Forever Historian on a Mac

I have been trying to find out if there was a way to use Forever Historian on a Mac. 

Historian is an amazing digital archive system for cataloging, storing and editing your photos.  The photo editing tools allow you to adjust your images from the slightest exposure adjustment, to full image cloning and repair.  There is currently no Mac version of the software, as it is designed for use on Windows systems. I have been using Historian for years on my Windows computer.    My problem was that I really wanted to be able to retire my Windows computer and migrate everything to a MacBook.   I was unwilling to throw away years of work on curating both my photos and my family’s heritage photos in my Historian software, so I couldn’t make the move until I could use Historian on a Mac.

Disclosure

I am a Forever Ambassador.  If you click on any of the links below to Forever products, you will go through to my ambassador site and I may earn a commission on any sales made, (depending on the country of purchase)  at no additional cost to you.  

I receive no benefit from Apple or Parallels Desktop.  The information provided below is purely from my own experience and I present it only in the hopes that I can help someone else who is looking for the same answers that I was.  

Forever Historian

If you have never heard of Forever Historian, I can fully recommend this software to you for your photo editing and management of a curated library of images. Organise your memories on your desktop, and enjoy seamless communication with other Forever software and products.

Using a virtual machine application

The Forever website states that:

Historian™ runs only on supported versions of Microsoft Windows. It will not run under MacOS. However, if you are running a supported version of Windows on your Mac using one of the available tools, such as Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion, you can run Historian™.

https://forever1.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/219022327-Will-Historian-Run-On-a-Mac-

This was all I had to go on.   So I started researching Parallels Desktop to see what was involved, and tried to find some reviews on this software.  

For a yearly subscription fee, Parallels Desktop software sits as an app on the Mac and becomes a virtual windows computer. The reviews came back saying that it functioned well. So I downloaded a trial version on my old MacBook Air to test it out.  It seemed to work ok, but there wasn’t enough memory on my old machine to try out a full transfer of my existing Historian vault. 

Decision looping

I searched the internet for ages, to find  some information or to hear about someone who had been able to use Forever Historian on a Mac.  

I wanted to know, for sure, that it could be done before investing in a brand new MacBook.  But I couldn’t find anyone who could actually say that it was possible.  It was very frustrating for me not to be able to find anyone who could say “Yes, it absolutely works!”

I tried reaching out to the digital scrapbooking community that I am involved with both through Creative Memories and Forever.  I put out questions to see if any of the people had used Forever Historian on a Mac.  One person came back and said that she knew someone in Canada who used it, and had never heard of any problems.  This didn’t give me a lot of confidence.  So I still wasn’t comfortable to make the decision to proceed. 

Ask for help

I ended up asking a local IT company for some advice. I wanted to know if they had set up Parallels Desktop  on a Mac before.  They said that they had done so, and were able to recommend some minimum specifications that I would need for the new computer, to ensure everything went smoothly.   I am not great with computers. It definitely gave me a confidence boost knowing that this company had done the set up before, and I could use them as a resource to help get me set up. 

Knowing that I could access help with the Parallels Desktop gave me the confidence to proceed with the purchase of the new MacBook.  I also had to purchase a Windows licence to use within the virtual machine.   

Yes you CAN use Forever Historian on a Mac

Once I had the Parallels Desktop set up on my new MacBook, it was time to back up the Historian files on my Windows computer and transfer them over to the Mac.  I was so happy when everything worked as it should! Yes, it requires a few extra steps and a bit more software, but it definitely CAN be done. 

How to use Forever Historian on a Mac

In summary, to use Forever Historian on a Mac you will need the following:

• A subscription to Parallels Desktop, payable yearly. (Or an alternate software that creates a Virtual Windows Machine on your Mac)
• A Windows licence for use within your virtual machine
• Historian Software ( a great time to purchase Historian 6 outright, or upgrade from a previous version)

With the Parallels Desktop, you can open a virtual Windows machine directly from the Mac desktop.  This allows you to then use Forever Historian in a Windows environment on a Mac computer. 

Now I can retire my old computer and fully enjoy using my new one!