Picking genealogy software is NOT an easy task!
My initial purchase of genealogy software was probably the easiest! I purchased PAF at the LDS Library in Salt Lake City. My husband and I were on a family vacation with my parents. Somehow, I talked them into spending a few days in Salt Lake City doing research and they not only agreed but helped do research! If my memory is correct, I attended a training session on PAF at the library. After the session, I obtained permission to purchase the software. Thus, I not only came home with lots of copies but with genealogy software.
My use of PAF evolved from entering family group sheet information to documenting many life events and adding citations. Many of those events were added as ‘Notes’. I tried Family Tree Maker but found entering events beyond birth, marriage and death cumbersome at that time. I also tried Master Genealogist – I think at version 4. I found that Master Genealogist was a very robust software package that could handle the events. Thus, I transferred my PAF data into Master Genealogist and began the process of turning my ‘NOTES’ events into the specific event (such as military enlistment). Thanks to the very active mailing list, I learned how to utilize the sentences and to create narrative reports. Armed with Second Site software, I was able to quickly and easily publish my work on a website.
Thus, it was with great sadness that I learned of the end of support for Master Genealogist. I’ve followed the work of the TMG-Refugees community and appreciate all of the work they did in evaluating the transition from TMG to other software packages. I have experimented with both Legacy and RootsMagic. Both packages have strong user’s groups and support from previous TMG users. I prefer RootsMagic, primarily because it is built on newer code.
Because I can’t use RootsMagic to produce a narrative type of web site, I haven’t made a firm commitment to RootsMagic. I am waiting to see whether the new version of Second Site will work with RootsMagic. I’m also experimenting with TNG (but I haven’t tackled its learning curve yet).
Since I had uploaded a gedcom file to Ancestry, I had a tree on Ancestry with some images tied to it. When I experimented with the Shoebox app, the images created by the app were added to that tree. In order to pull down those images and the associated tree, I have a current version of Family Tree Maker.
As you can see, I’m very fickle right now and am hoping that by the time week 13 of the Do-Over process arrives, I will have settled on a software solution. In the meantime, these are the features I’m looking for:
- Narrative
- Reports
- Web Site
- Portability- Potentially cloud based
- between desktop and laptop and tablet
- Able to use on iPad
- Windows and MAC compatible — just in case I decide to purchase a MAC laptop
- Underlying code is not deprecated
- Sources — Evidence Explained support
- Events — wide variety allowed
#WK7GenealogyDoOver