Frequently Asked Question

All full (non-trial) versions of Family Historian from version 3 to version 6 required a licence key. If you have lost your licence key but still have a working copy of the old version installed, you can use these instructions to retrieve it. Note: this only works for the currently installed version's licence.

Instructions for retrieving key from existing installation:

1. Right-click on the Family Historian icon on your desktop and select Properties. There should be an input box labelled 'Target' similar to: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Family Historian\Program\fh.exe"

2. Add a space and the word 'info' (without quotes) to the end of the line, after the closing double quote, to give: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Family Historian\Program\fh.exe" info

3. Click OK, then double-click the icon to run Family Historian. A window labelled 'INFO' will appear with "This program is registered to:" followed by codes on 2 lines. Highlight the codes and press Ctrl-C to copy, then paste into Notepad to save a copy.

4. Once complete, right-click the Family Historian icon again, select Properties, remove 'info' from the end of the Target line, and press OK.

If you own the download version, you already have the licence name and key. If you own a boxed or CD version, use the calculation below.

Calculating the Key for the Boxed Version:

The codes on 2 lines will look like:

AAAAAA

BBBBBB-BBBBBB-BBBBBB-BBBBBB

Copy them into a text editor. Insert the entire first line into the second line, after the first character of the second line. Then insert an additional hyphen after what is now the 6th character, to split the code into 5 groups of 6 characters (no spaces). Result:

BAAAAA-ABBBBB-BBBBBB-BBBBBB-BBBBBB

Example: codes 123456 / ABCDEF-GHIJKL-MNOPQR-STUVWX become A12345-6BCDEF-GHIJKL-MNOPQR-STUVWX. This is your licence key. If asked for 'Licence Name', enter your full name.