Genealogy Chat

Guys I have bought mine this morning in PC world, reduced from £39.99 to £29.99. Has made my weekend, trouble is I now want to play with, when really I should be cutting the grass!!

know how you feel , the grass can wait , good luck

Hi Valerie, I am opening the packaging right now!! You right grass can wait, or better still one of the kids can do it when they come home from school!! Cheers x

Anyway if you are anything like me you will be on here all day asking questions about it !!!! ,isnt it exciting I would have torn it open as soon as I got in the Car to have a quick look before I got it home sad eh??????

Hi Valerie, No dont think you sad at all, lets say keen x

Is it really that good and worthwhile buying then??? I know there are loads of messages on here about it but can you please tell me in simple terms what it is and how it helps. I have taken a years subscription out with Ancestry, units on 1837 online and along with buying certificates the costs are adding up. I don't want to buy it and find out that I have wasted my money. Should I get it or would I just be doubling up on stuff that I could get off Ancestry??

Hi Andrea Family Tree Maker is a software programme used for building your family tree and saving information found on Ancestry and family search etc. The newer versions have a facility for searching Ancestry for names matching those in your tree. From Family Tree Maker you can print charts, reports and books. If you go to www.familytreemaker(.)com and go to product tour you'll have a better idea of what it is. Heather

Thanks Heather. I'm off to check it out. UPDATE:- Checked it out - and bought it!! Now just gotta wait for it to get here! Thanks again.

I bet ancestry are well pleased with all these extra sales of their program! Dont forget peeps, do use it to create your free family home page on the internet - it is SO impressive when you tell family and friends you have made your own website (little do they know the program does it all for you just by you clicking the next button! DONT FORGET to privatise living persons on it before you export it)

nudge for Sean

Alan when you say you got the basic one what do you mean??? because I already had Ancestry and got 3 months free with FTM which is really a waste of money then. but I thought that was the only one available

Val, I bought the one with the 3 months subscription as well and I already have a sub with Ancestry, so I phoned them and asked about it and was told that if I phone them just before my sub runs out, they will then add the free 3 months. Best Wishes Mary

Mary love your ID by the way, thanks for telling me that I must email them

It occurs to me that some people reading this thread may be unfamiliar with genealogy software in general, and get the impression that Family Tree Maker is their only option. In fact, there are several different programs, all of which do more or less the same basic things - some just have more bells and whistles than others. Personally, I use Legacy Family Tree, which has the great advantage of being free - at least the Standard Edition, which does 95%+ of what most people need. (If interested, see http://www.legacyfamilytree(dot)com/Index.asp and scroll down for the 'Download' link.) In addition to recording your information and producing charts and reports, genealogy software also lets you import family trees from other people as GEDCOM files (GEDCOM is a standard format that any family tree program should be able to read). This saves you the trouble of typing everything in manually. Tim