Sunday Spotlight: GenScriber for Windows, Mac, and Linux

This weekend’s spotlight is on a very useful desktop genealogy utility that’s been around for over a decade, GenScriber. It’s free for non-commercial use, and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it is a very apt name, as it helps you to transcribe various documents into a .CSV (comma-separated values file), which is basically an ASCII spreadsheet/table that many programs can read, as can humans. The kinds of documents you would use it to transcribe include census images, church records, cemetery records, and Ye Olde BMD records in general, and the formats include jpg, png, bmp, tif, gif, and PDF.

I’ve seen it recommended a lot over the years, and I’ve used it a lot and I love the interface (a spreadsheet style grid that is writing directly to the CSV file, BUT IT’S NOT A SPREADSHEET as the developer, Les Hardy, has pointed out. Those who need it/use it, really need /use it a lot. Because it’s not a spreadsheet, no assumptions are made about the data being entered, so what you see is exactly what you get – nothing is modified (date formats, etc.) and because it generates an ASCII CSV file, it can be used just about anywhere. You can also export to HTML and PDF files, merge CSV files, import and export GEDCOM files.

It’s a research utility that really makes you go through a document line by line, and record the information, and the nice thing is that you can either use pre-existing templates (see below) or if it’s a unique record (Family Bible, maybe school records), you can create a new document and label the columns however you like and create your own template/worksheet. In fact, it also has a full text mode where you can transcribe documents such as letters, that wouldn’t fit in a normal data of genealogy information.

As you can see from the screenshot (Mac is below, Windows at the bottom), the main interface consists of:

  • Upper-lefthand section has a document directory listing, showing supported documents, as well as hints or column listings when you are typing in the Worksheet area
  • Upper-righthand section has the actual document, with controls to zoom in and out.
  • Bottom half – The Worksheet, Column Options, and TextPad. Normally, you work in the Worksheet area, basically typing in the data you see in the document section, but there are OCR features that can attempt to transcribe some files (cursive/older/Gothic letter support is not the best), and you can see that transcribed text in the TextPad area.

It comes with pre-existing document templates – when you either import a document or work with a new PDF or image file, it asks what template you want, and the table at the bottom of the window changes to match that, and it can also display what sections you are in as you go along (see the Windows screenshot below, the upper-left-hand document). Below are the documents supported (I believe you can create more):

  • UK Census – 1841, 1851-1881,1881-1901, 1911
  • Cornwall-OPC – Baptisms, Marriages, etc.
  • FreeBMD – Baptisms, Deaths, Marriages
  • FreeCEN
  • FreeREG – Baptisms, Burials, Marriages
  • FullText – Wills
  • Gedcom – Family Historian and GEDCOM full (import modes)
  • Gramps – Family, Marriage, People
  • Other – Banns, Baptisms, Burials, Cemetery-Inscriptions, Marriages – Early, Marriages – later (1743, 1813, 1837)
  • Specials – Cemetery/Inscripts, FamilyHistorians_Simple, VotersList
  • Spreadsheet
  • US Census – 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940

There was some talk a few years ago that it might have been discontinued with version 2.6.9, however GenScriber 2.7.2-1 is the current macOS version (Build MACOS64-272-1), and GensCriber 2.7.2-1 (Build WIN32GS:272-1) is also the current Windows version. I can also tell you that the copyright within the programs lists 2010-2024, and the last version appears to have been released in November or December of 2023. Right now, the original homepage has been removed, and it’s currently a file directory for you to download the install files, the help files, and the video tutorials.

It’s unique in that it does not need to be installed – it can run from a flash drive or any directory.

Official Links (downloads, help files, movies):

On the Mac, specifically an M-series (Apple Silicon/CPU) running macOS Sonoma 14.6, everything appeared to work except the fonts were off/weird at first (the Worksheet and TextPad fonts were too tiny, very unreadable), and I suspect that has to do with running a high-resolution display (“retina” as Apple likes to say). I was able to eventually adjust them a bit, and in fact installing the Homebrew packages listed below may have also contributed (I will look at this further in the near future, with a clean install I’m doing on a Mac).

With the Mac version, I also had to install the following 3rd-party apps for OCR (optical character recognition) and to read PDF-formatted files (Homebrew allows you to install libraries that did not come with the Mac, and makes sure they link (mostly unix-based stuff).

  • Homebrew (required for the next two)
  • poppler (Homebrew) – PDF rendering library
  • tesseract (Homebrew) – optical character recognition engine

On the Windows side, I did not install the OCR software (I saw where it was in the preferences), and the PDF recognition came pre-installed.

I did not try Linux.

Screenshot – Windows

I really can’t recommend this utility enough – it’s a fairly simple utility, and is very limited in scope which is why it’s so great – it’s just extremely fast and easy to use, and everything you need for transcription is right there.

Transcription is not fun at all, and if you’re not using GenScriber, you are most likely loading up an image file in one window, and a spreadsheet in another. I like Les Hardy’s philosophy about not making this a spreadsheet, even if it has a spreadsheet-like interface, because the data can be read on any platform, and even with a text editor if needed.