Review by Snap, Crackle and Pop

THE QUICK TAKE: Family Tree Maker 2012 is useful as a tool to organize and collect your information and related media (photos, documents, stories) about your family history. However, the really powerful tool is Ancestry.com. Ancestry should help you greatly expand what you know, not just organize what you know. FTM 2012 Deluxe includes a three month membership to Ancestry.com, so if you use it well you can get a lot of value from this package.

Before I get into the details of the review, some general advice:nn - Talk to your older living relatives now, while they are still around. Try to get the stories, copies of photos, find out who is in the photos, and so on. You won’t be able to do that later.

- Keep backup copies of all your files, and backup your files before you make any substantial changes or sync your tree. Work on the assumption that you will have computer problems or a hard drive failure, because at some point you will. You’re going to put a lot of work into your family history, you want to make sure you always have a copy.

GET PREPARED BEFORE YOU START: To protect the privacy of living people, government records aren’t made available for decades. So before you start using Ancestry and FTM, try to find out some details about your parents and your grandparents - birth, marriage, death, places they lived. Then you’ll be able to start to link to the publicly available information online. Without information on your recent ancestors, it will be hard to get very far.

FAMILY TREE MAKER IS USEFUL: FTM is a useful tool. It seems reasonably easy to use even for those less expert at using the web and computers. For example, there are tools to allow you to capture text and photos from the web.

The tutorials are worth reviewing. They are well done, brief, and will help get you started on key tasks.

The software can also do some tasks that you can’t currently do on the website, such as split and join trees.

For me, the software installed easily on an older XP machine. It needs .net 4.0 to run, so will install that if it’s not already installed. FTM Deluxe 2012 comes on 2 CDs, one with the software and the other with the PDF books in the Family History Took Kit (see below for a list).

REGISTER LATER? When you first run Family Tree Maker, it asks if you want to register the software. You may want to wait to register, as that seems to start your three months subscription to Ancestry. You may want to organize yourself a little, and get the basic facts about your family, before you go online.

ANCESTRY.COM IS POWERFUL: I was able to find a lot of additional information about the ancestors I knew I had, and turn up some new ancestors and new connections. I found Ancestry’s hints and matching to be useful, but then I guess I don’t mind searching through dozens of possible matches to see which ones are a fit.

CHECK ALTERNATE SPELLINGS: Census records are surprisingly uneven in terms of the accuracy of names. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, try searching on alternate spellings of a name.

INCLUDE THE WHOLE FAMILY: Even if your interest is primarily in your ancestors, it’s very useful to add the data about all their siblings to your tree, for two reasons. First, it’s incredibly helpful to match the data when you have more than just one person. Knowing the names and ages of siblings can make it clear whether another record is your family, or not. It helps confirm a link when a name is common, or when there are mis-spellings. Second, it makes the story much more interesting to see who was in your ancestor’s family and what was happening in their lives.

BE SKEPTICAL: There are a lot of mistakes in the family trees already online, so don’t assume that someone else has done their homework unless there is backup.

KEEP TRACK OF YOUR SOURCES: Don’t rely on your memory. Make notes and add documents to support the info in your tree.

CENSUS DATA IS INTERESTING, REALLY!: I found myself surprised at the amount of data in the census. It collects several interesting facts if you review it carefully. It’s also interesting to see what happens over time to families - the joy of births, tragedy of deaths and mysteries of life. (For example, why was great grandma living apart from great grandpa, and telling the census she was a widow?)nnDON’T UNDERESTIMATE GOOGLE: I chuckled a little that FTM includes Google as a link. But it’s probably not obvious to everyone, and so it’s worth saying. I’ve turned up a lot of useful information searching on Google, though it really helps to use a targeted search and to try a few alternatives.

CHECK ROOTSWEB: There are a number of family trees on RootsWeb as well. It’s worth searching for your family. It can be a useful starting point in your research, but be sure to verify the information, and also make sure it’s really your family.

PLAN ON A LONG PROCESS: Most people spend a little time over years or decades collecting information about their family. While you can make a lot of progress in a short time, filling out more details or finding new ancestors can take a long time.

CANCELING IS EASY: Note that if you don’t want your subcription to auto-renew, you need to cancel it. You can do that anytime, and still use the balance of your subscription. It takes several clicks online, but it’s not hard to cancel.

PRINTED MANUAL INCLUDED: I appreciate that they have included a printed manual for the software. That’s a corner that many other companies cut to save costs, a false saving in my opinion.

FAMILY HISTORY TOOL KIT: The following PDFs are included as part of the Family History Tool Kit. They look like useful information, but don’t feel that you need to read them to get started.

- Abbreviations and Acronyms: A Guide for Family Historians - List and explanation of abbreviations and acronyms found in census schedules, soundex indexes, mortality schedules, court records, etc.

- Ancestry’s Concise Genealogical Dictionary - Definitions of unusual terms, especially in cemetery, probate, court, medical, etc.

- Hidden Sources: Family History in Unlikely Places - Overview of sources that are often overlooked, where and how they can be found, etc.

- Printed Sources: A Guide to Published Genealogical Records - Guide to printed sources such as vital records, definitions and explanations of how to use them.

- The Official Guide to Ancestry.com - Become more proficient with searching the site. Explore obscure databases you didn’t know existed. Create and develop your own family tree.

- The Official Guide to RootsWeb - How to use RootsWeb, and success stories of the RootsWeb Community.