Best Genealogy/Family Tree Maker.... Which one?

Im interested in compiling a detailed family tree.....anyone know of or have any experience with any online or downloadable programs? I would like to add pics to the tree as well.

Thanks

Hi CSI,

I'm a long time Family Tree Maker (FTW) user. I find it a great program and very easy to use. I've been doing genie research for about 18yrs. When I was still very active with the local Genealogical Society's Computer group I would always recommend Family Tree Maker (FTM) to new users starting out. Simple and easy to use and will do most of what people need in a genie program. At the more complicated end you have programs such as The Master Genealogist (TMG), but TMG, while offering a few more advanced features has a harder interface to master and this sometimes turns people away from using software for their genealogical research.

Strangely enough the one thing I've never been happy about is storing the photo's within FTW. Most other programs only link to them but from memory FTW imports the photo's into its own database. Kinda causes the DB to bloat very quickly. I imagine their reasoning is that the file is always complete no matter what PC is used to opened them. I currently don't put my photos into FTW at all. Means I loose the feature of printing photos out in the charts.

If you are looking at what some of the other programs on the web make sure anything that you settle on has GEDCOM support.

“GEDCOM was developed by the Family History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) to provide a flexible, uniform format for exchanging computerised genealogical data. GEDCOM is an acronym for GEnealogical Data COMmunication. Its purpose is to foster the sharing of genealogical information and the development of a wide range of inter-operable software products to assist genealogists, historians, and other researchers.”

But what does this mean in real terms? Can you imagine this frustration of having entered 1500 people in a family tree program, then finding that you have to do all this again because you wish to switch to a different program. GEDCOM allows you to transfer all the information that you have entered into one family history program to another. All of the major software programs will have GEDCOM support built in. Some such as TMG have a complete data exchange module that will natively read the files from other programs such as FTW.

What to Look for in a Family History Program?

Send me a PM and I can email you the lecture I've copied most of these bullet points from. It greatly expands on What to Look for in a Family History Program idea.
• Gedcom Support
• Charting Facilities
• Reporting Facilities
• Extra Information Fields
• Search Features
• Search & Replace
• Web Page Creation
• Record your Sources
• Date & Surname Formats
• A Good help file/book
• Multimedia Capable
• Publishing Features
• Miscellaneous

These are some of the added extras that some people use
Address Book, Timeline, Maps, Data errors, Reference Numbers, Backup facility

A good place to start is on Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet
http://www.cyndislist.​com/

Another thread here not so long ago about Ancestry.com

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) from the LDS church is still free and when I last looked at it a few years ago did most of the things you'd want. It used to be a little weak on the charting side but has probably caught up here buy now. I seem to recall there was a third party add (for $) on that could help out in this area.


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Greg_C wrote:
Hi CSI,

I'm a long time Family Tree Maker (FTW) user. I find it a great program and very easy to use. I've been doing genie research for about 18yrs. When I was still very active with the local Genealogical Society's Computer group I would always recommend Family Tree Maker (FTM) to new users starting out. Simple and easy to use and will do most of what people need in a genie program. At the more complicated end you have programs such as The Master Genealogist (TMG), but TMG, while offering a few more advanced features has a harder interface to master and this sometimes turns people away from using software for their genealogical research.

Strangely enough the one thing I've never been happy about is storing the photo's within FTW. Most other programs only link to them but from memory FTW imports the photo's into its own database. Kinda causes the DB to bloat very quickly. I imagine their reasoning is that the file is always complete no matter what PC is used to opened them. I currently don't put my photos into FTW at all. Means I loose the feature of printing photos out in the charts.

If you are looking at what some of the other programs on the web make sure anything that you settle on has GEDCOM support.

“GEDCOM was developed by the Family History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) to provide a flexible, uniform format for exchanging computerised genealogical data. GEDCOM is an acronym for GEnealogical Data COMmunication. Its purpose is to foster the sharing of genealogical information and the development of a wide range of inter-operable software products to assist genealogists, historians, and other researchers.”

But what does this mean in real terms? Can you imagine this frustration of having entered 1500 people in a family tree program, then finding that you have to do all this again because you wish to switch to a different program. GEDCOM allows you to transfer all the information that you have entered into one family history program to another. All of the major software programs will have GEDCOM support built in. Some such as TMG have a complete data exchange module that will natively read the files from other programs such as FTW.

What to Look for in a Family History Program?

Send me a PM and I can email you the lecture I've copied most of these bullet points from. It greatly expands on What to Look for in a Family History Program idea.
• Gedcom Support
• Charting Facilities
• Reporting Facilities
• Extra Information Fields
• Search Features
• Search & Replace
• Web Page Creation
• Record your Sources
• Date & Surname Formats
• A Good help file/book
• Multimedia Capable
• Publishing Features
• Miscellaneous

These are some of the added extras that some people use
Address Book, Timeline, Maps, Data errors, Reference Numbers, Backup facility

A good place to start is on Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet
http://www.cyndislist.​com/

Another thread here not so long ago about Ancestry.com

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) from the LDS church is still free and when I last looked at it a few years ago did most of the things you'd want. It used to be a little weak on the charting side but has probably caught up here buy now. I seem to recall there was a third party add (for $) on that could help out in this area.

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WoW ...... I didnt realize how involved this could be.....looks fun!Thanks for the info! Ill PM you....

We had a similar thread going on here not too long ago about Genealogy etc... Check it out.

https://photography-on-the.net …91038&highlight​=genealogy

Jon.

I use FTM, too. It's a full featured program and is quite user friendly.

Thanks, guys...... I tried a basic search for the topic before I posted, probably mis-typed.

Regards,
Bill