Genealogy Chat

The site does seem to be having a lot of problems - the current jumping being just one. PLEASE do not just have a gedcom and/or tree on here - if the site went down you could lose all your hard research. Either buy a family treemaker program which is only about £12 on S and N Genealogy or Dockland Ancestors and is brilliant or download a freebie which doesnt have as many facilities but at least you have two sources. FTM can be backed up to cd and internet plus you can create your own website (honestly its just a matter of clicking next a few times on the program, you dont need a degree in IT).

PAF is free, and pretty easy to use. If you don't have your tree anywhere but here, at least get that. When you're more experienced with the programs, you can pay for a package. Or choose, like Heather said, FTM. That's very easy to use, though you do have to pay for it.

Morrisons the supermarket we doing one as an off shoot from WDYTYA for £5.99 - its perfectly fine. 3 months ancestry sub included too - that in itself is worth having

Have to be careful you don't get tied up with Ancestry like the lady in Canada!!

Well, I dont know what happened to that lady? but ancestry is a totally bon fide company and I quick phone call on a free number usually sorts things immediately.

Why does PAF never get more than a polite mention? It works very well, offers comprehensive features, and I can't see that it offers less than FTM, for example.

Heather, basically she didn't cancel her free trial in time, and they charged her. She's in Canada and paid American dollars so when they refunded she lost out due to the exchange rate. Not really Ancestry's fault, but should be taken into consideration when getting a free trial.

I use PAF and find it very good........at least on there one can link up to existing family members, thus allowing for the marriage of siblings to siblings without having to put everyone in twice............ Reg

Clive, I dont know a lot about PAF. I did download it yonks back but then got FTM. I dont know if you can back it up on cd and internet - can you? Does it add photos, music, videos etc? Perhaps you could tell newbies about the facilities on here, as I dont know what they are - PAF is a free download from the LDS site. Its got to be better than having no program.

My 'master' is on FTM. I didn't really like the idea of relying on an internet based tree. With FTM, I have a version on my hard-disk as well as a regular backup to CD. Also, FTM has a lot of features (e.g. scrapbook) that I like. The tree I have on here is a 'light' version of my main tree.

I've spent the weekend going up and down my tree backing bits up. (Horrifying that sometimes you realise just how much you've got on here that you haven't got hard copies of.) I have a tip you might like if you just want to get your information down in a word processing format. It's not very technical, but it works for me. You write the name of your furthest back ancestor down eg. Fred Smith born 1800 in Yorkshire married Mary Jones Then you tab the next line so it sort of nests and put Fred and Mary's children ie. Little Fred Each time you add children to a relative, you press the tab key one extra time, so you can see which children belong to who. I like to colour code each generation (first red, second orange, third yellow, and so on down the colour spectrum) to make it easier to know what generation whichever person belongs . As I say, it's not at all technical, but it's great for getting information down. I find it works best if the page is set to landscape format.

I just want to put in another plug for tribal pages it is free unless you have a massive tree and great for photos. I have never had a problem with it and people you give your password to can view it free of charge. It is also an extremely easy programme to use. I have also played with the personal tree on ancestry which you can link to census records. It still has a few bugs - you still get a box warning you that burial accured after death but the individual time line is useful. Anne

You can also get a free download of Legacy, and if you heve ancestry, you can do web search with it the same as FTM, I use that and FTM as some do dif things which I like , But I found that and FTM easier than Paff download;; Babs

I did download the Personal Ancestral File thing from familysearch but I couldn't get it to work on my computer. I think maybe it isn't designed for a Mac - my computer came up with the 'There is no application specified to run this programme' or something. I'll stick to the word processor and the spreadsheet (great for temporary accomodation of information) for now. Like Ann from Sussex, I have a folder on my computer, with subdirectories for all families, so I can keep photos I have been sent or my own photos or any other bits relevent to each family. Every now and then I burn a copy to CD, just in case the worst happens.

Hi Jess I have checked the Morrisons website and can find no info on that 3 month free sub to Ancestry. Do you have anything further on the offer ?? We have a Morrisons here in Gib. I phoned them but they couldn't help. Maybe the offer only applies to the UK mainland. Terry on a Rock