Part 4 ~ Genealogy Without Family Tree Maker

This is part 4 of an ongoing series documenting my search for a desktop/laptop genealogy software package to replace the retiring Family Tree Maker sold by Ancestry.com.  See below for links to the previous three blog posts in this series.

After playing around with some alternative software packages I’ve determined I needed a list of “deal breaker” features I need in my choice.   I’ll be looking for these features as I try out all the new software packages.  These are my “wish list” for a new desktop genealogy software package:

1.  A lineage report, for example, a simple report that shows how I descend from one ancestor.

2.  Concise citations that print out accurately on reports and charts

3.  An easy index of relatives, with a home button to easily return to a chosen relative (usually me).

4.  Easily produced GEDCOM files

5.  Good customer service

6.  Easy solutions for duplicate entries for relatives (collapsing pedigrees) and merges

7.  Handles large amounts of data on 50,000 to 100,000 relatives.

8.  Stability- no crashing, lost data, slow loading or other hints of poor software design

My “Would be nice” but not a “deal breaker” features:

1.  Sync to an online tree

2.  Drag and drop photos and documents

-----------------------------------------

Helpful links found on line:

A terrific chart comparing software packages by The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) http://www.americanancestors.org/education/learning-resources/read/genealogical-software-programs 

Also at NEHGS, a very timely and FREE webinar on Tuesday, January 26, 3pm Eastern Time, "Choosing a Genealogical Software Program" presented by genealogist Rhonda McClure.  Register ahead of time at this link:  https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2419120565893263618

An interesting view of Ancestry’s retirement of Family Tree Maker by Louis Kesser at the Behold Genealogy blog.  He brings up several good points about the lack of sympathy for the company for user suggestions and complaints.  Check out his post “What Ancestry’s ‘Retirement’ of FTM Really Means”  http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=1622   

And a blog post by Lisa Louise Cooke from Genealogy Gems "Family Tree Maker Alternatives: Great Offers, and What I do with my Tree"   http://lisalouisecooke.com/2015/12/family-tree-maker-alternatives/?utm_source=December+17%2C+2015+newsletter&utm_campaign=FTM+follow+up&utm_medium=email

Other good news!

Russ Worthington has been busy over at his blog Family Tree Maker User.  He’s produced a series of new mini videos to help you transition from FTM to other software-

“FTM2014 to RootsMagic – Living People weren’t included” http://ftmuser.blogspot.com/2015/12/ftm2014-to-roots-magic-living-people.html

“How to View Media Files in Roots Magic 7 (for FTM2014 users)  http://ftmuser.blogspot.com/2015/12/how-to-view-media-files-in-roots-magic.html

“How to Download your tree from Ancestry.com” 

http://ftmuser.blogspot.com/2015/12/how-to-download-your-tree-from.html

Also check out Dear Myrtle and Russ Worthington at “Wacky Wednesday: Life Beyond Family Tree Maker”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5a6RoJBpZo

---------------------------------------

PS-  In my Part 3 post I was playing around with MyHeritage’s Family Tree Builder Genealogy Program.  They have a NEW OFFER for FTM users.   You get both the Family Tree Builder software and an unlimited size Family Site online for FREE!  The software was free before, but the unlimited size family web site is new.  And both will sync on your handheld devices, too.  See the details at the MyHeritage blog at this link: http://blog.myheritage.com/2015/12/ftm-users-join-myheritage-and-get-family-tree-builder-with-an-unlimited-size-family-site-for-free/

------------------------------------------

Part 1 in this series  "Plan ahead for genealogy research without Family Tree Maker"

Part 2 in this series   "Without Family Tree Maker" 

Part 3 in this series   "Without Family Tree Maker", in which I try out MyHeritage's Family Tree Builder for the first time. 

------------------------------------------

Published under a Creative Commons License
Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Part 4 ~ Genealogy Without Family Tree Maker", Nutfield Genealogy, posted December 17, 2015 (  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2015/12/part-4-genealogy-without-family-tree.html: accessed [access date]). 

Part 3 ~ Without Family Tree Maker

Reading the online rants about Family Tree Maker has been so much more entertaining than reading the political rants this week!   And that’s saying as a “First in the Nation Presidential Primary” New Hampshire resident.

OK, last night I ordered Legacy and RootsMagic.  I have never used either one before.  Both were simple enough to order online and both are sending me disks via the US postal service.   RootsMagic immediately sent me a separate email with a code to download the file right away.   Legacy sent me a confirmation that said a separate email will be sent by the end of the next business day with an unlock code and download instructions. I haven’t received the Legacy download email yet.

My Heritage offers their software for Family Tree Builder free online.  I downloaded it and synced it to two of the four trees I had previously built on My Heritage.  This went smoothly and took only about five minutes for all four trees.  I was up late fiddling around with Family Tree Builder until the wee hours.

In the short time that I played with the My Heritage Family Tree builder I found a few things I liked and a few that were missing.  I liked the family group sheets it was able to produce.  I liked the sync with the My Heritage website.  The back button <-  is cool, letting you trace your steps back to a previous page.  It appears to allow same sex marriages and other alternatives (such as unknown).   I really like the index of all names down the left column, just like FTM (very handy for me since I have many families that repeat names – like five generations of Abijah HITCHINGS or nine generations in a row of Robert WILSONs, plus a plethora of Robert WILSON cousins).  The user’s guide is located on the MyHeritage website, but can downloaded to your computer for quick access – nice! Files can be exported, including GEDCOM.

On the other hand, it was missing the lineage report I loved in version 16 of Family Tree Maker that is also missing in all the newer version of FTM from 2009 to 2014.  The person pages of the program show children AND siblings, but doesn’t give many details until you click on their names.  At the person page it would be nice to see a sibling/child birth date, or to hover over a name to see a spouse.    One big problem I encountered was dealing with ancestors who are related in multiple relationships (collapsing pedigrees).  The solution to collapsing pedigrees was not intuitively obvious, so I’ll spend some time with customer service later as a “test case”.  I have tons of repeated ancestors, so this is a deal breaker for me [For example, I have 8 lineages from one BURNHAM ancestor, and many more similar cases – cue the banjos.]   Another deal breaker is the poor source documentation [No page numbers on the sources in family group sheets or reports? Wow!]

Free access limits the online tree to just 250 people, and limits photos.  Premium members get more space, and the Premium Plan is less than Ancestry.com.   However the software is FREE!  Can’t beat that!

It was fun exploring the My Heritage Family Tree Builder, but the real test will come when I try out a few more software packages. Then I will be better prepared to comparison shop.

Stay tuned for more as I try out the My Heritage customer service, and for when I try out Legacy and RootsMagic.  As I attempt more advanced genealogy reports and citations on these software platforms, I’ll be documenting the results here, too.

Useful links:

From Cyndi’s List – Software

http://www.cyndislist.com/software/

From Cyndi’s List- Macintosh Software

http://www.cyndislist.com/software/mac/

From the blogs:

Randy Seaver at GeneaMusings  “What Do Family Tree Maker Users Do Now?”

http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/12/what-do-family-tree-maker-users-do-now.html

Thomas MacEntee at GeneaBloggers “Blame the Millennials:  The End of Family Tree Maker Genealogy Software” http://www.geneabloggers.com/blame-the-millennials-the-end-of-family-tree-maker-genealogy-software/

From a Mac User point of view, see Elizabeth Pyle Handler’s blog post at From Maine to Kentucky, “Family Tree Maker Software is Being Retired” http://frommainetokentucky.blogspot.com/2015/12/family-tree-maker-software-is-being.html?spref=fb

Diane Haddad at Family Tree Magazine “Ancestry.com Announces End of Family Tree Maker Software”   http://blog.familytreemagazine.com/insider/default,date,2015-12-09.aspx

From Teach Me Genealogy – a very useful blog post “How to Export Your Family Tree from Ancestry.com”  http://www.tmgenealogy.com/2013/06/how-to-export-your-family-tree-from.html

Part 1 of this series

Part 2 of this series

------------------------------------

DISCLAIMER -  I was not paid or reimbursed by Ancestry or My Heritage to write this blog post.  I did not receive any free software or online packages (except for several years ago I did receive a free 6 month Premium package subscription at My Heritage while at RootsTech 2013).

--------------------------------------------

Published under a Creative Commons License
Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Part 3 ~ Without Family Tree Maker", Nutfield Genealogy, posted December 10, 2015 (  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2015/12/part-3-without-family-tree-maker.html: accessed [access date]). 

Flash Blog Mob

Earlier today I chatted with several other genealogy bloggers online about Ancestry.com's decision to drop their "old search" for the "new search".   After venting our opinions together, we decided that perhaps we should share our opinions through our blogs.   We're calling this our "Flash Blog Mob".  Genealogy bloggers will be joining in all weekend, and I'll be adding their posts to the list down at the bottom of this page.  Before I wrote my post,  I first wrote to the Ancestry.com Facebook page. And then I received this reply:

A message to me from Ancestry.com via their Facebook page…

"Hello Heather, We are consolidating the two search experiences on the site and will be taking features from both our old and new search experiences and add a few new features into a single search experience. As we consolidate, our old search experience will no longer exist as a stand-alone or separate experience. Please feel free to share your thoughts with us regarding the old search here: http://ancstry.me/14A19ik. As a side note, many of the tools you use and are comfortable with in our Old Search experience are currently available in the primary search experience. This article provides more information: http://ancstry.me/14A2F4a"

--------------------------------

This week I was stuck at home waiting for repair people.  Don’t you hate that chore?  Stuck at home, waiting for hours because the repair people won’t give you an exact appointment time.  Then, since of course the appliance is “unfixable”, you end up again waiting all day because the delivery people won’t give you an appointed time for  delivery of the new fridge.  Then the new appliance is a lemon, right out of the box (don’t ask- it’s a long story), so again we have a repair person waiting day, followed by another delivery day when they decide “You need a new fridge”.  Of course I need a new fridge!  I needed one a week ago!

Thus, I was stuck at home.  And I put this time towards learning what’ I’ve avoided for several years.  I learned the ins and outs of Ancestry.com’s “new search”.  Of course, it’s been around for several years so it’s hardly a “new search”.  But I’m a creature of habit, and I like the old one.  I liked being able to search without even looking at what I was doing since I’d been searching this way for ten years (or maybe even more).  I liked the simplicity of not even thinking about it, just getting predictable results.

However, all good things must come to an end.  I was an early adopter of Facebook, using my husband’s MIT email address back in 2005 to see what it was all about.  If you could step back in time to see it then, you wouldn’t recognize it as what you see today as Facebook.  And how many times has it changed since then? It’s changed dozens of times, without any announcements most of the time, and with most of us screaming and complaining.  But we’re all still on Facebook (most of us) and we’ve figured out the ins and outs, and how to make it work for us…

And so, when many people got an email message this week (I still haven’t received mine), it was time to either complain, reflect, submit, or get to work learning the new system.  Things change.  Not just Facebook, and Ancestry, blog readers or genealogy data bases… how many iterations of Windows have you lived through? How many types of word processors have you learned since the 1980s? How many cell phones have you owned in your life? I remember when going online involved dialing the phone and then putting the phone receiver into a cradle and letting it connect with the computer.  ? How many versions of your internet browser have you had since then?

So I got to work.  I learned how to use “new search”.  I learned how to live with it.  As you can see from the message I received from Ancestry above, you can fill out the surveys, give your opinions, “share your thoughts”, but you still have to learn the “new search”.

In the meantime…    I’m not just learning Ancestry.com's "new search",  I'm also seriously learning how to use MyHeritage, FindMyPast, Mocavo and FamilySearch and others.  I’ve bought some premium subscriptions to some of these.  Because if I’m going to be forced to change, it better be worth it.  My kitchen can hold only one fridge at a time, lemon or working model. My computer can hold multiple subscriptions to many databases online.  I can try them all, keep the good ones and drop the lemons. It might mean dropping Ancestry.com for something better.

Disclaimer:  I was not compensated by Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast or FamilySearch in any way for this blog post. I have purchased my own subscriptions to some of these websites (excluding FamilySearch, which is FREE).  I was given a subscription to Mocavo last year to review, and I still have that gift subscription. I am not an affiliate or vendor for these products.

------------------------------------------------------

 

Other thoughts from the blogosphere…

Jan Brown at “Cow Hampshire”

http://www.cowhampshireblog.com/2013/06/27/ancestry-com-why-is-a-good-idea-going-the-way-of-the-flash-mob/#more-3654

Carol A. Bowen Stevens "Reflections from the Fence"
http://www.reflectionsfromthefence.com/2013/06/the-2-rant-not-feeling-special-and.html

Bill West “West in New England”

http://westinnewengland.blogspot.com/2013/06/confession-of-genealogical-fuddyduddy.html
and again on July 7th
http://westinnewengland.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-last-word-on-old-search-vs-new-search.html

Thomas MacEntee “GeneaBloggers”

http://geneabloggers.com/ancestrycom-search-functionality-removes-search/

Valerie Craft  “Begin with Craft”

http://beginwithcraft.blogspot.com/2013/06/time-to-suck-it-up-and-say-goodbye-to.html

Randy Seaver "Geneamusings"  27 June
http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/06/ancestrycom-to-retire-old-search.html?showComment=1372361497024
and also 28 June
http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/06/comparing-old-search-and-new-search.html

John Newmark "Transylvanian Dutch"
http://blog.transylvaniandutch.com/2013/06/genealogy-and-tech-google-and-ancestry.html

Dick Eastman "Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter"
June 27
http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2013/06/ancestrycom-to-change-old-search.html
June 28
http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2013/06/follow-up-ancestrycom-to-change-old-search.html
July 2
http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2013/07/a-comment-about-all-the-comments-concerning-ancestrycoms-old-search-versus-new-search.html


And some opinions posted earlier

Michael Hait  “Planting the Seeds” June 2012

http://michaelhait.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/new-search/

Ancestry Insider  13 January 2013
http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com/2013/01/ancestrycom-rethinking-new-search.html
and 7 June 2013
http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com/2013/06/ancestrycom-revisiting-search.html

Dear Myrtle  23 April 2013
http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/2013/04/ancestrycom-wants-us-to-create-trees.html

Manly/Manley Family Tree DNA Project 19 May 2013
http://www.thepetmenagerie.com/dna/?p=2905


and some who posted later....

Liz Loveland "My Adventures in Genealogy"  July 8
http://adventuresingenealogy.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/search-strategies-on-ancestry-com-a-comparison-using-zenas-clement/


And just for fun...

Thomas MacEntee "50 Shades of Genealogy"
http://50shadesofgenealogy.tumblr.com/post/54046629140/when-someone-overreacts-to-the-end-of-old-search-at

Randy Seaver "GeneaMusings"
http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/06/a-tombstone-for-ancestrycom-old-search.html


UPDATE 28 JUNE 2013 by Thomas MacEntee at "Geneabloggers"
a reply from Ancestry.com
http://geneabloggers.com/update-ancestrycom-search-input-needed/

 

------------------------------

 

Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

A NH Yankee at Day Three of RootsTech 2013

David Pogue, Keynote Speaker on the last day of RootsTech

All I can say is “Wow!” you need to watch the video of David Pogue at the keynote session. Even I need to find time to watch this video because his fast paced, hilarious talk had me laughing so hard I missed several of his informative bits. Thousands of genealogists are suddenly learning to play the ocarina with their iPhone. If you want to be in on this inside joke click this link www.rootstech.org 

Blogger James Tanner from the blog "Genealogy's Star" 

Of course, I was feeling sympathetic for James Tanner, who was filling in for Gilad Japhet of the MyHeritage website as the second keynote speaker.  What an act to follow at the last moment! However, his talk was also fast paced, informative and gently humorous. It was full of the kind of announcements that make keynotes memorable. He was great! Kudos to a fellow blogger for pulling off a great follow up.  His message about new developments at MyHeritage.com was even more powerful coming from a blogger, than from the company CEO.

The last day of RootsTech was full of ambivalence. Do I spend more time chatting up vendors? Do I rush off to a session? Do I meet up with friends I won't see again for another few years? Do I search out bloggers I haven't hugged yet? Well, I managed to squeeze in all of these activities before 3 pm  by tweeting my location, and checking Facebook statuses. Using a mobile device helped, even with spotty connections around the Salt Palace Convention Center.

Sonia Meza and her translator, Debbie Shurtz Gertler

We had our most emotional moment at RootsTech when attending Sonia Meza Morales’s presentation on “Finding Spanish Records from your Sofa”.  Sonia had come all the way from Madrid, Spain to present this lecture, and two other presentations given at the Family History Library.  Her talks at the library were well attended, but at RootsTech the room was barely half full.  Knowing that the Western and Southwestern parts of the United States are highly populated with Hispanic citizens, she was quite sad that they were not represented proportionately at the conference. The attendees were a sea of white and English speaking faces. Why? Her spontaneous plea for more genealogy involvement, collaboration and education with the Hispanic community was the one emotional moment that touched me the most this weekend.  I hope to stay in contact with Sonia after RootsTech and work on this problem.  We'll meet up with her in Madrid, hopefully in May.

Even though we needed to pack up (we had to check out at 4am for our flight home) and sleep, we walked down to the Radisson so we could enjoy an adult beverage and maybe say a few goodbyes to fellow bloggers. This was a great idea, and we met up with so many old and new friends who were finally just taking time to RELAX. I even had a chance to meet a few new genie friends like Tonia Kendrick, Drew Smith and Cyndi Howell.  Another important lesson learned at RootsTech- never miss a chance to chat up other genealogists, even if you are tired!

---------------------------

Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo