the text was missing. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed: The output of fact notes has been changed. If a fact note contains leading or trailing blank lines, this fact note is now automatically shown in a separate paragraph. Additional blank lines before and after the notes are not taken into account or removed from the output.
  • Enhancement: The placeholder <Text> can now be used in Label fields for notes. The character string <Text> is not a format tag, but serves as a placeholder for the actual text of a note. The text from the note field is automatically used instead of the placeholder. Leading and trailing blank lines are always removed from the note. This makes it possible to allow the use of format tags for document and text formatting both before and after the actual text of notes. So for example: "<p>Note:<br><Text></p>" (without the quotation marks) can be used to output the text from the note field in its own paragraph or "(<i><Text></i>)" (without the quotation marks) can be used to output the text from the note field in italics.
  • Fixed: In case of pedigree collapse, Kekulé numbers displayed for children in family charts could be wrong. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (German): If the locale of the Windows operating system is not set to "German (Germany)", the application-integrated help system did not work as expected. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed: Facts which are marked as private are only included in family charts if they are also included in narrative reports or in lists of facts and events of the primary individual of a family. This means only in case the option 'Include private' is selected for the respective fact or event type on the tab page 'Items to include', 'Primary', facts which are marked as private are included in the family chart as well.

Build 483 (May 2018)

  • Enhancement: Family Book Creator now allows you to include data from all predefined Family Tree Maker facts and event types (fact types) and from custom (user defined) fact types found in your FTM tree.
    It is possible, for almost every fact type, to define which type of formatting should be used to output the respective data. The following formatting options are available:
    • Include in narrative (FBC style)
      Sentences are generated based on predefined templates from Family Book Creator. (Only available for predefined facts and events)
    • Include in narrative (FTM style)
      Sentences are generated based on the fact sentence template stored in Family Tree Maker. (Available only in FBC 2012 and later)
    • Include Fact Notes as paragraph
      Only the text from the Fact Note is output as a separate paragraph
    • Include as fact attribute in narrative
      The label of the fact type gets included followed by a colon and is followed by data from your FTM tree.
    • Include in list of facts and events
      The fact data is output in list or table style
      Fact formatting styles

Note: The formatting style cannot be changed for "Name", "Also Known As", "Birth", "Death", and "Marriage" fact types. These facts and events are always included by using the FBC style in the narration.
Note: Custom fact types starting with "FBC_" (without quotes) in their name (fact label) are ignored. These FBC-fact types are only for internal use by Family Book Creator.
Hint: You may want to hide unused fact types from the list of fact types listed in the 'Items to include' dialogs by selecting the option "List currently used fact types", which can be found in the 'Supported facts' area on the 'Book items', 'Main part', 'Options' tab page.

  • Enhancement (only FBC 2012 and later): For nearly all built-in or predefined fact types it is now possible to specify the wording for a sentence generated from data recorded in your Family Tree Maker database for a fact type, using the predefined sentence templates available in Family Book Creator or via the modified sentence created/edited in the sentence template available in Family Tree Maker.
    Select the appropriate style from the 'Formatting' drop-down list (found in the fact options area) on the 'Items to include' tab page for the currently selected fact type:
    • Include in narrative (FBC style)
      Generates sentences based on predefined Family Book Creator templates.
    • Include in narrative (FTM style)
      Generates sentences based on the FTM sentence template for the selected fact type.
      Family Tree Maker (version 2012 and later) allows you to define and modify sentence templates. To modify a sentence template in Family Tree Maker you need to open the 'Manage Facts' dialog by selecting 'Manage Facts…' from the 'Edit' menu in Family Tree Maker. Select the fact type you want to modify and click on the 'Properties…' button. This opens the fact type properties dialog, where you may specify the wording of the fact sentence as needed.
      Note: The modified sentence is stored in the FTM database. In case you are working with multiple FTM trees you have to modify the sentence in each of your FTM trees.
      Fact sentence definition for fact type Occupation
      Note: Predefined templates from Family Book Creator are available in multiple languages, while you can store in FTM only a single template using one language at a time.
  • Enhancement: It is now possible to include Fact Notes as additional paragraphs inside the narrative section of an individual. This enhancement allows enhanced storytelling because you may now use generic fact types like Memories, Narrative or Note (created as custom fact type in FTM) to record all the anecdotes, stories and memories you would like to see included in the narrative section of an individual. Values from Date fields of these "Narrative" fact types are used for chronologically sorting, but are not included in the book document.
    In case you would like to set a fact type to be used as "Narrative" fact type you need to select "Include Fact Notes as paragraph", from the 'Formatting' drop-down list found on the 'Items to include' tab page, of the currently selected fact type.
    "Story" fact type formatted to include just the text from the Fact Notes
  • Enhancement: It is now possible to just list data for fact attributes, without constructing a sentence, inside the narrative. The label of the fact type gets included followed by a colon and is followed by data from your FTM tree. Please select "Include as fact attribute in narrative", from the 'Formatting' drop-down list found on the 'Items to include' tab page, of the currently selected fact type to use this style.
  • Enhancement: It is now possible to include information from recorded facts and events from your FTM tree in table style format in a list of facts and events paragraph. This paragraph is following the narrative report paragraph of an individual if needed. A list of shared facts and events for a couple is following the list of children for the respective couple.
    In case you would like to list available data for the currently selected fact type in table style, please select "Include in list of facts and events", from the 'Formatting' drop-down list found on the 'Items to include' tab page, for the currently selected fact type.

    Additionally, it is possible to specify the item style to use. Multiple different item styles are available from the drop-down list.
    Some of the styles
    The table style uses three (invisible) columns. The fact label is always included on the left in the leftmost column followed by the value from the Date field (if available) in the middle column. Where the rest of the data (fact attributes like Place, Description and Fact Notes) is going to be included depends on the selected item style and if the data has been recorded in your tree or not. The following 'List of facts and events'-Item-Styles are available:
    • Table style D-1
      Only values from Description fields are allowed to be included in the rightmost column next to the Date. The value from the Place field has maximum space available because it always gets listed in its own row.
    • Table style P-1
      Only values from Place fields are allowed to be listed in the rightmost column next to the Date. The value from the Description field has maximum space available because it always gets listed in its own row.
    • Table style D-2
      Values from Description fields have priority and are always listed before values from other fields. Description or Place field values get included in the rightmost column next to the Date.
    • Table style P-2
      Values from Place fields have priority and are always listed before values from other fields. Place or Description field values get included in the rightmost column next to the Date.
    • Table style D-3
      All fact attributes are listed in the rightmost column. Description field values have priority and are listed before data from other fields.
    • Table style P-3
      All fact attributes are listed in the rightmost column. Place field values have priority and are listed before data from other fields.
    • Table list style D
      All fact attributes are listed by using a single row for each attribute. Description field values have priority and are listed before data from other fields.
    • Table list style P
      All fact attributes are listed by using a single row for each attribute. Place field values have priority and are listed before data from other fields.

      Some output options for the list of facts and events are available on the 'Preferences', 'General' tab page.
      Output options for list of facts and events

      Different character and font styles are used and can be modified by the user in the 'List of facts and events' section found in the style list on the 'Preferences', 'Fonts' tab page.
      Note: Embedded Source Citations are using the font settings defined for fact notes and are also following the fact notes position.
      Style settings for 'List of facts and events'
  • Enhancement: The lists of fact types in the 'Items to include' lists for Primary, Partner or Children are now alphabetically sorted by default. This behavior can be changed by the user on the 'Book Items', 'Main part', 'Options' tab page.
    List of supported facts options
  • Enhancement: It is now optional to show or hide LDS specific events or fact types from the list of facts and events. The option 'Show LDS facts' can be found in the 'Supported facts' area on the 'Book Items', 'Main part', 'Options' tab page.
  • Changed: The feature to list only fact types which are in use in the current tree is now only available in case you are using Family Book Creator 2017 on a 64-bit system or in case you are using less than ten thousand individuals in your tree. The option 'List currently used fact types' can be found in the 'Supported facts' area on the 'Book Items', 'Main part', 'Options' tab page.
  • Enhancement: It is now possible to just show '«private»' instead of the name for privatized individuals. The guillemets (also known as angle quotes) around «private» make it easier to distinguish between privatized individuals or real names for individuals.
  • Improved: The built-in text editor, available to change the text elements used for the "Title page", "Colophon", "Dedication", "Foreword" and "Introduction" sections, has been improved. Now it is possible to change the font family of a selected area even in case there are multiple different font families used in the selected area. Before only a single font could be selected in the text and changed to another one.
  • Improved: The font size selector on the 'Preferences', 'Fonts' tab page now allows the selection of some half point font values like "6.5", "7.5" and "8.5".
  • Changed: The keyword used for the statistics placeholder was case sensitive in the past. This has been changed. Now the letter case used for "<statistics>" (without the quotes) does not matter.
  • Changed: The checkbox to determine family/married names has been moved from 'Preferences', 'General' tab to the 'Name Formats' tab.
  • Fixed (Norwegian): A translation issue in the sentence for the number of children has been fixed.
  • Fixed (Dutch): An unwanted space character in the sentence shown for the Residence fact type has been removed.
  • Fixed: There was an issue related to names being shown wrong on the title page. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: There was an issue related to single apostrophe characters in names being handled as given name markers. This issue has been fixed and now single apostrophe characters are allowed at any position in names, without being handled as given name marker.
  • Fixed: There has been an issue related to cropping or tailoring of images to passport format. The resulting image width may have been calculated too small some in previous releases. This issue has now been fixed and now also always an aspect ratio of 7x9 is used for passport format.
  • Fixed: In case an image is linked to a relationship with a spouse or partner and this image is linked to an 'unknown spouse' as well, it could happen that you receive a warning message that no photo album section could be created. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Improved: The layout used for the narrative report has been improved again. The default is to use text-only layout for all paragraphs. Only in the case that a person's portrait is included for an individual, the starting paragraph for this individual utilizes a table-based layout. Now the used space for the text that is going to be shown left of the person's portrait is measured and if it does not fit into the box the text which did not fit left to the portrait is going to be automatically displayed in a paragraph under the table-based layout.
  • Enhancement: The use of hanging indentations in parent paragraphs is now optional. Family Book Creator uses standard indents to structure the output. In this case, the output of the person order number is left-aligned and the actual text for the person is then right indented. A hanging indent is an indent that indents all text except the first line, which means when using a hanging indent, the second and all the following lines of a paragraph are indented more than the first - the first line thus "hangs" on the left out of the column. Please use the new option 'Use Hanging Paragraphs' in the 'Indents and Spacing' area on the 'Settings', 'Text and page layout' tab pages to disable this behavior. When disabled parent paragraphs are going to be created without indentation.
    Indent and paragraph spacing options
  • Enhancement: Paragraph spacing for parent paragraphs and entries in the list of children can now be controlled by the user. Paragraph spacing specifies the distances before or after a paragraph. On the 'Settings', 'Text and page layout' tab page in the 'Indents and spacing' area you may now adjust paragraph spacing before and after paragraphs by selecting between 'None', 'Small', 'Medium' and 'Large'. The actual space used depends on the specified font size as well. The following paragraph spacing sizes are available:
    None - No paragraph spacing before or after the current paragraph
    Small - A quarter of a line is used as distance before or after the current paragraph
    Medium - A half-line is used as distance before or after the current paragraph
    Large - A whole line is used as distance before or after the current paragraph
    The paragraph spacing can be set separately for parent paragraphs and entries in the list of children. In addition, the before paragraph spacing can be specified for entries of the facts and event list.
  • Enhancement: When you highlight a fact type in one of the lists found on the 'Primary', 'Partner', 'Children' or 'Children (No main section)' tab pages now the same fact type is automatically highlighted in the lists on the other, currently not visible, tab pages as well. This makes it easier to compare the options used for the currently highlighted fact type on the 'Primary', 'Partner', 'Children' or 'Children (No main section)' tab pages by switching between those different tab pages and comparing the current fact type options.
    Note: The fact type list control presents a list of fact types that you can navigate by using the keyboard or the scrollbar on the right side of the control. In case the list has focus and you press a letter on the keyboard the focus automatically moves to a list item matching the letter at the beginning of the fact type label. This allows you to quickly jump to the fact type of your choice by just pressing the respective letter on the keyboard.
  • Enhancement: Now a context menu has been added to the fact type lists on the 'Primary,' 'Partner,' 'Children' or 'Children (No main section)' tab pages. Clicking on the fact type list with the right or alternate mouse button, also called right-click, opens the context menu. With the menu open you will have different actions available.

    context menue of the fact type list on the Primary tab page
    If you select something from the menu (use the left mouse button to select), the selected action will be performed. The context menu provides the following actions:
    • Select and unselect multiple fact types in the current list at once.
    • Copy fact type options from the currently highlighted fact type and assign (Paste) this options to another fact type within the same list.
      The submenu entries found under 'Paste fact type options (special)' allow you to assign (Paste) the previously copied options to the currently highlighted fact type in all lists, to all fact types in the current list, to all predefined fact types in the current list or to all custom fact types of the current list.
    • The submenu entries found under 'Formatting' allow you to assign the format of the current fact type to the currently highlighted fact type in all lists, to all fact types in the current list, to all predefined fact types in the current list or to all custom fact types in the current list.

      Context menue - Formatting
    • In case the currently highlighted fact type allows for Description-Style changes the submenu entries found under 'Description-Style' allow you to assign the Description-Style of the current fact type to the currently highlighted fact type in all lists or to all fact types in the current list.
    • In case the currently highlighted fact type allows to specify a List Item Style the submenu entries found under 'List Item Style' allow you to assign the List Item Style of the current fact type to the currently highlighted fact type in all other lists, to all fact types in the current list, to all predefined fact types in the current list or to all custom fact types in the current list.
  • Changed: Now the text 'Can't be specified for this fact type' is shown in case the Description-Style of the currently highlighted fact type cannot be changed (Height, Weight, SSN...).
  • Fixed: There was an issue related to images embedded in PDF file format. In case PDF file format was used images were always down-sampled to 220 dpi. This behavior has been adjusted, and now images are only down-sampled to the specified resolution.
  • Enhancement: A new "high-fidelity" image resolution option allows you to insert images into your document without down-sampling images to the specified resolution. An image needs to be a member of the media category FBC_PhotoAlbum_HighFidelityImageResolution to get included without any down-sampling.
    Note: Please note that using full resolution images does unnecessarily blow up your files and adds additional processing time as well.
  • Changed (Swedish): The translation of "Name of the male in front" has been changed from "Namn på hanen framför" to "Namn på maken framför".
  • Fixed (German): The German sentence created for "legally separated" did not handle past and present tense correctly. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Some before and after paragraph spacing issues have been resolved. Now the intro sentence used for the list of children and the intro sentence use before the facts and event lists are using after paragraph spacing.
  • Changed: The drop-down list for Fact Description Styles does now no longer use abbreviations for the word Description.
  • Fixed: While including pages from PDF files as images in the Photo Album section for a family it could happen that embedded fonts and shapes where not properly handled. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case just Apache OpenOffice has been found on a system as word processing application the "Index of Places" area on the 'Book Items', 'Indexes' tab page was always disabled. This issue has been fixed. Now the "Index of Places" area is only disabled in case a word processor file format like DOCX, DOC, ODT or RTF is selected as output file format. In case you are using for example PDF file format the "Index of Places" area is enabled and the "Index of Places" options can be specified as needed.
  • Fixed: There was an issue related to the usage of FBC_PrivacyProtection. In case privacy protection options where specified for some individuals by using the FBC_PrivacyProtection fact type the result was not as specified. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: There has been an issue related to bullets (or bulleted lists) not being handled properly in notes. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement: The built-in text editor, available to change the text elements used for the "Title page", "Colophon", "Dedication", "Foreword" and "Introduction" sections, has been improved. The tool strip bar does now also provide a button to ‘justify’ text so that it is aligned to both right and left.


Build 443 (December 2017)

  • Enhancement: The layout used for the narrative report has been improved. The default is to use text only layout for all paragraphs. Only in the case that a person's portrait is included for an individual, the starting paragraph for this individual utilizes a table-based layout. Additional information about the individual may be shown in a paragraph under the table-based layout. This enhancement may also allow better usage of white space below a person's portrait in the case of Person Notes or Research Notes having a large amount of information.
  • Enhancement: In a situation when a lot of information about an individual is going to be included, Family Book Creator now tries to split the text into multiple paragraphs. Person Notes and Research Notes now always start on their own paragraphs as well.
  • Enhancement: You may now specify the font styles used for Person Notes and Research Notes. Different style sheets are used for Person Notes and Research Notes in parent paragraphs and child list paragraphs. You may change these format definitions by modifying the settings for "Parent section - Person notes", "Parent section – Research notes", "Child section - Person notes", and "Child section - Research notes" entries on the 'Preferences', 'Fonts' tab page.
  • Enhancement: For common book items like title page, colophon, dedication, foreword and introduction, style sheets are now used. You may change these font format definitions by modifying the settings for "Title page", "Colophon", "Dedication", "Foreword" and "Introduction" entries on the 'Preferences', 'Fonts' tab page.
  • Enhancement: A tool strip bar with some basic word formatting functionality has been added on top of the built-in text editor for common book items (title page, colophon, dedication, foreword and introduction). You now have better control of the used font name and size, character style (bold, italic and underline) and text alignment (left, right and center) settings while customizing your common book elements. Note: By default, predefined styles are used for these text sections. You may change these format definitions by modifying the settings for "Title page", "Colophon", "Dedication", "Foreword" and "Introduction" entries on the 'Preferences', 'Fonts' tab page.
  • Enhancement: The built-in text editor has been improved. If a valid keyword is found inside angle brackets (for example <CurrentDate> or <Author.Name>) , this placeholder is highlighted by using a grey background. The text formatting used for the first letter of the keyword is automatically assigned to the complete placeholder and properly shown in the book document. You may also just double click on a keyword to select it and then assign a font name or character style (bold, italic and underline).
  • Enhancement: Italian is now available as additional output language, which means that it is now possible to create, with the help of Family Book Creator, comprehensive family history books in Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish or Spanish language directly from data stored inside your Family Tree Maker database.
  • Enhancement: A help system is now part of the product. The ‘Help’ button allows you to open the integrated User Guide. If you select a tab page in Family Book Creator and then press the function key F1, the help system provides context-sensitive help and jumps to the specific help topic of the currently selected tab page.
    BTW: The User Guide in PDF file format has been updated as well and is available in the download area of the FBC website.
  • Enhancement: Proper place prepositions are now used in case Dutch has been selected as current output language and the Description-Style includes 'at location in place'. This allows to specify location details for churches, hospitals etc. using Dutch language inside fact description fields.
  • Enhancement: In case you are using the Color Coding feature of FTM 2017 it is now possible to include these colors in Family Charts created by Family Book Creator. Additionally it is now possible to include colors assigned to individuals in the Index of Places and in the Index of Individuals as well. The new checkbox’s 'Include Color Coding' can be found on "Book Items", "Main part", "Items to include", "Family chart" tab, and "Book Items", "Indexes", of the FBC user interface.
  • Modified: In the case when spouses or partners of a child (without their own section) are included in a child section, and a portrait for them is included as well, then the portrait is now always shown at the beginning of their respective text block.
  • Fixed: When pages from media elements in PDF file format are embedded as images in the photo album section of a family, it could happen that unwanted blue hues are added to the images. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Under some very rare circumstances it could happen that the text "<REPLACE>" was shown inside partner sections. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: It could happen that the caption for a portrait inside the narrative report was shown on the next page. This issue has been fixed. Now the caption and the portrait are always kept together on the same page.

Build 434 (October 2017)

  • Fixed: When a media category with comma characters in the category name was used to define a filter it happened that it was not possible to restart the plugin. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: When the option 'Use link types to sort elements in Photo Album' was unselected an unexpected sort order for media items shown in the Photo Album section of a family was used. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed: The person selection list is now immediately available after startup of the plugin. Now there is no delay in case of large databases if you would like to use the find/search functionality and the annoying spinning wheel on top of the list control is gone.

Build 430 (October 2017)

  • Enhancement: Optional it is now possible to include references to media elements in the Index of Individuals. If you have for example a group photo (A group shot of several people) included in your photo album and this media element has references to multiple individuals all those individuals are going to be included in the Index of Individuals. This feature may be enabled or disabled by using the checkbox 'Include references to media elements' found in the 'Index of Individuals' area on the 'Book Items', 'Indexes' tab page.
  • Enhancement: In case some or all media elements could not be included in your document because the original file was not found on your disk, a dialog is shown. Optionally it is now possible to create a list with details about those missing media elements. Please have a look at the following article to learn how to find your missing media: Why are my images not included?
  • Enhancement: Support for media elements in PDF file format (Portable Document Format) has been added. By default PDF files are not included in a book, because analyzing and including a PDF needs additional computing resources and processing time. To allow the inclusion of pages from a PDF document as images in the Photo Album section of a family PDF files need to be assigned the media category in FTM of FBC_HandleStoryAsImage. Please have a look at the following article to learn more: How do I include PDF files as media items in a book?
  • Enhancement: Some additional Title and Headline name format options are now available from the drop-down lists found on the ’Preferences’, ‘Name Formats’ tab page. It is now possible to select format options which allow including name suffixes as well.
  • Improved: The PDF rendering engine used to create PDF documents has been significantly optimized. Now the created PDF documents are smaller than before.
  • Changed: The default setting for Name fact types has now been changed to not include Source Citations.
  • Changed: Now by default the information from the description field of Residence fact types is no longer used as place detail and just shown in brackets following the sentence. The default Description-Style used for Residence fact type has been changed now from "at d. in place | Sentence. D." to "Sentence (Description).". Please have a look at the following article to learn more: Why do I get sentences that don't make sense?
  • Fixed: Under some very rare circumstances, an error might occur during the initialization phase of the plugin. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: The limitation to just include seventy families of the FBC Trial Edition did not work as expected for books about ancestors. The result was that always less than seventy families where included. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: If a Source Citation found in the FTM database is unreadable, you might receive an error message. This issue has been fixed and now invalid or malformed Source Citations are just skipped.
  • Fixed: Irish surnames (like O'Connor or O'Neill), used as middle names, did cause errors in case ‘Handling of preferred given names’ was enabled as well. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Under some very rare circumstances it could happen that it was not possible to include person notes. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: The endnote line used in PDF output was thicker than the line used in other formats. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: When double quotes are used in names it happened that these names were not included in the Index of Individuals. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In the case of Ancestor books, it could happen that just the preferred partner/spouse was shown and not the biological ancestor of the starting individual. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case of multiple relationships, where the details of a partner has not been recorded in the FTM database; the name for the unknown partner was omitted. This issue has been fixed and now always 'unknown partner' is used in case the partner has not been entered into the database.
  • Fixed: The find/search functionality could lead to a crash. This issue has been fixed and the find/search functionality is now enabled only after the person selection list has been properly initialized.
  • Fixed: In case Family Book Creator 2017 was not able to access the parents of an Individual (because FTM throws 'Sequence contains more than one element' exception) the plugin did crash. This issue has now been fixed and those unreachable parents are just ignored.
  • Fixed: (English): There was an issue in case the parent/child relationship is specified to both parents of a child as 'Guardian' just the single form (guardian) was used in the sentence created by Family Book Creator. This issue has been fixed and now the plural form is used.
  • Changed: In Family Tree Maker it is possible to specify parent/child relationship types in the Relationship View (e.g., Biological, Adopted, Step… ). In case 'Unknown' was specified Family Book Creator previously mentioned this by creating an additional sentence. This behavior has been changed. Now 'Unknown' parent/child relationships are treated like 'Biological' relationships, because some FTM users find this kind of data issues when importing from other applications to FTM.
  • Changed: In Family Tree Maker it is possible to specify relationship types for couples in the Relationship View (e.g., Spouse, Partner, Friend). Family Book Creator only treated a couple as married in case 'Spouse' has been specified. This behavior has been changed. Now an 'Unknown' relationship type is handled like 'Spouse' in case a Marriage fact has been recorded for this couple as well.
  • Fixed: In case the date keyword "Never Married" is used as Date for a Marriage fact the sentences created in case of multiple relationships was wrong. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: A compatibility issue with Family Tree Maker 2017 has been resolved.

Build 398 (August 2017)

  • Fixed: The update notification dialog was not properly shown. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 396 (July 2017)

  • Fixed: In case of Kinship books (Relatives of the starting individual), with a huge number of individuals involved, it could happen that the Family Book Creator application hangs and no progress was seen. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: An issue related to multiple pairs of natural parents for a single individual has been fixed. Now always just the first couple is used as natural parents.
  • Fixed: There was an issue, related to memory usage during the initialization phase of Family Book Creator 2017, which leads to a message box stating that FTM needs to be closed. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 392 (July 2017)

  • Fixed: In case the plugin has had trouble reading text for default text elements (like title page, colophon, dedication, foreword or introduction) from notes attached to individuals an error message was shown. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: If documents are created in DOCX file format and also spitted into Master and Subdocuments, the plugin may crash in case you limited the output to start from generation one as well. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case individuals have multiple relationships, but the data structure in FTM is wrong and no relationship has been marked as preferred, you may receive an error message. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case the plugin has had trouble reading text from person or research notes an error message was shown. This issue has been fixed and now invalid or malformed notes are just skipped.
  • Fixed: In some very rare conditions, on systems where the plugin is not able to detect the amount of total physical memory installed, it could happen that you get the error message "Input string was not in a correct format". This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: The option 'Use single sections per relationship' should only be used, if all relationships are going to be included in your book. Otherwise you may get broken links (Error! Bookmark not defined) in your documents if the option 'Include only preferred partner' is used as well. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case notes had been created or modified with Family Tree Maker on Mac OS it could happen that the output of those notes included unwanted characters and line breaks did not work as expected. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement: The "Henry System" has been added as additional numbering method. It is now possible to select on the 'Preferences', 'Style/Format' tab between the following descendant numbering methods: "Register Style", "NGSQ Style", "Henry System", "Modified Henry System", "D'Aboville System", "Modified d'Aboville System" and "Descendant Lines System"
  • Fixed: Depending on the selected Name Style it could happen, with Family Book Creator 2017, that two space characters were used between given names and surnames. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 388 (April 2017)

  • Fixed: In case you have individuals without a name fact in your tree it happened, that you got an error message during startup of Family Book Creator (Build 387). This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Individuals sharing same names, but using different name suffixes, were not properly sorted in the list of individuals on the 'Individuals to include' tab of FBC (Build 387). This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case document creation was canceled by the user, it could happen that a wrong message was displayed inside the status bar. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 387 (April 2017)

  • Fixed: In case you are working with a family tree with more than 62 generations it could happen that you get the error message "Value was either too large or too small for an Int64." This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case no file associations to word processing applications could be found on your system, it happens, that you receive the error message "Object reference not set to an instance of an object". This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case the plugin has trouble reading notes attached to individuals it could happen, that the plugin just hangs and "Not responding" was displayed in the title bar. This issue has been fixed and now malformed notes are just skipped.
  • Fixed: In case the file format "Word Document format (DOCX) " is used together with the option to automatically update all fields, it could happen, that some page numbers at the end of the Table of Contents were not correct. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Options specified for descendant styles on the 'Preferences', 'Style/Format' tab for "Show generation indicators in italics" and "Show names in italics" had been saved, but not restored when reopening the plugin or reloading saved settings. This issue has now been fixed. Additionally these options are now only enabled in the user interface in case superscript generation indicators or parenthetical lineage lists are used.
  • Fixed: In the first release of Family Book Creator 2017 the list of individuals on the 'Individuals to include' tab was not alphabetically sorted and the find feature did not work as expected. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: The font settings used for notes attached to media elements did not work as expected. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 383 (March 2017)

  • Enhancement: Support for Family Tree Maker 2017 has been added. Existing Family Book Creator customers are allowed to upgrade for free. The licensing information (Name and serial number) you received before is going to work with Family Book Creator 2017 as well, but you need to download and install Family Book Creator 2017.
  • Enhancement: Now all installation packages are digitally signed. This proves the software is legitimate, comes from a known software vendor, and that the package has not been tampered with since being published. To make the installation easier the password protection has been removed. Now no installation password is required.
  • Enhancement: Dutch is now available as additional output language. Which means that it is now possible to create, with the help of Family Book Creator, comprehensive family history books in Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Norwegian, Swedish or Spanish language directly from data stored inside your Family Tree Maker database.
  • Enhancement: Support for legal separation has been added. Now "legally separated" is used for married couples, in case the relationship type for a couple is set to "Spouse" and the relationship status is set to "Separated" or a Separate fact type is present.
  • Fixed: If documents are created in DOCX file format and spitted into Master and Subdocuments the endnote numbering style could be wrong. This issue has been fixed and now, even in case of Master and Subdocuments, Arabic numbering is always used as numbering style for endnotes.
  • Fixed: There was a large delay when the user wants to cancel the book creation process while a large amount of images was processed for families. This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: If kinship books are created it could happen (in case of pedigree collapse) that wrong kinship terms are used. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Sentences created for the Religion fact type did not always use the correct tense. This issue has been fixed.
  • Changed: The English version of the User Guide has been updated. The document covers now the most recent enhancements as well.

Build 375 (January 2017)

  • Change: The previously separated installation packages for 32-bit and 64-bit systems were combined into one installation package. Now a single installer package of Family Book Creator 2014 is used which supports 32-bit and 64-bit target systems.

Build 374 (January 2017)

  • Enhancement: Support for marked surnames surrounded by backslashes inside 'Also known as'-facts has been added. For example from the character sequence 'Jack \Black\' the marked surname segment 'Black' will now be recognized as surname and the entry is placed correctly sorted into the "Index of Individuals" section and the backslash characters are omitted from being shown in your book.
  • Enhancement: It is now possible to decide, if statements about same-sex couples should be included inside narratives or not. You may enable these statements by selecting the "Identify same-sex couples" checkbox on the "Book items", "Main part", "Options" tab.
  • Enhancement: If the list of children is going to be included inside family sections, it is now optional to include or omit sentences with the number of children known inside partner paragraphs. You may decide to include these statements by selecting the "Show number of children" checkbox on the "Book items", "Main part", "Options" tab. Additionally you may now decide, if you would like to include or omit the sentence if no children are known.
  • Fixed: There was a crash (Object reference not set to an instance of an object) in case the "Index of Places" did not contain geographic information or information about individuals. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case an individual was only mentioned as a child, inside his or her parents paragraph, and the individual did not have its own family section, then the index entry for this individual was missing. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: It could happen that the plugin never completes creating the book document while processing media elements. This issue was caused by invalid or unsupported media elements and has been fixed now.
  • Fixed: In case OpenOffice Writer was used as target word processing system, it could happen that index entries for individuals did not work as expected. The result was, that it was not possible to let OpenOffice Writer fill the "Index of Individuals" section by inserting a 'Alphabetical Index' field. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Hyperlinks inside the "Table of Contents" section for documents in E-Book format (EPUB) did not work as expected. This issue has now been fixed and now you may use hyperlinks to jump to the selected headline inside your electronic publication.
  • Fixed: In some very rare situations it could happen, that it looks like the ‘Creating document’-phase never completes. In reality the plugin has already successfully created the book document inside the output folder. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case 'Word 97-2003 Document (DOC)' was used as file format it could happen, that Microsoft Word complains about a potential security issue while opening the generated file. This issue inside the binary file format has been fixed. Now the security feature from Microsoft Word (Office File Validation) does allow you to open and modify the document by default.

Build 364 (December 2016)

  • Fixed: There was a crash related to places with more than ten place segments. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case the option 'Update all fields' is used to automatically update the indexes, it could happen that the sort order did not fit to the expected sort order for the selected output language. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case the option 'Update all fields' is used to automatically create the Table of Contents it could happen that page numbers at the end of the Table of Contents are wrong. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case books about relatives are created and the documents are split into Master- and Subdocuments, it could happen that only one family was included inside each subdocument. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In some rare situations, while processing high resolution images, it was possible that the FTM application stopped working. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed: (Swedish output): The translation used for "1st Cousins 1 Time Removed" inside kinship books has been changed from "Kusinföräldrar" to "Föräldrars kusiner" and "1st Cousins 2 Times Removed" is now translated with "2:a gen föräldrars kusiner".
  • Changed: (Swedish output): The translation used for "Granduncles/aunts" inside kinship books has been changed from "Far- och morföräldrars syskon" to "2:a gen föräldrars syskon".
  • Fixed: In case the ”Reset Settings“ button was used, to reset all settings inside Family Book Creator to the installation default values, the option 'Update all fields' was not disabled. This option needs to be disabled because PDF file format is the default and the user should have no control about the option 'Update all fields'. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 359 (December 2016)

  • Enhancement: Handling of error situations (for example “not enough disk space available”) has been improved.
  • Fixed: If no back matter elements (like Bibliography, Index of Places, Index of Individuals or Endnotes) were included inside the generated book document, it could happen that an additional blank page was added at the end. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: There was an unwanted newline before the headline of the Bibliography section. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: When you tried to include only a single generation in your book document using Build 354 or 356 it could happen that you are facing a NullReferenceException-Error message. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 356 (November 2016)

  • Enhancement: It is now possible to specify the quality used for images inside generated PDF-Documents directly on the 'Preferences', 'General' tab.
    You may select between:
    - Smallest File Size (72dpi, 50%)
    - Standard Quality (150dpi, 50%)
    - Press Quality (200dpi, 50%)
    - High Quality Print (300dpi, 80%)
    - Image quality as specified (... on the 'Preferences', 'General', 'Images' tab)
    Note: Higher quality requires longer processing times and much more physical memory is needed
  • Fixed: There was an issue related to missing family sections in case Master- and Subdocuments are used. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed (French output): The translation of 'Figure' has been changed to 'Image'.

Build 354 (November 2016)

  • Enhancement: Now it is possible to specify the file format you would like to use during book creation. You may select between word processor file formats, platform independent file formats and image file formats.
    File formats for word processors:
    You may create the following file formats without the need of having Microsoft Word or any other word processor application installed:
    - Word Document (DOCX),
    - Word 97-2003 Document (DOC),
    - OpenDocument Text (ODT) or
    - Rich-Text Format (RTF).
    Note: You may need to install the free Microsoft Word Viewer for Microsoft Windows to properly display and print Microsoft Word documents if you do not have Microsoft Word installed on your system.
    Platform independent file formats:
    It is also possible to automatically create book documents using the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) without having a PDF creator application (like Adobe Acrobat) installed. For archiving and long-term preservation of electronic documents it is possible to select PDF/A-1b format as well.
    You may even create electronic publications in E-Book format (EPUB) and have a look on your family documents on an E-Book reader. EPUB is an open standard supported by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) organization.
    Image file formats:
    If you like you may export every single page of your book document in Image file format (JPG- or PNG) with a resolution of 600 dpi. This may allow you to put together the pages inside a photobook and get it printed in very high quality.
  • Enhancement: It is now possible to automatically create proper table of contents and index pages without the help of your word processing application. Depending on the selected file format it is possible to specify if all fields (Table of Contents, Cross-References, Index of Individuals etc.) should be automatically updated while the document is being created or not. The option 'Update all fields' can be found inside the user interface on the 'Preferences', 'General' tab inside the 'Document creation' area. Updating all fields on document creation is optional in case the file format is DOCX, DOC, ODT or RTF. Updating all fields is still possible with the help of your word processing application.
    Note: Updating always all fields may take a lot of time during the document creation phase and in case of a huge number of individuals included the memory consumption might be very high.
  • Enhancement: Family Book Creator now lets you break a long document into smaller documents in order to work on these individually. A master document is created that contains links to individual subdocuments containing the family data. Microsoft Word is able to combine these subdocuments into a larger document. In Microsoft Word use Outline view. Once you’re in the Outline view, go to the Master Document toolbox and click ‘Show Document’ or ‘Expand Subdocuments’. Please consult Microsoft Word documentation for more information about working with Master- and Subdocuments.
    Only in case Word Document format (DOCX) is used it is possible to work with Master- and Subdocuments. The option 'Create Master- and Subdocuments' can be found inside the user interface on the 'Preferences', 'General' tab inside the 'Document creation' area.
    Note: It is not possible to update automatically all fields while the document is being created using Master- and Subdocuments, but you can later use Microsoft Word to update all fields. To update all fields at any time just mark the whole document (click 'Select All' on the Edit menu or use CTRL+A), and then press F9.
    Note: The subdocuments get automatically the suffix "-subdocument-" followed by a subdocument number assigned to the specified filename of the master document.
  • Enhancement: The new book type "Alphabetical family register" is now available inside the drop down box on the "Book items", "Main part", "Individuals to include" tab page. You may select this book type to create a book about all individuals found in your database. The individual families are arranged in alphabetical order according to the husband's surname and receive an order number.
    Note: If you have a huge amount of individuals creating the book documents may take a very long time and you will get very large documents. So you may need to limit the output used. For example you may exclude Family Charts, Portraits and Photo Album sections. Also using the new Master- and Subdocument feature might be a good option if you are going to create output in Word Document format (DOCX).
  • Changed: In case the selected output language is French, German, English or Spanish and the Index of Individuals is grouped by first letter of the last name the first letter used in the index is now always the base letter without any diacritical marks. For example is case of the first letter is 'Ä' just 'A' is used. Note: The same behavior is used to create proper section headlines in case the report type is "Alphabetical family register".
  • Changed: Now the last selected target word processing system is reselected when the plugin is restarted.
  • Changed: By default now the option 'Try to shorten place names' is selected.
  • Changed: By default now the option 'Include geographic coordinates' for the Index of Places is selected.
  • Changed: The internal usage of temporary files during document creation has been changed.
  • Fixed (English output): Inside the statistics section the wording used has been corrected. The "which" has been corrected to "whom".
  • Fixed (Swedish output): The sentence regarding the relationships had a grammar issue. This issue has been fixed. Now "…förhållande med" is used.
  • Fixed: The 'Cancel' button was enabled before the user had specified a filename. This issue has now been fixed. The button is enabled after specifying the filename.
  • Fixed: There was an issue regarding detecting ancestral loops. Right now this issue is not fixed, but ancestral loop detection is disabled now.
  • Fixed (English output): Add missing word 'by' in default text used inside foreword section "… close resemblance for relatives separated by generations."

Build 340 (July 2016)

  • Enhancement: Spanish (Español) and French (Français) are now available as additional output languages. Now it is possible to create, with the help of Family Book Creator, comprehensive family history books in Danish, English, French, German, Norwegian, Spanish or Swedish language directly from data stored inside your Family Tree Maker database.
  • Enhancement: Support for Person ID facts has been added. Now it is possible to include values from Person ID facts right at the position of the first appearance of the individuals inside a narrative reports. You just need to specify on the proper 'Preferences', 'Name Formats', 'Family chart' tab page the Person ID style you would like to use. To do so, please specify the 'First used style' inside the Primary, Partner and Children subtabs. You may select to add the Person ID following the individual’s name either in square brackets or by using superscript.
  • Changed: In case the gender of all children is equal, the sentence with the number of children inside the partner section is now specific to the gender found. This means you get now something like "They have three sons" or "They have two daughters" if the gender of their kids is equal, or you just get "They have two children" in case they have different gender. The same is true for the introduction section on top of the list of children.
  • Changed: Family Book Creator tries to use past tense inside narrative reports in case individuals are deceased. But in some cases where no Death facts are given, present tense might have been used, even if you know that the individuals are deceased. To find out, if an individual is death or alive, Family Book Creator now checks additional fact types to be able to create proper sentences. Note: Please add a death fact for the individual to indicate that the individual is deceased, if still the wrong tense is used - even if you do not know the date.
  • Changed: The algorithm to suppress equal segments from the location information (Try to shorten Place Names) has been changed. Now the place context inside the list of children is handled in a different way. If a child has a given place of birth this place is used as context for the next child mentioned in the list. Before it was jut the last place mentioned inside the previous child entry.
  • Fixed: There had been some unwanted space characters inside some sentences generated in Danish or Norwegian language. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Under some very rare conditions it could happen, that Family Book Creator tried to add unsupported media types to photo album sections and just hangs. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: It could happen that the bibliography list was not properly sorted. For example 'Census 1920' was shown before 'Census 1860' inside the bibliography list. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case Word Document format (docx) is used together with Microsoft Word 2010, and a lot of large footnotes on the same page needs to be rendered, it could happen, that Word was not able to render the text properly across multiple pages. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 316 (March 2016)

  • Fixed: There was an issue inside the Ancestral Lines numbering format. If the format used had a space character inside it could happen that you get the unwanted sequence of "<NBP>" instead of just a space character. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement: Family Book Creator is now also available for Family Tree Maker 2014.1 which has been recently released by The Software MacKiev Company. More details might be found in the FAQ: "Does Family Book Creator work with FTM 2014.1 from Software MacKiev?".

Build 313 (December 2015)

  • Fixed: In some rare cases, if no names are stored for an individual, a null pointer exception occurred. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: The number of media items linked to a source citation was only shown if a Photo Album was included as well. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: It could happen that the bibliography list was not properly sorted. For example ‘Book 11’ was shown before ‘Book 2’ inside the list. This issue has now been fixed. So now ‘Book 2’ is shown before ‘Book 11’ inside the list.
  • Fixed (Norwegian language): There were some spelling issues inside the Norwegian translation "Her finner du tilgjengelig informasjon" which have been fixed now.
  • Changed: In case of multiple relationships each family section of the primary individual has an introduction sentence. Previously this sentence stated the relationship number of the primary individual and was followed by a sentence only with the page number as back reference to the section showing the details about the primary individual. Now the sentences also include the name of the spouse or partner and the back reference list the given name of the primary individual as well. Hopefully this is less confusing for your readers.

Build 306 (September 2015)

  • Fixed: In case the family chart did contain more than eight children the connection lines to the lower part of the children were incomplete. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case only biological children should be included and non biological children are known as well the sentence with the list of children names inside partner sections were wrong. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement: The sentence with the list of children names inside partner sections may now list the children’s timespans as well. You may enable this behavior by selecting the "Show timespans in addition" checkbox on the "Book items", "Main part", "Options" tab.
  • Changed: There is a change regarding the image used inside the center of a family chart. In case of multiple images before this update it was required to mark the wanted image by adding it to the media category "FBC_FamilyChart_Center". This is now no longer required. If no image is marked just the first image found is going to be used.
    The following rules are used to select the image now:
    If there is only one single image linked to the marriage fact this image is going to be used, but if there are multiple images linked to the marriage fact the system looks for an image belonging to the media category "FBC_FamilyChart_Center". If no image belongs to the media category just the first image found is used.
    If the marriage fact does not contain images the search is continued inside the image store for the couple’s relationship. If there are multiple images, but no one belongs to the image category "FBC_FamilyChart_Center" again the first images found is going to be used.
  • Fixed: A relationship status (married) was shown inside family charts for individuals with children also in cases were no partner or spouse are known. This issue has now been fixed and now the status is only included when both partners are known.
  • Fixed: It could happen that the information from non preferred facts was used to display the relationship status inside family charts. This issue has been fixed and now only preferred facts are used.
  • Changed: The relationship status (engaged, married, divorced …) of the current couple is now also visible for privatized couples inside their family chart. But because the data has been privatized no dates are shown.

Build 302 (September 2015)

  • Changed: Swedish output: Now modern style ordinal numbers are used in headlines of kinship books.
  • Fixed: If the starting individual had multiple sets of parents (for example adoptive parents) it was not possible to create a kinship book for this individual. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: There was an issue related to duplicated fonts which caused the plugin to crash on some Windows 10 systems. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case of books about descendants (sorted by families) it could happen that an unwanted additional page break was inserted after the headline of the second chapter. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement: The "Include family headlines" checkbox on the "Book items", "Table of Contents" tab allows now to include or exclude family headlines from the table of contents. (Note: Right now only if you are using MS Word!)
  • Changed: The output of family charts for individuals marked as "Newer Married" (inside the date field of the marriage fact) has been improved.
  • Enhancement: The relationship status (engaged, married, divorced …) of the current couple is now also visible inside their family chart.
  • Fixed: In case of kinship books it could happen that you got an "Error! Bookmark Not Defined" message inside your word document. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Changed: Swedish output: The wording used for sentences regarding AKA fact types and alternate name facts has been improved.
  • Fixed: The sentence showing a child's relationship to the parents did not correctly use present or past tense. This issue has been fixed: Now if the child or the parents are deceased past tense is used.
  • Fixed: When a relationship type is set to "Partner" the tense used inside the sentence about the relationship might have been wrong. Now past tense is used if one of the partners is deceased or if the couple is separated.

Build 297 (August 2015)

  • Fixed: After using the 'Reset Settings' or the 'Load Settings' button to go back to default settings or to load previous used settings the user interface did not always reflect the current settings for fact types. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case of individuals with multiple sets of parents (for example in case of adoptions) it could happen that only reduced information (no family chart and no list of children) for the individual’s family was included in the book. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case the notes from fact types used to store text for the book items title page, colophon, dedication, foreword and introduction are missing it was possible that the plugin hang in an endless loop during the initialization phase. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Change: The visual appearance of the language selector drop-down lists has been enhanced. The lists are now sorted alphabetically and flag symbols are used inside the language selector drop-down lists of the user interface.
  • Fixed: Swedish output: There was a punctuation/spaces issue inside the Swedish translation for Adoption, Military and Census fact types. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Swedish output: The relationship group terms used inside kinship books have been improved.
  • Fixed: Multiple issues inside the Swedish version of the user interface have been fixed.
  • Fixed: The settings used for civil law or canon law inside books about individuals related to the starting individual was not restored on restart of the plugin. Also this setting has not been saved inside and restored from book creator setting files. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 291 (June 2015)

  • Enhancement: You may now change on the 'Preferences', 'General' tab the language of the user interface. Please choose between English, German and Swedish.
  • Enhancement: An additional book type is now available. It is possible to select from the top left drop down box on the "Book items", "Main part", "Individuals to include" tab page from the following types:
    • Ancestors of the starting individual
      Creates a book about the ancestors of the starting individual. It is possible to limit the number of generations shown.
    • Descendants of the starting individual
      Creates a book about the descendants of the starting individual. It is possible to limit the number of generations shown.
    • Relatives of the starting individual
      Creates a kinship book about individuals related to the starting individual. It is possible to limit the degree of kinship shown and you may decide to use civil law or canon law rules for calculating the degree of kinship. More details might be found in the FAQ: "How do families get sorted inside kinship books?".
  • Changed: Depending on the currently selected book type some options which are not applicable for the selected type of book are now disabled.
  • Fixed: In some rare situations it could happen that the plugin hangs inside an endless loop while processing unsupported media files. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Numbering figures did not work in case of duplicating images was allowed. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: In some rare situations it could happen that an image file was not included even when the file exists on disk. This was related to missing thumbnails of images and has been fixed now.
  • Changed: The trial limitations are changed. They are now:
    • only the data of seventy families are shown
    • once in a while instead of the lifespan for an individual just the text "Free - Trial" is show inside family charts
    • from time to time the month of an event is replaced with "trial month" inside narrative sections
    • every page contains a watermark on the background
    • the button "Save Settings" is not enabled
  • Enhancement: The "Include private" checkbox on the "Book items", "Main part", "Items to include", "Family chart" tab allows you to include privatized images inside family charts.
  • Enhancement: It is now possible to include privatized person portraits inside narrative report sections as well. The "Include private" option can be found next to the "Include portraits" checkbox on the "Items to include" tabs for the "Primary", "Partner", "Children" and "Children (no main section)" of the user interface.
  • Fixed: If there are fonts installed on a system that do not work properly or are just missing it could happen that FBC crashed during the initialization phase with the following error message: "Font 'Verdana' does not support style 'regular'". This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement: Family Book Creator 2012 and 2014 are now aware about place detail information coming from values inside place fields (A FTM feature available since FTM 2012). A place name may also include a place detail, which is a more precise location that probably does not appear in the places database (place authority). In the past and now by default this place detail information is handled by Family Book Creator like an additional place segment. Depending on your usage pattern for place details inside place fields in FTM this may or may not be the best for your needs. It all depends on how you are using the place details inside FTM.
    If you do not use them at all or if your place details just contain historical place names or cities which are not know by FTM’s place authority this default setting might be fine for you. In case you always use the place details for hospital names, church names, cemetery names, addresses etc. you may like to change this default.
    If you disable the "Use place details always as place segments"-option (This check-box can be found on the "Book items", "Main part", "Options" tab) Family Book Creator is aware of this place detail information and creates proper sentences. Also note that only the place part that could be resolved by the place authority is going to be used to create proper index information, but the place detail information is going to appear inside the generated sentence using the following format: "at <place detail> in <location>".
  • Fixed: If only the father or mother of an individual is known and stored in your database the sentence regarding the kinship of the individual to the father or mother was missing. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Inside ancestor books it could happen that details about siblings of the starting individual were missing. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 267 (March 2015)

  • Fixed: Swedish output: There was a spelling issue inside the generated sentence in case of unknown relationships of children to their father or mother. The word "Släktskapet" was spelled wrong. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: Gender-symbols ("" or "") to indicate the sex of individuals inside the list of children did not show up for females if Danish, Norwegian or Swedish were used as output languages. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: It could happen that inside a family headline the name of the primary individual with multiple relationships was included twice. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: If the option "Include only preferred partner" was used it could happen that paragraphs for primary individuals with multiple relationships were missing inside the report. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 265 (February 2015)

  • Enhancement: Norwegian (Norwegian Bokmål) is now available as additional output language.
  • Enhancement: The age at death of an individual is now also calculated in cases without given exact birth or death dates. So now the age is calculated even if the day or month of the birth or death event is missing. Or if about or calculated dates are used. Note: The age is still not calculated in case of date ranges or if before or after dates are used.
  • Fixed: The feature to calculate family names did not work as expected for primary females without children in Family Book Creator (Build 261). This is fixed now. If there are no descendants from a relationship the surname of the male person from the relationship is going to be used as married name for the couple.

Build 261 (February 2015)

  • Enhancement: The new option 'Include grandparents for starting person' on the 'Book Items', 'Main part', 'Items to include', 'Family chart' tab page allows to include grandparents for the family of the starting person without the need of showing grandparents for all other families inside family charts.
  • Fixed: Pictures set as person portraits had been included in family charts and narratives even if they had been marked as "Private" inside FTM. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement: In the past releases of FBC enlarged images were always shown before smaller images. The media size shown had an impact on the sort order. This prevented users from showing the images sorted chronologically in case of using the media category FBC_PhotoAlbum_FullWidth. The default behavior has been changed now and it is now possible to select if you would like to sort enlarged images first in your Photo Album paragraphs or not. Please find the option 'Show enlarged images first in Photo Album' on the bottom of the 'Book Items', 'Main part', 'Items to include', 'Photo Album' tab page.
  • Change/Enhancement: The order of names in family headings can now be specified. By default always the name of the primary individual is listed first. Optionally it is also possible to list always the name of the male first and the name of the female last by enabling the option 'Name of the man in front' on the 'Book Items', 'Main part', 'Options' tab page.
  • Enhancement: It is now possible to select on the 'Preferences', 'Style/Format' tab between additional descendant numbering methods. Now the following styles are available: "Register Style", "NGSQ Style", "Modified Henry System", "D'Aboville System", "Modified d'Aboville System" and "Descendant Lines System"
  • Enhancement: In case of multiple relationships of primary individuals now always cross-references to the pages of the partners are listed in parenthesis. (Only the first partner receives no cross-reference, as this person is always to be found in the following section)
  • Enhancement: The usage of the media category FBC_PhotoAlbum_FullWidth allows showing your important images very large. But in some cases there is not enough room left on the page to show also the text from descriptions or notes under the image. In those cases you may now use one of the new media categories to get the image a little bit smaller:
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_90%OfFullWidth -> 90% of text width
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_80%OfFullWidth -> 80% of text width
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_70%OfFullWidth -> 70% of text width
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_60%OfFullWidth -> 60% of text width
    FBC_PhotoAlbum_50%OfFullWidth -> 50% of text width
  • Fixed: It could happen inside family sections of non-biological children (Example: adopted children or stepchildren) that the family chart and photo album sections were not included. This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: In case of having just the place of death without a given death date the wrong tense was used inside the generated sentences. For example "She is the daughter of" instead of "She was the daughter of". This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement: Geographical coordinates may now be included inside the Index of Places. The given geographical coordinates from your FTM database are listed inside parenthesis in the form of geographic coordinates in decimal degrees.
    Note: If the coordinates for a place are missing open the Places workspace in FTM. Select the place and add the coordinates to the location field. You may enter directly the coordinates or use the pin button.
  • Enhancement: Descendants can now be either shown "Organized by families" or "Organized by generations". If organized by families, the tables of contents of your books get structured like the "Outline Descendant Report" known from FTM. The table of contents is then a kind of multilevel list. There is an indentation done with points for every generation and individuals having multiple relationships are indented with additional spaces. The result is a proper breakdown showing the complete family structure.

Build 253 (December 2014)

  • Enhancement: The option 'Include reference numbers' on the 'Items to include', 'Family chart' tab allows reference numbers to be shown inside the boxes of the family chart. Please note that you can specify the font settings for this reference numbers on the 'Preferences', 'Fonts' tab as well.
  • Enhancement: It is now possible to use generation indicators. Generation indicators appear inline with the text of the narrative report and they are used to indicate the number generations the person is away from the primary person of the report or oldest paternal ancestor. They are shown as superscript numbers following given names. They refer either to the starting individual or to the oldest paternal ancestor.
  • Enhancement: It is now possible to include parenthetical lineage lists as back references to the starting individual. They may help you to identify, with absolute assurance, each descendant in each line inside your books about descendants.
  • Enhancement: Alternative numbering and sorting systems for ancestors are now available on the 'Style/Format' tab inside the Preferences area. You may choose between three different systems:
    1. "Sosa–Stradonitz System"
      This popular numbering method is worldwide most used and has been named after the genealogist Jérôme de Sosa and Kekulé von Stradonitz. The numbering system was first published by Michaël Eytzinger in 1590. When using this method the individual reference numbers are based on their respective Kekulé numbers (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahnentafel). The order of individuals or families is always in ascending order by generations.
    2. "Ancestral Lines Pairing System"
      In this relatively new system for organizing lineages, developed and patented by Capers W. McDonald, the individual reference numbers used consists of a combination of a calculated line number and a generation number followed by a number indicating the birth order. In case of multiple marriages an additional pairing number might be used. (For more information about the system you may also look at http://www.ancestrallines.net/ or http://admin.americanancestors.org:8080/uploadedfiles/media/american_ancestors_magazine/ancestral_lines.pdf) The output order is according to the lineage numbers. And additionally it is possible to choose between ascending or descending sort order by generations inisde those lineages as well. In case of father lines priority this patrilineal system follows the line of the fathers. In case of mother lines priority the lineage of women (mothers) is followed.
    3. "Patrilineal/Matrilineal Lineages"
      This system is a modified Ancestral Lines Pairing System. The lineage numbers used are not calculated they are just assigned by sequence to prevent the usage of very large line numbers.
  • Changed: The drop down style has been changed for all drop-down lists inside the FBC user interface.
  • Changed: It is now possible to really use the full available width for images inside the photo album.
  • Fixed: Missing formatting control tags inside label fields like <b> without </b> did result in invalid documents which could not be opened by the text processor used. This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: Processing of preferred given names was not correct for names inside the book title and page headers. This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: AKA-Names are only shown if they are included in the index as well. This has been fixed now.
  • Fixed: The current setting for the option to include user-defined short place names in the index was not preserved on restarts of the plugin. This issue has been fixed.

Build 241 (September 2014)

  • Fixed: In case only control characters or non-printing characters are found inside a description field of a fact it could happen that the plugin stopped working with an index out of bounds exception. This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: Inside ancestor reports with more than 31 generations the person reference numbers where wrong. This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: Settings for the fact type Ordination for Children (No main section) had been not properly initialized, saved and restored. This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: Settings for the fact type Burial of the Primary Individual and for Children (No main section) where not properly initialized. This issue has now been fixed and by default only preferred and not privatized burial facts are included.
  • Enhancement: It is now possible to specify if default book items like title page, colophon, dedication, foreword, table of contents and introduction should be part of the book or not. On the respective tab pages are now check boxes available to determine whether the item should be included in the document or not.
  • Enhancement: It is now possible to activate the usage of automatic hyphenation inside Microsoft Word for names inside family charts. You find the 'Use automatic hyphenation'-checkbox on the 'Preferences', 'Name Formats', 'Family chart' tab page. Without automatic hyphenation long names just break at the edge of the box. The automatic hyphenation feature of Word now helps to resolve this issue.
  • Fixed: The find/search functionality on the "Individuals to include" tab did not work properly. This issue has now been fixed and the user may now again use the find/search functionality to find the wanted starting individual.
  • Fixed: When using "English (UK)" as language for the generated document, the language setting for the spell checker within the generated document was incorrect. This bug has now been fixed and it is instead of 'English (USA)' now 'English (United Kingdom)’ set as the language within the generated document.
  • Fixed: If a fact description style is used which shows the words from the description as additional sentence it could happen that punctuation marks (".","!" or "?") where followed by an additional period. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: It could happen that cross-references in cased of duplicate families (due to common ancestry) were not properly shown in descendant reports. This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: When creating documents for post processing with OpenOffice figures inside the photo album sections were not numbered correctly. This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: There was an unwanted comma inside the current date on the title page and inside the foreword when using "English (UK)" as language for the generated document. This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed (German User Interface): A spelling issue inside "Inhaltsverzeichnis - Ebene 1-4" has been fixed.

Build 226 (July 2014)

  • Fixed: In case of non-bitmap images (for example images in Windows Meatafile Format) it could happen that the user gets the error message "Unable to cast object of type 'System.Drawing.Imaging.Metafile' to type 'System.Drawing.Bitmap'". This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: There was an issue regarding the mouse pointer: When Family Book Creator is open the mouse pointer moves to the upper right corner of the screen and it is almost impossible to control the cursor. This issue has been fixed.
  • Enhancement: If your trial edition has expired it is now possible to start another free trial period by just entering "Try-Now" (without the quotes) into the serial number field.

Build 224 (June 2014)

  • Fixed: In case of CMYK images it could happen that the plugin stopped working with an Out Of Memory exception. This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: Sometimes it could happen that images are not scaled properly. This issue has been fixed.
  • Enhancement: The person selection list on the 'Individuals to include' tab is now initialized in a background task. This allows considerably faster startup of the plugin in case of large databases. All features of the plugin are usable while the person selection list gets initialized. Of course the find/search functionality is only available after the initialization is done and the spinning wheel on top of the list control is gone.
  • Enhancement: The fact item lists are now also initialized and updated in a background task. While the lists are initialized or updated spinning wheels are shown on top of the fact type lists inside the 'Items to include' tab pages and a wait cursor is shown if the cursor hovers of the 'Supported Facts' group box of the 'Book Items', 'Main part', 'Options' panel.

Build 220 (June 2014)

  • Fixed: On some systems a crashed happened when the user tries to open the font selector drop down box inside the 'Preferences', 'Fonts' tab. This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: The privacy settings where handled too strict. Even when a death date was known it could happen that individuals with death dates older than the used setting had been privatized. This issue has been fixed.
  • Fixed: The find/search functionality on the "Individuals to include" tab did not work in Build 216. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 216 (June 2014)

  • Enhancement: If you are running Family Book Creator inside Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac and have Microsoft Word for Mac 2011 installed it is now possible to open the created RTF document automatically inside Word on your Mac. Note: This requires that you save the document in a folder that is shared between Mac OS X and your virtual machine.
  • Fixed: There was an issue regarding mixed languages inside the user interface if Family Book Creator runs on Dutch, Spanish or Polish Windows Operating Systems. This issue has been fixed and the User Interface is now in English language only on those systems.
  • Enhancement: Support for marked surnames surrounded by slashes inside 'Also known as'-facts has been added. For example from the character sequence 'Jack /Black/' the marked surname segment 'Black' will now be recognized as surname and the entry is placed correctly sorted into the Index of Individuals and the slash characters are omitted from being shown in your book.
  • Enhancement: Support for multiple 'Also known as'-names delimited by comma has been added.

Build 213 (May 2014)

  • Fixed: If settings are loaded from a Book Creator Settings file (*.bcs) it could happen that the options used for including notes, index of individuals and index of places are not loaded properly. This issue has now been fixed.
  • Fixed: It was not possible to use the keyboard to select fact types inside the fact type controls found inside the ‘Items to include’ area. This issue has now been fixed and the user can now navigate by using the keyboard or the scrollbar on the right side of the control. The user can place a check mark by hitting the space bar or pressing the left mouse button on the currently selected fact type to include this fact type.

Build 212 (May 2014)

  • Fixed: If there are fonts installed on a system that do not work properly it could happen that FBC crashed during the initialization phase with the following error message: "font '<FONTNAME>' does not support style 'regular'". This issue has now been fixed.
  • Enhancement: Inactive or hidden fonts are now no longer listed inside the "Font" tab of the "Preferences" area.
  • Enhancement: Some small enhancements inside the About/Licensing dialog which should make it easier to enter or paste valid licensing information into the given fields.
  • Fixed: The image manipulation border option ‘Circle corners’ found on the "Images" tab of the "Preferences" area leads to wrong results for images in landscape format. This issue has now been fixed. Please also have a look at the FAQ: "What cropping and image manipulation options do I have?".
  • Fixed: If given names included a single quote or an underscore character it could happen that the user gets the following error message: 'startIndex must be less than length of string'. This issue has now been fixed.

Build 210 (May 2014)

  • Changed: Support for different licensing types has been added.
  • Initial release of Family Book Creator for Family Tree Maker 2010, Family Tree Maker 2012 and Family Tree Maker 2014.

Build 169 (May 2013)

  • Initial release of Family Book Creator as add-on included in the Swedish version of Family Tree Maker World Express.