Please note that Family Tree Maker (by Ancestry.com) has been discontinued and is no longer available. You can read our old review of Family Tree Maker (by Ancestry.com) below, or check out the rest of the Genealogy Software we've reviewed.
Looses connections to notes 23 April 2015 Reviewer: Ghsyms from Burlington, Ontario, Canada
359 of 469 people found this review helpful
Features:
Photo and File Management:
Web Integration:
Ease of Use:
Ease of Installation:
Customer Support:
Value for Money:
Overall Star Rating:
I have been using Family Tree Maker for years up to the 2014, and I love the ease of writing books because it generates the table of contents, the place usage and the index, and it automatically resizes photos for 1 to 25 per page and multiple pages if necessary. You simply create an outline of the charts, reports and photo albums you want, and the program automatically includes changes and generates a PDF file of the book contents.
However, I am very disappointed with its losing connections to data, and its impossible to tell when and where these errors occur. It often generates a second unknown spouse married on the same date with the same ID number as the real spouse.
A year ago when I last merged files, it lost all notes in the source file. It sometimes loses notes for random people and the note portion of sources, so it does not keeping the info I have entered.
Web Integration is discounted because 2 relatives in different cities can NOT make changes on their FTM and have it appear of the other person's FTM. They have to make changes on the Ancestry.com version of the other person's FTM tree.
I know it crashes a couple of times a week and I always do Compact File to clean up errors, but I don't know if this is causing the lost information.
Is there any other program that generates books as easy and as comprehensive as FTM?
In summary, I would not recommend Family Tree Maker (by Ancestry.com) to a friend.
