Review by Michael

I’ve never made a family tree before and I’ve never used family tree software before. I’m definately not going to be the person who updates my software every year (or perhaps ever). I thought it would be fun to make a family tree and talk to my family so I knew a little more about those related to me.

But there’s one twist that is probably weird. My natural father died and I’ve been adopted by my step father. I don’t want to make two family trees–both sides of the family are family to me. I don’t see a way to customize this software at all to allow what I want to do.

And that’s my main complaint. If your family tree has no twists or turns, the software looks like it works ok. But to do anything out of what it wants to do seems to be impossible.

So I’m probably going to just make something up in Word or Publisher. It looks like most of the records that Family tree maker looks up are with Ancestry.com, so I assume I’ll be able to get an Ancestry.com account and get the same records that I would have in Family Tree Maker.

I don’t want to tell you that the software is horrible–some people here seem to like using it. But I can’t give it a great review when I gave up on it.