Review by Harold McFarland

Quite simply the best. I tried various other ones over the years and they never come up to the level of Family Tree Maker. That is not to say that they have not made some missteps because they have. One version was so slow that it was basically unusable if you have a large file. Not so with the last few iterations. It still starts slow but apparently that is in exchange for working at a decent speed once it is up and running.

This one works well and plenty fast even with a very large database. Of course one of its strongest features is the way that it integrates with ancestry.com. You can search ancestry.com from inside the product and then import the information directly into your family tree database including pictures, copies of the pages of the census records and similar. If you are new then it provides you with the resources to quickly build your family tree.

The only real problem with the software is the user interface. There are places where I wonder what they were thinking. I created a report and spent several minutes trying to figure out how to print it. I looked in the frame where the report was located and there was no print icon. Click File and no print option. Right click on the report and no print option. Then there it was.. a tiny printer icon way up in the right hand portion of the screen where there is normally only the minimize and close icons. Some of the ways of navigating the screens are also less than intuitive. However, once you get it all figured out you can breeze through reports, importing, exporting, and getting your family tree built and published if you desire.

Remember to build your tree quickly as it comes with a 30 subscription to Ancestry.com and if you sign up and forget then it will charge your credit card each month until you remember to cancel. Personally, I never liked a system that did that and believe it should warn you when the 30 days is about to expire and let you then agree to a monthly subscription at that time. I know it is common but it still raises and ethical issue is my opinion.

Still the best product on the market today for building your family tree.