Family History software

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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:

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.