Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1.0 out of 5 stars
do not buy if you have v. 16 or older, August 10, 2009
I have been using Family tree Maker for years. I originally used version 8.0, and later version 16. There are a few things that I would like changed with version 16, but was pleased with it. I work on genealogy 10 to 30 hours a week, share family reports and gedcoms with other researchers very often, and have more than 17,000 peopl in my family tree.
I recently "upgraded" to version 2009. I know that version 2008 was not well received, and so I waited or this new version to come out. There are a few things I like about version 2009, but all in all it is not as good as version 16 on many levels.
About the only things I like about version 2009 is the addition of a pedigree chart bove the family and individual view, which makes navigating to a near relative simple (but not a great deal simpler that version 16). And I like is that it allows more children to be listed in the basic family view (version 16 limits the on-screen view to 8.) Besides these, I have no use for any of the additional "bells and whistles" that 2009 offers.
After trying to get used to FTM 2009 for a month, I have these criticisms:
You have to click several times more to get to a field where you can edit data (such as birthdates, places, marriage, etc.), and this information is duplicated on your screen: in a static field to the left, and in editable fields to the right, which is unecessary clutter. Simple things like going to the index of individuals, used to be one click, now it requires two. Little things like this end up doubling and tripling the moves it takes you to navigate thro7ugh the program. With as miuch data entry and editing I do with my gedcom, this makes me spend hours more each month to get the same amount of work done.
FTM 2009 automatically logs onto the internet when you open. I hate this! There is no reason for this! I have a limited threshold with my internet provider, and if I cannot have programs connecting to the internt in the background. Moreover, I hate the idea that my computer is sending information back and forth to Ancestry.com or anyone else without my express consent.
The worst part about FTM 2009 is the area where you generate reports. In version 16, the reports generated into RFT (Richtext) format could be easily opened and edited in Microsoft Word. However, in version 2009, FTM reports create a heading that is repeated on every page of the report. There are also lines added at the top and bottom ove every page, with page numbers and the date repeated. If you try to open and edit any report in Word, these "headings" and "footers" for all subsequent pages get thrown off. This makes it practically useless to export to Word to add or delete specific information (this is important to me because when I create a report for someone specific, I like to add a note at the beginging, explaining where she or I relate, and also highlight or bold important information--these edits I would make just for this person I am sharing with, and are not intended to shange my whole file, so I wouldn't want to make these editions in FTM). And so, I am left with the option of creating a report, exporting it to WORD, and then tediously going through and deleting all of the unecessary repeated hradings and stupid linmes that FTM 2009 adds.
And the other thing that is very annoying and frustrating is that FTM 2009 has a serious problem converting some of the text in individual notes. I have particularly noticed this with punctuation, such as quotes, commas, dashes and bullets. Instead, FTM2009 just shows you a little square where these punctuation marks used to be. Now, you could go thorugh your whole file and correct all these little conversions errors, but if you have lots of data, this is not an option. I have more than 17,000 individuals, and some of them have up to 10 pages of notes! It would take me more than a year to go through all of the individiual notes with a fin-toothed comb and correct them. It might be easier if I could copy the text and paste it into WORD to do this edition, and then paste it back into FTM2009, but this seems to be part of the problem: there seems to be a bug in FTM2009 which creates a problem with some puncuation marks.
I find version 16 (which came out in 2006) to be superior in many respects, and will stick with it for now.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Much Better than previous version, June 22, 2009
Ahhhhh! What a difference. This version is a pleasure to use. Much more user friendly and equally more powerful. Thanks
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by George G. Morgan
by Kimberly Powell
by Tana L Pedersen
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