Family Tree Maker 11 Deluxe

Rating:
Summary: Useless program
Review: After having spent all the money on the program you should NOT have to buy all the bloody add ons to make it even semi useful

Rating:
Summary: Useless extra CDs and constant ads to buy additional items
Review: Family Tree Maker Deluxe has some nice features. An instruction manual is included, but you'll hardly need to use it, as the basic genealogy program is simple to use and offers several options for viewing and printing your family trees. For this reason, I'm giving it two stars instead of one.

The problem with Family Tree Maker Deluxe is the extra CDs which are included with the basic program. I found the extra CDs to be absolutely worthless. There is nothing on the box outlining in detail what you'll find on the CDs, so let me give you an idea.

4 of the CDs are a "Family Finder Index" which include millions of names, some of which are sketchy at best and include a lot of ??? instead of full names and dates. You may find the names of many of your ancestors here, but if you click on the name to see what additional information is available and if this is really your ancestor, you aren't given any information about the person. You are instead given an advertisement to purchase yet more CDs or an online subscription. This seems to be the typical response for most of the "research" associated with this software.

2 of the CDs contain the Social Security Death Index from 1937-1999, all of which can be looked up online for no cost.

1 CD is "Family History: Mid-Atlantic Genealogies" and contains information on the following families: Condit, Dill, Dodge, Douglas, Dutton, Emerick, Emmons, Mott, and Schell.

1 CD is "Local and Family Histories: New England" and contains the following information: Descendents of Thomas Dickinson; History of the Dudley Family; The Eaton Family of Nova Scotia; and the History of the town of Bristol, New Hampshire.

1 CD contains Military Records of US Soldiers from 1784-1811.

You are also given one-month access to Genealogy.com's World Family Tree collection, which lets you view the family trees of other people who have purchased the software and posted their family trees, unless they have marked the information "private." I found this feature to be practically worthless, as the format for viewing the online trees was confusing and difficult to navigate.

You are also given access to Genalogy.com's search engine, but again, if you run across any matches for the names you're researching, you're told to purchase more CDs or an online subscription, many of which were quite costly. Genealogy.com does have many census records available, but each decade is a separate CD, and buying all of them would be a ridiculous expense.

I'd suggest skipping this particular version of Family Tree Maker altogether and either purchasing the basic no-extra CDs version of Family Tree Maker or using another genealogy program entirely.

Rating:
Summary: Sometimes the most popular software is the best available
Review: First of all, the current version out on the shelves, Family Tree Maker 11, as well as 10, do not have 35 CDs. It has the number given in the manufacturer's description above. I also have to add that these two recent editions do NOT have any ads within the program, nor do they tell you to update. This also must have been something else that occured in an earlier version.

Now, I have to say that if you do most of your genealogy research via your PC you need to buy either Family Tree Maker Deluxe or Basic. I'm not saying this to be cute. I'm saying this because it comes with a reader that Genealogical.com uses for many of its CDs. Not only that, but if you publish your GEDcom on the web, FTM appears to have the most seamless process and translation of your GEDcom.

I didn't start out with FTM, I started out with the Generations program, published by Sierra, bought out by Broderbund which is the same publisher of FTM, and not exactly the favored child. So, I felt I had to move on to FTM.

You are going to have to spend some time learning the program. Luckily, the guide that comes with it is perfectly adequate and there is no need to buy the published book for it.

Using the program, you will find the database well designed. When you add notes, though, you will find the interface a bit clunky. However, you're not going to find a better program out there. After purchasing FTM 10, I decided I would move on to the Master Genealogist, because I had heard it was more flexible regarding notes. It is, to a point, but it's a very unpleasant program to use in comparison, and the reports you can generate with FTM are surprisingly better. FTM version 11 lets you save/export in PDF files more than ever, which is very helpful if you have family members who do not own any genealogical software.

Now, this said, the charts that FTM generates are horrible. Chances are you will either have to fill out blank ones by hand, if you don't want to spend an afternoon with the FTM printed pages, a tape dispenser and scissors. FTM does not even have a cascading pedigree chart, which will add to you spending a lot of time numbering what you do get out of it. Or you might have to buy a charting companion. My old Generations program has a great charting tool (Easy Tree) which I still use instead.

As well, the family group sheets generated aren't very good. You can customize to have as little or as much information as you'd like, but the actual layout of the sheets are not exactly innate for the eye. You will do better by using the program, publishing a GEDcom on the web, and printing off of the host site. Seriously.

The timelines, are also not helpful. Not as many people use timelines, but they are necessary in doing serious detective work on a family or if you are going to put together a retrospective on an individual's life.

There are small extras that deserve mention, scrapbooks, which let you create a photo album, and/or slide show. (This is not a digital scrapbook, just the term they use for organizing photos by person.) I found it an adequate tool, but I would rather have the option of adding photos to group sheets, charts and reports instead.

There are data CDs included in the package. Basically, they're just a tool to get you on the web and researching, which is what you know to do already. They are superfluous.

It should be noted that FTM is connected to genealogy.com, which has been bought out by ancestry.com. I don't know how this will affect doing research via your FTM window in the future.

On the Family Tree Maker web pages themselves. They're very pleasant pages but aren't of much use to you until you have done quite a lot of specific research already. They're not databases or photo albums, but places to display research plus a few photos and a brief introduction. Perfectly nice, but not what you might think you get. The good news is that the program walks you through creating your page and it turns out well.

In any case, the obvious strengths of FTM are data entry, report generating, and web publishing. The weaknesses are charting and group sheet generating. You may or may not find it helpful as a research aid. So, this is not at all a five star product but it's still the best you can buy.

Rating:
Summary: Using it for years....
Review: I am a first-time user and purchased #8. I found it to be easy to use and understand, and the ability to print out nice looking family trees is great. However of the 35 CDs that came with the #8 Deluxe package, I found one useful and the others excess baggage. If you get the cheapest version of FTM, you'll get your money's worth. Any more and you'll have a lot of spare CDs to use as drink coasters for your hot chocolate. The strengths of the program are it's ease of use, the ability to include photos and "scrapbook" info, and to print attractive trees. The weaknesses of the program are the misleading advertising that makes you think you can use it for researching and the frustrating "buy, buy, buy" pitch at every turn. I would recommend FTM, but mainly as a good basic database.

Rating:
Summary: Easy to Use for the Basics
Review: I am a first-time user and purchased #8. I found it to be easy to use and understand, and the ability to print out nice looking family trees is great. However of the 35 CDs that came with the #8 Deluxe package, I found one useful and the others excess baggage. If you get the cheapest version of FTM, you'll get your money's worth. Any more and you'll have a lot of spare CDs to use as drink coasters for your hot chocolate. The strengths of the program are it's ease of use, the ability to include photos and "scrapbook" info, and to print attractive trees. The weaknesses of the program are the misleading advertising that makes you think you can use it for researching and the frustrating "buy, buy, buy" pitch at every turn. I would recommend FTM, but mainly as a good basic database.

Rating:
Summary: Easy to use - creates great reports
Review: I am very confused by all negative reviews of this product. I think this product is wonderful! With the click of your mouse, you can create beautiful color reports & charts and store them in .pdf format. I emailed them out as Christmas gifts to my relatives and they were thrilled! I was amazed at how easy it was to create professional looking reports with FTM.
I should mention I originally purchased The Master Genealogist program because the customer reviews were better than Family Tree Maker - but found it to be very difficult to work with. After 3 months using TMG, I still couldn't figure out how to make a decent report. Within 1 day of using the FTM, I had created a beautiful family tree book.
I think the FTM is perfect for the amateur genealogist looking to quickly and easily create family charts, trees & reports.
Also, I found entering data to be so much easier in FTM than TMG. I have been just thrilled with the product.

Rating:
Summary: Easy to use - creates great reports
Review: I am very confused by all negative reviews of this product. I think this product is wonderful! With the click of your mouse, you can create beautiful color reports & charts and store them in .pdf format. I emailed them out as Christmas gifts to my relatives and they were thrilled! I was amazed at how easy it was to create professional looking reports with FTM.
I should mention I originally purchased The Master Genealogist program because the customer reviews were better than Family Tree Maker - but found it to be very difficult to work with. After 3 months using TMG, I still couldn't figure out how to make a decent report. Within 1 day of using the FTM, I had created a beautiful family tree book.
I think the FTM is perfect for the amateur genealogist looking to quickly and easily create family charts, trees & reports.
Also, I found entering data to be so much easier in FTM than TMG. I have been just thrilled with the product.

Rating:
Summary: Watch out if you're migrating from Family Origins
Review: I bought Family Tree Maker (FTM) for two reasons: (1) It is the most popular genealogy program among people that I share databases with, and (2) I was using Family Origins, but support for Family Origins has been discontinued.

In trying to get you to switch from Family Origins to FTM, they tell you, "Your Family Origins data imports accurately into Family Tree Maker via the GEDCOM format." I found this not completely true. I have run into serious problems in porting data from Family Origins to FTM. So far, I have found that key words are dropped from custom facts, long notes are truncated, and suffixes such as "Jr." are dropped from names. In addition, notes that Family Origins associated with facts are disassociated from the facts and dropped into the person's general Notes bucket, so that these notes lose their contexts, and many of them no longer make sense. And I expect to find more problems, as I have only begun sifting through the 1,197 warnings and error messages generated during the import. Another case of false advertising for FTM, to echo a charge made by other reviewers.

A number of customers on FTM's own message boards recommend migrating from Family Origins to RootsMagic. RootsMagic is supposedly done by the same people who did Family Origins.

On the other hand, this program is easy to use and produces nice reports and graphics, even better output than from Family Origins.

I'm surprised at the bitterness in other reviews regarding the CDs. I'm not so disappointed with the CDs, maybe because I wasn't expecting much from them anyway. If you rely heavily on CDs, you'll have to look at an awful lot of CDs to find many direct hits on your ancestors. In this set, I find several CDs interesting. Not bad.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty darn good
Review: I came to this product reluctantly. I own The Master Genealogist (TMG, for short). I bought it because it was supposed to be such a powerful program. Perhaps so, but I found navigating so frustrating that I figured I had nothing to loose by buying Family Tree Maker. Well, it was good decision. The program is pretty intuitive. I have been able to quickly enter data and produce useful reports. I would second the advice to get the stand-alone Family Tree program and skip buying the "deluxe" edition. A lot of those resources you can subscribe to online. Don't waste your money on what you may never need. From my experience, the purchase of the core program will not be a waste of your money.

Rating:
Summary: Using it for years....
Review: I purchased the original software and have upgraded regularly and it is very easy to use and very easy to look up folk and combination etc.

Would recommend to any family researcher that wants accurate and complete records. Options for information is endless and it will do books of your information for you with the data you have entered.

bloody good software this...