Family Tree Maker 2011 A second opinion FIRST IMPRESSION Having read Kathy Cardozas positive review of Subject: [AZORES-Genealogy] Family Tree Maker for Mac --- my first impressions- Friday, November 12, 2010, 1:13 PM and having been using 13 different Family Tree Maker version 1 to 2005 since 1992 with currently 18,946 individual records I decided to break down and up date my 2005 version to the current version for windows. A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT ! Don't be mislead by the title Family Tree Maker ! This new version is no longer the Family Tree Maker I know. It is a completely different software package. I recognized none of the familiar windows of my previous versions. The old standard "Family View" is gone. In its place appears to be a totally different view containing some 6 (or more, depending on what you count as a window) different windows crunched on to one screen. Visualize, an index window on the left side, a primary individual window on the right side, an ancestor chart window at the center top, a children's list at the center bottom, with two or three windows between the center top and bottom who's function I have not yet figured out. One says Henry & Joan (who I don't recognize), another says "Add Parents" yet it shows the birth and death of the primary individual shown in the right side window ? and a window titled "Marriage" which appears to be a repeat that is in the primary individual window! The application that I received I do not consider an upgrade, or version of the Family Tree Maker. It is a completely new and different program that neither looks even similar or works like or similar to the former Family Tree Maker. It may well be a better program but it is misleading to say the least, to label it as what was once known formally as the " #1-selling family history software" . It will take this individual a long and steep learning curve to be able to use, let alone be comfortable with, this totally new rewritten and different program.
For Christmas I received a 130 page history of the "French Family 1555-1995" by Eleanor M. Crouch. After two days of attempting to record new information in the new software application I have reverted back to my old 2005 version of "Family Tree Maker" So if you are considering buying or upgrading to Family Tree Maker by Ancestry.com be aware it is very very different from the Family Tree Maker programs published from about 1992 through 2005 Ralph Sellars --- On Fri, 11/12/10, Kathy Cardoza <kmacard...@mac.com> wrote: From: Kathy Cardoza <kmacard...@mac.com> Subject: [AZORES-Genealogy] Family Tree Maker for Mac --- my first impressions To: azores@googlegroups.com Date: Friday, November 12, 2010, 1:13 PM I have used many genealogy programs over the years, both for Macs and for PCs and own several for both platforms. Reunion (Mac) has generally been my program of choice, though, as it is generally a very fine program, thorough, and easy to work with. I am always intrigued by trying out new programs, looking for that "perfect" one. To that end, I recently purchased FTM for the Mac and have been working with it this last week. This is not a complete review, but is only my first impressions of the program, both pro and con. I hope it will be helpful to you if you are considering purchasing it. First of all, there are two versions of this program ..... One, for $69 is sold directly from Ancestry http://store.ancestry.com/ProductDetail.aspx?P=P-4845. The other version sells for $99 but includes a Toolkit of 6 PDF books that may or may not be helpful to you. It also includes a 6 month membership to the U.S. collection on Ancestry. Before I purchased mine, I called Ancestry to find out if I could apply that additional 6 months to my current Ancestry subscription and was told Yes. I purchased my copy at Office Max, but it is also sold at Best Buy, Office Depot, Amazon, and Apple stores. After I purchased and registered it, I called Ancestry and they added 6 months to my subscription. That, alone, is worth the additional $30, in my opinion! I first prepared a gedcom in Reunion of my 9,000+ individuals and imported it into FTM. That process went very smoothly and quick. As most everyone knows (or should know) gedcom is NOT a perfect process, nor do you get perfect results. This was no exception. (Also, because I store my genealogy files in Dropbox and share them with both my computers, I changed the default place FTM wanted to put my file, to my Dropbox.) The program feels pretty Mac-like, in general. One thing I noticed right off, though, was that, after the import, I clicked the button to View the Log..... and it opened up Parallels on my Mac to go into the Windows XP System that I run on my Mac! Oops....Not very Mac friendly there and bad first impression. :) Gedcom import: Generally, most things were handled very well in the import. Notable exceptions were that many of my Misc. Event tags in Reunion (gedcom tag was EVEN) did not survive the import. Those included events such as Illness, Accident, Surgery, Register to Vote, and Fraternal Society Joined........ events that I added myself into Reunion and had given the EVEN gedcom tag. When I realized this, I had to mark those individuals in Reunion and add those Facts (as FTM calls them) into FTM one by one. I am still in the process of doing this but am getting close to being finished with it. Notes: I use quite a few Notes in Reunion and have added my own with the gedcom tag of NOTE; Census (where I record the entire household for each census), Probate, and Military as well as the default one for each individual of Misc. Notes. It seems that only one Note was imported for each person so if they had a Military note, for example, you will have to manually add that into FTM as part of your Military Fact for that person. Facts: FTM calls everything a Fact. There is a very large Note field attached to each Fact. I do not know if there is a character limit to this field as there is in Reunion (which is rather small). It is a very large field for adding data so there is plenty of room to add in your Note data from Reunion. When you publish a report such as an Individual Person Report, these Fact Notes don't appear immediately below the Fact data (date and place) but instead are gathered at the end of the report. I didn't like that at first, preferring to have ALL the pertinent data including the Memo/Note, all together with the event data. But, after working with this for a while, I see the merits of having that Note data appear at the end of the report (before Sources, if you choose to include them). You have an uncluttered view of all the Facts (Events) in a person's life, shown as a concise list at the beginning of the report. It makes it easy to view those events but if you want more info on each one, you can refer to the end of the report where that data appears. Sources: FTM has a set of templates included for adding specific source types. I haven't done a lot of these so far so I can't really give you much feedback on it as of yet. At first glance, though, it seems to be somewhat limited for templates. The Source View, though, is very complete. You can click on one of your sources on the left side and immediately see all the source citation detail as well as the links (the people or event it is being used on) and the media attached to it. Very nice! You can also rate your sources with a built-in criteria that asks you quick questions about the source to assign it a gold star rating OR you can choose your own blue star rating based on criteria of your own choosing and there is a place to add your Justification notes for your reasons. Media: I chose to import my Media links from Reunion into FTM. What that means is that the links all appear in FTM, but not the images (photos, documents, audio, video, etc.). This forces you to click on each Media link in the Media view. When you double click to open it, you are presented with the choice of YOU searching for the media file or letting FTM search for it. FTM does it much faster than I could locate the file, even knowing exactly where it is. FTM takes only 3 or 4 seconds to find the file so the process goes fairly quickly. Then, you can assign a category to the item (built in are Photo, Census, Document and a few others.... you can add your own, if you wish), add a date and description, add a note, and (most importantly) assign a link to the media file of a person or the actual event, or both. Depending on how many media items you have, this can be a long and tedious process. I am still working on mine .... but I'm almost finished with it. There is no provision that I can see, to link more than one individual at a time to a media file (for instance, linking both the bride and groom to a marriage record.) You can link both, but you have to do it separately. That process could be much improved upon in future upgrades! Places: I love this feature! You have a list of all your places and when you select one, you are very quickly awarded with a map of that area ...... even our Azores! You also get a list of all the people who are "attached" to that place with a little arrow that when clicked, shows you what event(s) of theirs occurred there. Very nice! Also, you can choose to view people in the Places view. When you click on a person, you see a list of their events on the right. You can check off the events you want to add to your map. Then, you get a migration map for that individual. It shows their path with whatever events you choose to add. You can export this in several ways as a PDF to show their path but it does not indicate each individual place along the way by a push pin or label. Nice, but could be improved upon. Publish: The reports and charts in FTM seem to be very good as they are well known for. I was disappointed not to find an Individual Narrative Report. But, there are ways to work around that .... one is to create a different type of report for one generation, such as an Ahnentafel Report. That gives you the details of a person's life in narrative form that you can edit later. One thing I looked for and did not find, was a way to save a reports options for future use. Charts and Reports, though, look very interesting and I look forward to playing around them more in the future. Web Search: I haven't used this a great deal yet, instead choosing to focus my time and attention to cleaning up my data from the import, creating my media links, etc. First things first! It does look very interesting, though, and I look forward to trying it out. My Wishes: There seems to be no way to Mark or Flag people like you can do in Reunion ... wish that was an option. (However, if you want to export a gedcom from FTM and choose Selected Individuals, you are presented with a selection window to select a person and all their ancestors, descendants, or other options ..... not as much control over the process as I would like.) I have not found where you can view the actual gedcom tags for the Facts or be able to edit those or the sentence structure that appears in certain reports so that you have more control over those....wish that was an option. I have not found anywhere that you can use the normal Mac behavior of command+click or shift+click to select more than one item... that could be added and would be most welcome. These items are not a "deal breaker" for me; they may be for you. But, they are things I would certainly like to see added or improved upon in the future. In summary, I am really getting to like this program! It has a lot to offer and I can only hope that they continue to develop it and add new features as they go along with its development. I am still getting used to the interface, but I find that I like it. It is clean, attractive, informative with lots of options everywhere you look in the form of tabs, buttons, and popups. And, it is very easy to navigate through your family file. On the Family tab of the Person view, you can view the Index, Bookmarks, and History. The program feels very quick and responsive. There are a few areas that could be improved upon, to be sure...... giving the user more control is a big one....., and I look forward to hopefully seeing those improvements in the future. Meanwhile, I'm going to spend more and more time exploring the program and plan to use it side by side with Reunion for the time being. As I discover more about it, who knows? I may decide to make it my main program...... or not. Time will tell but I do so enjoy the journey! :) Kathy ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Visit the Azores GenWeb Project: http://homepage.mac.com/kmacardoza/Genealogy/azoresindex.html Climb my Family Tree: http://homepage.mac.com/kmacardoza/Genealogy/Kathy/index.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To unsubscribe from this group, send email to azores+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Follow the confirmation directions when they arrive. For more options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." -- To unsubscribe from this group, send email to azores+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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