Family History software

[AnneC]

We've talked a lot elsewhere which are the best sites for finding information, but not a lot about how we record it all.

I know from past newsletters that Peter is especially fond of Genopro, though he also advocates Family Tree Maker from Amazon, purely for the free subscription to Ancestry.

I have always used Legacy, which although is American based (so I can't use a lot of features) I find very easy to use and to navigate. They also run web-based seminars, again very American, but if you pick and choose well can be very informative - especially if you have American relatives. The basic software is free, but upgrading to the deluxe edition is only about $20 (and no, I'm not on commission....perhaps Peter can negotiate something for Lost Cousins!)

What do you use, and would you recommend it to others?

 

[Mike]

I use webtrees and it is excellent.

Some of the main reasons why I chose it

• It is free (Open source)
• It is web based.
• It takes privacy seriously
• It works from standard GEDCOM files
• It has an active and talented development team

I used to use a family tree program on my PC and then upload changes to my web based webtrees site but soon realised webtrees could do it all (well almost) so now I work totally on webtrees.

 

[Tim]

I now use GenoPro. I like it. It simple to use, searching is very good, its very visual (you can layout the family as you want to), you can add pictures, scans and notes anywhere on the page, if the tree gets too big or complex, you can move that branch into another tab (a bit like Excel) and it has internal links to allow you to jump from person A to person A on the other tab, you can also have a branch in a completely separate file (e.g. your spouse and their family) and you can produce a HTML file of your tree (or any part of your tree) that you can send to other people and they can open it in any browser software. And yes, there are bits missing and things you'd like to change.

As for recommendations, its really about horses for courses. What information do you want to store? Are you more interested in storing the data than having something that looks like a tree? How easy are the reports to use? Is it easy to share or export?

Ultimately, people have to make their own choice, so I won't be recommending software A over software B. But if people have questions about what it can and can't do, then I'm happy to answer them.

 

[Jonathan C]

I would recommend Family Historian 5 and these are my off-the-top-of-my-head reasons:

1. It's very thorough and encourages a disciplined approach, particularly for the recording of sources.
2. It's British - or certainly tailored for the British market - which I think is important if conducting UK research.
3. Unlike Legacy,which I used for a while, it doesn't bring up irritating links to other peoples spurious research online.
4. It's a standalone PC based system - not Cloud based, so I don't have the possibility of server crashes or, perhaps more likely, unexpected future charges or anything else that goes with lack of control.
5. It has good graphing.
6. Adding people and their connections is easy.
7. There is a knowledgeable user community and forum, some of whom are active in creating:
8. Add ons / plug-ins which extend the functionality.
9. It handles multi-media well, if you want to add pictures etc. I especially like the ability to link to faces in a group picture, keeping the picture intact.
10. I believe it's very customisable too - not that I've bothered with much of that, aside from some of the plugins.

I could go on. Since the early 1990s I've tried Brother's Keeper, The Master Genealogist (a good program, but I felt the authors struggled to adapt it to UK use, being a US program - is it still available ?) and latterly Legacy, but I feel most comfortable with Family Historian. Good value for money too.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Personally I use Family Tree Maker (currently on version FTM 2012). I have also tried various packages including Family Historian which is great and actually a whole lot better than FTM for doing scripted queries of your data, which is part of the whole easy to extend and use addons feature Jonathan mentioned.

However the outstanding features of FTM that are key to me are:

• the very straightforward navigation around your tree. You see a couple + children as standard view with buttons above the couple heads to take you to their parents and buttons on the children to make them the main couple you view. This makes it exceptionally easy to move around the tree and see relationships.
• they have a very small new feature where under a persons name on the data sheet in the right hand column it says the relationship to the "home person" (which I've set to myself) Thus you can at a glance see if the person is blood relative, by marriage, direct ancestor or unrelated. At a glance info as soon as you view the record no having to work out the relation.
• The biggest new feature however is the online integration with Ancestry.co.uk this means I can click a button and sync my tree privately to Ancestry (I choose to publish my tree so people can benefit from my research but you can just as easily have the tree private). This has a range of benefits, one it's auto shared between my desktop, laptop & work computers as well as my iPad AND on the Ancestry website if I login there. Thus my tree is available to me anywhere I have an internet connection (which being an IT Geek is almost everywhere I go) or when I have my laptop or iPad with me (neither of which requires a connection)
• Online integration also means I can make changes on any device or even on the website and the next sync will merge the changes together, I don't have to worry about which version is the latest all the changes get merged for me.
• the integration with Ancestry.co.uk's searching. This means that every person in my tree gets checked automatically with the Ancestry database and a little leaf is displayed on their record. I can click the leaf and see what records might match. This goes to the website and displays the results in the FTM program. Where this gets REALLY clever is if for instance I find its a matching census record, I can click merge and it takes me through a small wizard to ask me what data I want to merge and what to discard. I have full control of the process. It even tags every fact it imports with the source data and allows the import from Ancestry of any images/scans they have for that record. For a census if there are extra kids it allows you to auto add them to your tree with a single "add child to this couple" button. Very simple very quick.
• By adding someone's email address (eg: my mum) I can let them browse the tree (read only) on the web, so whilst a family tree program might be daunting browsing a website tree isn't.
• I get 6 months Ancestry subscription free every time I purchase a new version, which has been every 18 months or so. This as has been said by Peter many times is a substantial discount on a normal Ancestry subscription.
• You can link into Bing Maps and it has a powerful "place finder" where all places in your tree are listed alphabetically as well as on a map so it throws up interesting insights on your data. Like my mother's father was aged 7 living in the next door farm to my fathers great grandmother when she died in 1921 aged 63. Little would she have realised that her great grandson would one day marry the daughter of the young boy next door. Nor would I have realised without the map function in FTM 2012.

NB. For merging I only ever merge for census, passenger lists, BMD lists etc never for any suggestions from someone else's tree as I want as much as possible to only ever tag facts in my tree that are from original sources (preferably those with images).

For comparison though what is not important to me :

• Tree drawing, FTM does an excellent job of doing "standard" reports and there are addons for doing other types of tree layout but its defaults will be disappointing to people for whom seeing a tree is very important.
• I've never used the "book maker" tools which are designed for presenting to family members as a book about your research so I can't comment on that

I say the tree drawing isn't important to me because I have almost 8000 people in my tree so I'm never going to get them all printed out. Although a very large percentage of those people are for my one name study of Bisset's. In this study I just enter every last Bisset fact snippet I find and merge up links later. It is like a 3000+ piece jigsaw puzzle, I'm sure a little piece might come in handy some day even though I don't know where it fits today it will probably fit somewhere. Thus small twigs form bigger twigs and become branches.

I hope this helps explain why I use the software I do. If you have similar needs you might like it too, if you find tree printing a top priority it's probably not for you.

 

[Bee]

Alexander, I too use FTM and find it as intuitive as you and agree with your pros. Coincidentally I agree with the aspects you do not use. We seem to use it in the same way. But tell me, when entering a place do you just name the map place and put the exact address eg 1 High Street in the description thus reducing the places names starting with numbers?

I was recently asked by a friend new to genealogy, though he has a large tree already in paper form, what site to use to put his tree online safely but let people search and connect with him. What happens when he's had enough and doesn't want his tree online any more? That I couldn't answer other than to say that once he gets hooked he will not want to take it off. Any suggestions from forum friends would be greatly received.

 

[MarionK]

I could go on. Since the early 1990s I've tried Brother's Keeper, The Master Genealogist (a good program, but I felt the authors struggled to adapt it to UK use, being a US program - is it still available ?) and latterly Legacy, but I feel most comfortable with Family Historian. Good value for money too.

I'm a TMG (The Master Genealogist) user, for about 5 years now. There is a specific UK version which I use. I love the versatility of the software, but it can be a bit daunting to a new user. There is a forum and a mailing list which provides exceptional support from other users. Most of the features have been - dare I say - copied by other programs in recent years.

 

[Andrew Bannister]

I was recently asked by a friend new to genealogy, though he has a large tree already in paper form, what site to use to put his tree online safely but let people search and connect with him. What happens when he's had enough and doesn't want his tree online any more?

For several years now I have had trees (each of a different slice of my ancestry) on Tribal Pages It's free, though one can pay for various upgrades, and it's very simple to upload a .ged and pictures. There's limited opportunity to customise one's websites, but as a way of letting relatives and friends have a look at one's family without needing any specialist knowledge except a password, it seems to me to hit the spot. I recently needed to take down a tree: it was very straightforward.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Alexander, I too use FTM and find it as intuitive as you and agree with your pros. Coincidentally I agree with the aspects you do not use. We seem to use it in the same way. But tell me, when entering a place do you just name the map place and put the exact address eg 1 High Street in the description thus reducing the places names starting with numbers?

I was recently asked by a friend new to genealogy, though he has a large tree already in paper form, what site to use to put his tree online safely but let people search and connect with him. What happens when he's had enough and doesn't want his tree online any more? That I couldn't answer other than to say that once he gets hooked he will not want to take it off. Any suggestions from forum friends would be greatly received.

I have a very rigid way of entering places, which the recent versions of FTM are very good at enforcing with the auto complete feature when you type a place name (forgot to mention that as a pro). My placenames are of the format : house address, street/place, parish, county, country ie: fields separated by commas. eg:

Scotland
Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Old Deer, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Old What, Old Deer, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Old Schoolhouse, Old What, Old Deer, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

I usually try to keep on top of place names to mark them using the maps feature in FTM so I can see things on the map. The place name search in FTM is a great tool to see everyone listed at the same place regardless of whether it was a census, birth, death, marriage, whatever.

Note all of these place formats are "little endian" formats, ie: the smaller end comes first. My Family Tree Analyser program that I've written can the load up my GEDCOM from FTM and analyse the location strings and display them as "big endian" ie: starting with Scotland and "drilling down" to greater and greater detail. Helps a lot with finding spelling mistakes and data that is mis-matched. Of course the program does a lot more than that but that's quite a useful feature.

Its other useful feature for Lost Cousins members is it lists everyone you have already found on a Lost Cousins census so you can check that list against your My Ancestors page to make sure you have entered them all. A great way of making sure that everyone you have found on a census is actually entered on the Lost Cousins website.

 

[Bob Spiers]

For several years now I have had trees (each of a different slice of my ancestry) on Tribal Pages www.tribalpages.com It's free, though one can pay for various upgrades, and it's very simple to upload a .ged and pictures. There's limited opportunity to customise one's websites, but as a way of letting relatives and friends have a look at one's family without needing any specialist knowledge except a password, it seems to me to hit the spot. I recently needed to take down a tree: it was very straightforward.

Yes I too have trees on Tribal Pages, one of which is upgraded mainly because it allows up to 5000 photos (not that I will ever require that amount but I already have over 600 on my main tree). I cannot recommend it too highly for the reasons given by Andrew and because it is an excellent way to keep family in the picture and read the many family stories I post within. Only I, as Administrator, can amend or change things, for all others it is view only.

I also share it with trusted genealogical friends who are researching one or more of my family lines. Many of these have their own Tribal pages which they also share. Tribal Pages also offer DVD's of your current Tree for modest cost, which make ideal Christmas gifts, and they produce professional quality Charts which I have framed on the wall in my lounge, and have gifted similar to my sisters.

I agree there is limited scope for customisation, and (for me at least) it does not replace a PC data base; although it could of course. For that I have Family Tree Legends but will mention that in a separate posting as I don't think that it has yet been covered.

 

[Bob Spiers]

For my main PC database I use Family Tree Legends (FTL) and have done now for some 10 years. In fact that says it all, because it once stood head and shoulders above all, mainly because there were few others about. It is American in origin but that was just a fact of life and never interfered with its working as a UK database. Produced originally by Pearl Software, sadly a year or so back it was bought out by My Heritage. To their credit, they still allow a free download of the original FTL. That said there is pressure to 'monitor online' which will mean you end up with a My Heritage webpage, but it is easy to decline, and have it as a stand alone database as I do.

Why do I like it - no adore it - because it is what it is. You enter family data and view the family page- parents and children, and can click backwards, and forwards -ancestors/descendants at will. It has one of the best Kinship reports of any which takes seconds and provides an at-a-glace relationship of anyone to anyone. The same with Ancestral & Descendants charts and reports. Its crowning glory is its index which intuitively latches on to a surname with just a few letters entered. I find it quite invaluable and so easy to use. To download a true FTL copy I recommend a CNET download. Just remember to avoid any My Heritage persuasion to monitor online. Once downloaded it readily accepts GED uploads.

 

[Norman]

Ask 10 people what is the best genealogy software and you'll get 10 different answers.

I use FTM 2012 and link it to my ancestry.co.uk tree. This enables me to make changes either on my PC or on-line at Ancestry knowing that the two will synchronise and any images and documents will also get up/downloaded. I also use RootsMagic mainly for it's ability to create web pages that I can "top and tail" to post to my "Law Family Web Site".

Creating those pages takes a lot of work (there are several hundred of them) and I wonder if anyone else has found software that creates web pages that would require less modifying. I'm particularly looking for something that would produce a web family tree something like the old GenesReunited version.

 

[Mike]

... software that creates web pages that would require less modifying. I'm particularly looking for something that would produce a web family tree something like the old GenesReunited version.

I use webtrees for pretty much that reason. That I wanted to have a good website for my tree. You will never beat the old Genes tree of course.
On the webtrees demo site click "Default chart" to see the tree and "Default individual" to see how the non graphical bit works.

Ask 10 people what is the best genealogy software and you'll get 10 different answers.

Agreed

 

[Norman]

Thanks Mike. I'm looking for software that I can produce web pages to upload to my own site rather than be hosted somewhere else, unless I've missed something. I could always invite people to view my tree on Ancestry but that requires registration etc. I want the family, or anyone else that's interested, to just visit my web site and browse without having to register.

 

[Mike]

I was proposing you convert your site to be a webtrees site which is a bit drastic I suppose. webtrees sites are your own it isn't like ancestry.

 

[Norman]

It seems I misinterpreted the Webtrees methodology. The demo page you pointed me to didn't make it clear but you can run the software on your own server if you use PHP and MySQL which I do. This means that I can generate the required web pages and host them on my own server.

Thanks again for the "heads up". I've downloaded the software and will install it on my test server and give it a try. Hopefully I'll be able to configure the "look and feel" so that it fits in with the rest of my site(s).

 

[Norman]

It's not going to be easy as the web pages are generated by the database as needed. There doesn't seem to be a way to modify the style of the pages other than by selecting one of the supplied "themes".

 

[Mike]

I modified the "webtrees" theme. Just a few minor tweaks. There is a style.css etc
There should be some explanation about how to create your own theme. Can't find it though.

 

[Phil]

We've talked a lot elsewhere which are the best sites for finding information, but not a lot about how we record it all.

I know from past newsletters that Peter is especially fond of Genopro, though he also advocates Family Tree Maker from Amazon, purely for the free subscription to Ancestry.

I have always used Legacy, which although is American based (so I can't use a lot of features) I find very easy to use and to navigate. They also run web-based seminars, again very American, but if you pick and choose well can be very informative - especially if you have American relatives. The basic software is free, but upgrading to the deluxe edition is only about $20 (and no, I'm not on commission....perhaps Peter can negotiate something for Lost Cousins!)

What do you use, and would you recommend it to others?

I have a Mac, and have used Reunion for 12 or more years - pretty good, and well maintained. But it's not cheap, about £70-£80 I think; it's American, but that doesn't affect the usage. My wife uses Heredis, which looks good to me (I've briefly tested it in the trial version); there is a French version as well; it's about £40.

 

[Cathy]

I'm a Legacy user and have used it since version 2 in 1998.
Legacy gets better and better and I've found no reason to change. Other software often has "new" features which I've enjoyed for a long time. Is it perfect? Of course not but no software is.
The Standard version is free and very good. The database is fully compatible with the Deluxe version. It just lacks access to some views of the data and advanced tools. The Deluxe version is about $30. Free updates often include new features that other companies would release as a version upgrade and require another payment.
American? Well it's an American company but I use the Australian English version and some of the specific US tools can be turned off - like the County verifier. Some of the bells and whistles are more developed for the US but there are sufficient examples to enable them to be used wherever your research takes you.
I moved to Legacy from Brother's Keeper for the superior sourcing. The sourcing has improved more over the years. The Source Clipboard is invaluable.
Mapping was introduced some time ago and I love being able to map all locations.
The ability to get a list of people alive and probably in a particular location in a particular year with a click or two is also useful for checking out who should be searched for in a census. It can note or leave out those who have already been found in that census.
Jonathan C. said:

3. Unlike Legacy,which I used for a while, it doesn't bring up irritating links to other peoples spurious research online.

Interesting comment. I've never seen them or heard them referred to before. They must be buried in the Research Guidance section which has far more useful stuff but not an area of the program I use.
The Legacy Webinars have included some good ones on UK and Irish research. The Webinars on methodology and technology are universally relevant. Webinars are free to view for 7 days. The current one is on evaluating genealogical evidence and available free until the 10th. I haven't watched it yet.