Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
  Big disappointment November 8, 2008
Having previously had family tree maker 2006 I was looking forward to recieving the 2008 version - :-( Big disappointment - Try as I might I cannot get it to connect to the internet
Waste of money!!!
This Item Is Useless October 10, 2008
I bought Family Tree Maker delux edition thinking it would be an improvement on the FREE disc I received with The Sunday Times how wrong was I .It does not do as it says in nearly all areas. Wish to print The Whole of your tree -- forget it ,only one individuals.
Try registering no go .Oh and as far as your free 3months to Ancestry no go.
So all in all a useless piece of software. My freebie was superb IS superb,Save your money buy an earlier edition 2006 or earlier
Software supplied is incomplete. Take care September 23, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The product itself is a very good engine for collating family tree information as a standalone solution but has one significant problem for buyers..........
The CD software will not operate fully as supplied and requires the downloading of a software patch to enable it to connect properly to the internet. From reviewing internet message boards this seems to be a not uncommon problem. Very disappointing and a major problem for buyers who are not IT literate.
 Crammed full of features May 11, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I bought my copy of FTM from the USA via ancestry.com website without it dawning on me that I could have ordered it from Amazon (cost a bit more, too. Doh!). Looking at the screenshots and reading other reviews, I am sure it's the same product, except mine came with a DVD tutorial and a CD full of old American postcard pictures; not particularly useful in my case, but interesting.
I had dozens of names in my existing tree saved in a GedCom file and these were quickly imported into the program; I only had to make a couple of changes to date formats. Also, and I don't expect the UK version to be any different, the locations that were imported tended to be American; ie 'Birmingham' brought up a map of Alabama. These ambiguities are easily resolved by FTM, however.
Searching the internet without having to exit the program is useful; it's on the same screen, so that you can enter details manually while looking at them. There is also a facility for pasting bits of web pages into your work.
I don't know why it happens that names such as 'Higgins' are sometimes read as 'Biggins' despite it being clearly spelled with an H in the actual record, but it does. In other words, FTM is not a program that you can press a button, make a cup of tea, and have your family tree prepared when you get back. You have to do some investigation of your own. This might sound obvious to experienced researchers, but I have read reviews where an inability to find relatives is blamed on the program rather than the search engine being used, the fact that records might not exist, or anything else.
FTM is full of features to allow you to collect and enter data, print and make presentations in a variety of ways, and in short do anything you would wish to do, without having a pile of paper to rummage through. It must be one of the best genealogy packages on the market...and at a price less than you would pay for a video game, with twice the fun!
 The good, the bad and the ugly May 4, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I can understand the disparity between the reviews received to date.
The good is the data entry page, and charting pages which are a vast improvement over previous versions of FTM.
The bad is that the program still severely restricts how you enter data, particularly dates. With a lot of my research I only need to record the year and quarter, but you cannot enter Q1 1925 for example.
The downright ugly is the "manual" that is provided with the software. The square root of useless comes to mind. I had a problem printing a family tree as important data was not being printed on the right hand side, due to the predetermined print size. After some hours I finally managed to resolve the problem. Was there any help in the manual-not even a mention.
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