Family Tree Maker Version 3.4 (FTM) Review

General

FTM comes in DOS and Windows (3.1 or 95) versions and a soon to be released MAC version. Overall it is a fair program with some extremely good spots but has a number of weak spots as well. Folks that use FTM fall into 3 categories - those that *love* it, those that *hate* it and those that love some things and hate others about it. I'm in the third group.

Weaknesses

FTM was developed by a company that excels in the production of flow chart software and used the flow chart as the base in developing the genealogy software. For this reason their pedigree charts print like flowcharts - all boxes and borders with no "deselect" switch to turn them off. They look great if you are printing only 4 generations. But if you want to print more than 4 your charts are expanded to additional pages both horizontally and vertically. This is called the extended pedigree chart. When taped together they make great wall charts but aren't very practical to put into a loose leaf or in a file folder. This, at least to me, is a real weak spot for FTM - lack of true cascading pedigree chart printing.

Another weakness is match/merge. It is really very time consuming to match/merge in FTM and if you aren't very careful you can merge inappropriately.

FTM, at least to me, is not very user friendly. I like to "walk" and be able to add and edit from a 5 generation screen presentation. FTM does not have this "big picture" function. Also, I find this style much more difficult to enter data. (Just me folks - those of you who have no experience with other programs probably aren't bothered by this.)



Strengths

A great strength of FTM is its source file - *but* - you can't print it separately, it is limited in size and there is no assistance in the program to tell you how to enter your sources in standard format.

The NOTES files (there are 2 - one for individual and one for marriage) are fairly large and can contain a lot of information. *and* you can copy/paste into the notes from a word processor. *and* they edit just fine.

There is a limited notes area for health and there is an area for adoption information. There are 13 additional event fields that can be specified from a list or customized and you can add addresses which can then be organized in a card file or on labels for mailing. The card file can also be used to print cards on individuals - kind of a neat way to keep them handy when on AOL.

The really great things about FTM are in the "Genealogy How To..." guide in the help file. It contains every address for national, state and county offices, gen. Socs. And a whole raft of stuff that you'd spend months collecting on your own. There are forms you can print *and* all the census forms so that's a real plus.

I have mixed emotions on the new "book" function. You are limited in the printing options - those being printing - as a "register" or "NGS" report format for descendancies or Ahnentafel for ancestry (or pedigree) reports in text format. There is *no* index generated although you can export is as a RTF file and then retrieve it into a word processor for editing. You can't exclude information that might be confidential. One other thing I noticed - if you, like me, enter locations as "of" someplace because you don't know the exact location of an event, the books print with "in of" for locations. Those would have to be edited.

Bells and whistles - Lots of folks really love the scrapbook in FTM. You can store pictures, text graphics, etc. in it and then print them on a few of the reports (I'm not sure if they print in the book format). I don't use this as it takes up too much hard drive space to store pictures, just my preference, as I add them to my books later along with histories.

If you want a really good explanation of what FTM has in it go to the main genealogy forum, click on "Genealogy Store" and then on FTW (win - NOT CD). There is a long list of items that will interest you. By the way - the URL for FTM is https://www.mackiev.com/ftm/ (Updated 9/15/2020)

Review by V. B. Rogers

NOTE: The opinions expressed in this Software Review are the author/user's own and in no way reflect on the opinions of the Genealogy Forum.

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