1.1 Software:

There are two apps that can be used to view the Timeline and Family Trees:
1. MS Excel
2. LibreOffice (a free Office alternative to MS Office)

The World History Timeline and Family Trees have been created using MS Excel.
For the best user experience the they should be viewed and edited using Excel or LibreOffice installed on your device.
Due to the size of the timeline and the large number of entries, the viewing experience using the free online version of Microsoft Excel will be limited.

1.2 Devices:
For the best experience, the Timeline and Family Trees should be viewed on either a laptop or desktop screen, or on an Apple or Android tablet.

Please be aware, that on a small screen, such as a phone, the viewing experience will be very limited.

When opening an Excel spreadsheet that you have downloaded from the Internet, the following warning is displayed:

"! PROTECTED VIEW Be careful-files from the internet can contain viruses. Unless you need to edit, it's safer to stay in Protected View."

Next to the message is a button titled "Enable Editing".
By clicking this button, you will have full access to the file so you can make changes to it. If you do not enable editing, you will only be able to view the contents.

The World History Timeline (WHT) and some of the Family Trees are presented as a Microsoft Excel Macro-Enabled Worksheet file. The macro relates to how comments are displayed. The purpose of this macro is fully explained in section 4 below.

By default, when an Excel file containing macros is opened, a warning message appears indicating the presence of a macro and that it has been disabled.

The process to enable macros is straightforward, but is slightly different, depending on your system configuration. The following video takes you through the steps involved (copy and paste the link into your web browser to view the video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dyPanIbe0s&t=205s

Using LibreOffice: When viewing the Timeline and Family Trees with LibreOffice, the macro is not required and should be turned off/disabled.

Using Excel: It is still possible to view the Timeline in Excel without enabling macros.

In addition to the more than 19,000 timeline entries, the World History Timeline contains over 3,500 comments.

There is a known issue with Microsoft Excel where comments are not always displayed correctly. They are sometimes collapsed into a thin horizontal line rather than a correctly-sized yellow text box. Comments may also display a lot of blank space below the text.

The Timeline contains a macro to fix this 'on the fly'.

This macro is 100% safe to use, its sole purpose being to easily and quickly adjust comments that are not displayed correctly.

If you prefer to not enable macros, mis-displayed comments can still be adjusted, but will need to be done manually. This will have no effect on any other functionality of the World History Timeline.

Using LibreOffice: When viewing the Timeline and Family Trees with LibreOffice, the macro is not required and should be turned off/disabled.

The WHT is completely editable. To assist in adding a large number of new entries, we have developed the 'New Entry Template'. This is available as a free download. Full instructions are included in the file.