What genealogy software do you use?

Question

And what are its good points compared to the other programs? And, if you're not using software, how do you keep it all organized?

If you're a veteran from the old days, what's missing in computer software that you'd like to see?

Best sound-off, genealogical smack, or ranting rave wins 10 points.

PS: I have yet to meet an experienced genealogist who has less opinions than the number of people on their family tree...go ahead and rant...

Answer 1

Oh cool, I get to rant and rave for 10 points! And since I have many thousands of people in my database, I certainly won't run out of opinions!

Well, let me tell you about Family Tree Maker (FTM). That program just stinks! I mean, I think I paid over $50 for it. Really, over $50! And right off the bat, it was a disappointment. I installed it and fired it up and alas, I found that it didn't have my family tree back to 597BC preloaded! How RUDE! I mean, I did pay over $50 so at least it could have come preloaded with my family back a few hundred years at least. But NOOOOOOOO....it actually expected ME to do research and enter the information.

And entering the information - again, the program is just rude. I mean, if I want to say my grandfather was born in 1935 and died in 1896, that's my business. I don't want some stupid program telling me I have him dying before he was born! If I meant to type 1986 I darn sight would have typed 1986. And it doesn't stop there. It has accused me of being an idiot just because I had my great grandparents marrying each other when they were 1 and 3 years old respectively. Or my aunt having a child when she was 8 or my uncle being a father at 94 years old. Just rude.

And the stupid program assumed that if you are looking at one person, you want to see related information, like their parents, spouse and children. How idiotic. I mean, often times I really want to see my 8th great grandfather on my fathers side with the 3rd great grandfather of my wife.

And those idiot charts. I simply wanted to show a descendant chart from my 9th great grandfather. It only had 184 people in it. And this poorly designed program wanted to print it on 12 pages. Hey, paper costs money. So I told it to make it all fit on one page. This horribly designed program did put all 184 people and their birth, death, marriage dates and places on one page, but would you believe that the print was actually too small to read. What a horrible design.

And notes. These idiot program actually expect you to take notes and keep references. Yea right, like I would actually care a year from now where I got some piece of information. I'm only after names and any information I find I intend to treat as absolute fact. Really, the first occurrence of any piece of information you find has to be the best. Don't know why the programs don't understand that.

But they do treat you as idiots. If I want to make Harrold Simth the father of Jane Smith, William Smith, David Smith and Mary Smith, that's my business. I don't need no stinkin' computer asking if i spelt it corectly.

They all stink! Especially FTM. Though I'm hearing that Roots Magic is just as horrible. And that PAF program you can get for free, well, what would you expect? It seems they all expect you to be accurate, organized and worst of all, actually do some work yourself and maybe even care.

Now that was a rant worth of 10 points.

Answer 2

I use Family Tree Maker and have for several years and just to dispell a myth in a previous answer, yes it does allow for "doubles" . You have to learn how to USE the program to get the program to display everything correctly. Also, I have several lines that go hundreds of years back and I have been able to accomodate EVERY generation. One more thing, the program DOES allow for a father having a different last name then his children. For instance, I do a lot of Dutch research and the the Dutch generally didn't adopt surnames until after 1811. Prior to that, the Dutch used patronymic names. For more information on Patronymics, here is a great article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronymic
I can easily enter the information in the program. I don't have any complaints with FTM as far as being able to display information correctly. One last thing, FTM DOES allow you to export your file in GEDCOM format. In fact, I think that most programs do.

I have tried PAF but didn't really care for it. It is true that the program is free and that is a big deciding factor for a lot of people. It is a great program for those doing genealogical research for the LDS church because it has some fields that are very specific to LDS research. Its just personal preference though. You might download the program and think that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread!

There are several things about Family Tree Maker that I really like. I mostly like the user interface. It is really easy to follow a line. I like the fact that you can write an endless amount of notes. You can make several "pretty" trees. You can make ancestor based trees, descendant based trees, and even a bowtie tree where you select an individual and show direct descendants and ancestors.

The only gripe I have and I think that this applies to EVERY genealogy program is that one can't pull a report based on a particular location. For instance, say I wanted to go to a repository and research anyone in my file living in Holland, Michigan. Do you know how handy that would be to be able to pull a report showing Birth Marriage amd Death info on everyone in your file from a given place? That would be a GREAT tool; however, I know that that doesn't exist and if it did, I would change programs tomorrow!!

The important thing to remember is that no matter what program you choose, you must learn how to use it. Play around with the help menus if you run stuck. Computers and programs are only as good as their users. I think that most of them will do what you want them to, but they are not mind readers. You can't expect a computer program to KNOW that there is a double relationship, you have to tell it and most programs will have a precedure to recognize and reflect this relationship correctly. Most of all have fun! If you have a hard time reflecting a particular relationship correctly, you can always post another question here OR you can to http://genforum.genealogy.com/
They do have individual forums for Family Tree Maker, PAF, Generations and others. Good luck and I hope my rant helped. Take care!!

Answer 3

I have used Family Tree Maker for about 15 years and it always accomodated what I want it to do. However the new version FTM 2008 sucks!!! I bought the update from FTM 16 and when I tried to use it half of the reports and features that were in v. 16 were no longer available. It screwed up source notes and put some data in fields that had no connection to that data. I returned it, got my money back and am still using version 16. I do understand that there is an update for 2008 to correct some of hese problems but do not want to risk it. If you get used to working with one program I think it is very hard to switch to a different one unless there is a specific feature that you want and you are willing to make the effort to change the way you process your inputs.

Answer 4

Family Tree Maker has been around a long time . The latest versions have had a lot of criticism and many people like myself prefer to stick with the older version ( Version 16 or earlier ) Not very good on reports but can produce an " all in family tree" print out which is pretty unique . I like Roots Magic which is great with reports but not so good with charts! I tend to use both as RM can import the Family Tree files without converting to a gedcom file . If you are in the UK both these progs are more geared to US research and you should try Family Historian which is somewhat complex but very good . Prices for most genealogy progs vary . I would go for the basic and not the inflated super dooper versions where you are paying for a lot of mostly useless CDs .

Answer 5

I've got 25+ yrs experience, so that might qualify me as a veteran. You might lose your bet on this one, friend.
I use PAF, it's free and it does the job.
My "rant" (or opinion, depending on your mood, I suspect) is that I am way more concerned with how to find ancestors, than I am with what program (or web site) to use. What is missing in software? Common sense. People seem to want the computer to do their thinking for them. It's a great tool, but it does not magically generate a family tree, if you don't understand the basics of genealogical research.
Several sentences to come to one idea. I am not politically correct . but then, I count that as a blessing.
Keep smiling. If it aint fun, why are you doing it?
oh.. organized?? lmao.

Answer 6

What?
Me, I do NOT use any genealogy software. None of them will go back far enough; none of them allow for what I call doubles. Doubles occur in a variety of ways: ancestors have 2 or more children, each of whom becomes an ancestor; a person's spouse dies, the survivor remarries, has children by each spouse that become ancestors; ancestors marry a relative. None of the programs allow for any of these situations. Another problem with genealogy software: they ALL assume that every person's father has the same surname. That was not true; one of my ancestors had NO SURNAME; his son chose a surname; and his children (2 sons) each chose a different surname! THAT really blows a software program!
So, I type everything: I have 2 "trees", one for Dad, one for Mom. Each start out as #1; the father of each is #2, the mother of each is #3, and so on. I type in Number, Name, date/place of birth; baptism; marriage; death, etc., Notes (with occupation, etc.), Sources; then children below the female's info.
This works for ANY situation.

Answer 7

I have been using PAF (Personal Ancestral File) for over 25 years and have never ever had a problem with it. And now with the PAF Companion I can add all kinds of things to my database. It's a free download from Familysearch.org so the price is right. They keep upgrading it and it's available in many languages. And if you happen to be LDS you can record the dates and places of LDS ordinances IE: Sealing of family, Baptism for the Dead, etc... And unlike some of the versions of FTM every version of PAF will create Gedcom files so you can share your data with others.

Answer 8

I use Roots Magic. I had PAF, FTM 5 and Family Origins for Windows 6 at the same time, tried them all, loved FOW, never looked back. The same company owned the licensing agreement for FOW and FTM. They pushed FTM, so Bruce Buzbee, the wizard behind FOW, struck out on his own under a new name, Roots Magic. RM 3.0 is really FOW 13. In the early days Mr. Buzbee used to answer questions about FOW on the GenForum FOW page. What a guy! Bill Gates didn’t tell people how to get rid of that obnoxious animated paper clip in Windows.

Roots Magic is the answer to HSK Mama's prayers. It will let you write custom reports. A custom report has two steps. First you decide what fields you want to print, and in what order. You can use as many lines as you need.; B on one, M on a second, D on a third. You can select any fact you want; birth place / date, marriage p/d, Bar Mitzvah p/d, . . .

The second step is choosing who to print. You have some choices;
birth place equal to , (ie, Modesto, Stanislaus, California"
birth place contains, (ie, contains Stanislaus, to get everyone born in the county, or
contains Michigan, to get everyone born there.)
You can also select everyone with ANY fact place (B,M,D, Bar M . . .) that contains "Michigan". You can choose death place, marriage place, born before, died after - it lets you pick up to five criteria. (Such as
"birth place = Pennsylvania AND death date before 1950"
"BP = Pennsylvania OR death date after 1880"

You can use any fact date or place to select people; also that people have a non-blank one, so, for instance, I could list everyone who either had a blank birth place (work to do there), or who didn't have a blank BP.

Now, if sometimes you put "Modesto Ca" and others "Modesto, Stanislaus, California", the ones with the first place name won't come up when you select any place that contains "Stanislaus". RM helps there, too. As soon as you type "M" in a place fact, it "suggests" the first place on the place list that starts with "M"; in my case. Macon County North Carolina. As soon as you type the "o", it suggests the first place on the place list that starts with "Mo"; in my case, Modesto, Stanislaus, California, and I just press enter, having typed just two characters. The suggestion features makes keeping your places consistently spelled a piece of cake.

I even cheat; if I had a family that had a lot of facts in “Monroe County, Virginia (Now WV)” I would temporarily change the place name by putting a space after the “M”. A space comes up even before an “a”, so with the temporary change, “M onroe County, Virginia (Now WV)” would be the first place on the list that started with “M”. After I enter my hillbilly ancestors I change it back.

That is another great thing; RM lets you edit a list of place names. If you import a GEDCOM from someone else and find he has used “Modesto, Cal”, “Modesto, Stanislaus, Ca” and “Modesto, Stanislaus, California” interchangeably, you go into the place name list and change “Modesto, Cal” to “Modesto, Stanislaus, California” just once. It changes the place name on all of the facts (B, M, D, BarM . . .) on all of the people, no matter how many there are. Then you repeat for “Modesto, Stanislaus, Ca”.

RM (and FTM, but it isn’t as obvious in FTM) lets you “print” any report to a text file or an RTF file. I “Print” custom reports to text and import them into Excel all the time, to make checklists. You can “print” to an RTF file, then open it with Word or MS Publisher and tweak it to your heart’s content.

It is easy to use and intelligently designed. I've been a programmer for 30 years. I've designed data bases. I know good work when I use it, and RM is really a gem.

Answer 9

I use Family Tree Maker is it very simple to use for beginners. Holds endless information, I currently have 12,000 people in mine.
You can store photos, print books, reports, trees. Just great program.

Answer 10

Well, I use FTM--its pretty simple to use although I do feel it could use a few improvements. The biggest downer about it is the price. I am currently looking at other programs to see if I like them better.