We’ve all heard the news by now: Ancestry.com is retiring Family Tree Maker (FTM) after 26 years, at least 6 different owners, and 22 major versions for Windows (plus 4 for Mac). No, the sky isn’t falling. This is a business decision on Ancestry’s part, and in the long run, I think it will be a win-win situation for both Ancestry and genealogists. Let’s face it: FTM has travelled a rocky road since the major update in 2008, and then again in 2012 when they added the TreeSync feature. TreeSync was in fact the only reason I stuck with FTM, despite the bugs and constant crashes until it finally stabilized with version 3 for Mac. I’ve read with envy the glowing reviews for some of the Windows apps like RootsMagic and Family Historian, but using Windows apps on a Mac is just not convenient, ideal, or Mac-like. And besides, while some of them can sync with FamilySearch.org or MyHeritage.com, they can’t sync with Ancestry.com. Up until now.
In a recent blog post, Ancestry stated, “We are exploring possible relationships with other desktop software solutions that would make it possible for their products to integrate with Ancestry.” This makes perfect sense. What better way to get a hold of the family trees of thousands of RootsMagic, Family Tree Builder, and Legacy Family Tree users? And get new subscribers? Without the overhead of continuing to develop a problematic software application? Let other companies bear those costs!
A few readers have asked what we plan to use. Ben already switched a while back to using Family Historian (FH) in VirtualBox on a Mac. While FH has many advantages, especially for Windows users, running a virtual machine on a Mac is not a viable option for users who don’t have the resources in RAM or disk space or don’t want to deal with the inconvenience (like me). Apps that can run using Wine-like software such as the free Wineskin Winery or the commercial app CrossOver are a little more viable, since they require fewer system resources but can be fiddly to set up unless they are bundled with CrossOver by the developer, which is what RootsMagic and Family Tree Builder have done. The user experience is decidedly un-Mac-like, however, which stands to reason, since they’re Windows apps in a Mac wrapper. By the way, Wine, which means “Wine Is Not an Emulator”, is a compatibility layer software application that enables some Windows apps to run on Unix-like operating systems, such as Linux and OS X.
I have not yet decided what I will migrate my desktop family tree to. Since the ability to sync with Ancestry is an important criterion for me, I’m going to wait and see which desktop apps end up with this feature. Other criteria important to me include: ease of use, stability (no crashes or major bugs), compliance with the GEDCOM 5.5.1 de facto standard, robust search/filter and replace; ability to include jpg, pdf, doc, html, and txt files; data validation tools (including standard place names), maps, source and citation management tools, robust charts and reports, and integrated web search. Your criteria may vary.
Since we have a year to continue using FTM with Ancestry, I’m going to take the time to clean up my tree to prepare it for GEDCOM export and explore available desktop genealogy apps for the Mac. I’ll focus on native Mac apps and those Windows apps that have been bundled with CrossOver for ease of installation and use. In the next few articles, I’ll detail my experiences, starting with cleaning up an FTM tree so that it’s more GEDCOM compliant. This will help prevent data from getting lost in the migration to a new app, or even directly to the cloud, for those who want to get off the desktop app upgrade treadmill altogether.
If you’re an FTM user, what desktop app (Windows or Mac) do you plan to switch to and why?
Update 3 Mar 2016: Now that FTM has been given a new lease on life, please see my post, “Should You Stick With Family Tree Maker?”
I have used FTM3 on the Mac for awhile. The TreeSync was the main reason.
After reviewing online comments, and those comments of folks in my local Genealogy Society, I am using RootsMagic for the Mac. The customer support at RootsMagic has been impressive, and I am now quite comfortable moving trees from FTM3 to RootsMagic (on the Mac). When exporting a 4700 person tree from FTM to RootsMagic, and doing the subsequent mass “fixing broken media links” you need patience. I have hd it run for almost 15 minutes but you need to exercise patience (I have a LOT of media files.) Just be patient. And get the book that RootsMagic has for the software – there are many things I may have eventually discovered, but having them made known to me at the start is great.
I have found several features on RootsMagic that I seriously appreciate. I also like the way it gives you more flexibility in documenting sources. I also like the ability to really tune the presentation of RootsMagic – changing to TrueType fonts really improves to look on the screen. And RootsMagic says they are working on a native Mac version. I know that more than half of my local Genealogy society use Mac hardware – so I am sure there is a huge market for that.
I have Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro using bootcamp – so I was able to try Legacy. I found Legacy a little easier to use initially, but slightly lacking in some features – and no Mac version.
There’s an easy way to fix broken media links BEFORE importing a GEDCOM into RootsMagic for Mac, which I’ll share in a future article.
Hi, Keith. That wold be very useful. I’ll look forward to your post.
See the comment by Carol below. RootsMagic released an update on 17 Dec that supposedly fixes the broken media links. The problem is that RootsMagic is really a Windows app, and even the Mac version was looking for file paths in Windows format. I’ll be reviewing RootsMagic shortly and will check to make sure this has really been fixed.
Looking forward to that article – several people in my Genealogical Society will be interested.
I bought Reunion 10 for Mac and now Reunion 11 and I absolutely love it. I may not be a computer whiz but if I had seen this program before I had a Mac, I would have bought the Mac just for Reunion!
I enter almost everything I get from Ancestry.com into iFamily for Mac, omitting only distant cousins’ spousal trees. I like iFamily’s interface better than any other genealogy application, and the price is certainly right. I’ll watch to see which if any other program Ancestry will sync with. As of now I have no preference among the others.
Isn’t iFamily (http://www.ifamilyforleopard.com/) the perfect example for an outdated application?
Tom, they changed their name to iFamily for Mac with a new website: http://www.ifamilyformac.com. I don’t know how much they’ve continued to develop their app, but I intend to find out. It can run on El Capitan, so it must be fairly current.
Keith and Tom, iFamily for Mac is as current as any genealogy program that is not affiliated with a web-based program. It’s very Mac-like, which programs such as RootsMagic that started life as Windows apps aren’t. I back up all my files with Time Machine and SuperDuper as well as online with Backblaze, so barring nuclear war, my data are safe. Warwick Wilson (no relation to me that I know of) took over iFamily after his dad’s untimely death and has maintained it very well. He responds to inquiries personally, a real rarity in software developers. I’m sticking with iFamily until he decides he doesn’t want to continue it.
I’m migrating to Rootsmagic 7. Although the user interface is un-Mac like as you noted, they are developing a new RM program that will be native for the Mac. I took all of my data, sources, and media from FTM for Mac and imported it with no loss that I can see so far into RM7. Thanks for all you do!
A hugely topical subject! Just look at Facebook and Ancestry and you will see that a vast number of FTM/Ancestry users, do not share your optimism of a win-win conclusion to this decision by Ancestry. In my view and many others this has been a PR disaster. To announce that, FTM was to be no longer sold from 1 January 2016 and likely not supported after 1 Jan 2017, without any enlightenment, on what will replace this, is disgraceful. Many people have just purchased FTM not realising it’s short shelf life. Ancestry say that FTM will be supported for 12 months, but that decision may be taken out of their hands. If there are operating systems changes, from either Microsoft or Apple, which take place earlier than 12 months, then that could impact on FTM and the user could be left with a problem, as Ancestry, will surely not throw any money at sorting it! Even before the announcement, I was complaining to Ancestry about the FTM software, which was giving me ridiculous relationships. It now becomes clear why they were dragging their heels, so fat chance it will ever be resolved now.
I moved from Reunion to FTM, simply because of it’s synchronisation feature, which I thought would be a tremendous time saving feature, and it proved to be so. To have this removed unceremoniously, without a replacement option, does not inspire me to trust Ancestry. I am going back to Reunion, which is written solely for the Mac. So much of the other software are compromises, with Mac users having to accept a Windows program, which does not always have all of the same features, as the true Windows version. I do not want to go down that route. Why should I have to compromise as a Mac user. Reunion here I come!
Bill Birchall
Did you by chance look into Legacy News option. I sure want to find a software soon I have 2100 names to transfer to a new software. Thanks Cecil
I’m a Mac user and have used MacFamilyTree for years. While I like the software, there are times I feel like I’m filling out tax forms with all the different screens, etc. I also own a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. Due to my job I have a Windows virtual machine running on my Mac most of the time, and once I heard about FTM’s ability to TreeSync, I switched from MacFamilyTree to FTM Windows so I could run it on my virtual machine and my Surface. This way I do much of my searching on Ancestry and merge items to my online tree, then sync it to my local machines periodically (using OneDrive to keep data up to date between the virtual machine and the Surface).
Now that FTM has a known drop-dead date, I’ll:
1) Pray that they open up the API so that third party apps can tree sync
2) Hope that MacFamilyTree comes up with a way tree sync
3) Evaluate and possibly switch to whatever Mac or Windows based software that comes along that offers syncing.
I’m going back to Reunion for Mac. I only went to FTM for the sync feature.
I’ll wait for “Other” to try and fill the void of FTM. Rootsmagic 7 gets pretty good ratings for Accuracy Score and Ease of Use; but no Web Hints and no reviews on Mac ability other than can be used on the Mac OS/X 10.4 or later platform. Judging from Coleen’s comments, improved Mac interface is worth waiting for later this year.
I switched from Windows to a Mac and transferred everything to Reunion 10. Will miss FTM, liked their Despondency Reports. And to my knowledge Reunion 10/11 does not connect with Ancestry.com
At the moment, only Family Tree Maker can sync with Ancestry.com, but Ancestry has stated they are exploring letting other apps do this.
I don’t have a clue I was a Reunion user and transferred to Mac and now maybe I will transfer back to Reunion. Who knows in the meantime I will watch and wait.
transferred to Family Tree Maker
No mention of Reunion? Why not? Is there a problem perception?
Reunion is definitely one of the apps I plan to review, along with Mac Family Tree, Family Tree Builder, Heredis, Gramps, iFamily for Mac, GEDitCOM, and probably others.
I’m just holding out until I find out what you recommend! Thanks for all you do, Ben!
Will watch with interest for your other articles on this topic! I am a Reunion user, but I sure have enjoyed the easy sync with FTM3!!
Thank you for your information on Ancestry which I did not know. About three months ago I loaded FTM Mac 3 Platinum to my IMac, however, I have not registered the program yet as I will have six months subscription to Ancestry free. I will register after Christmas when I have more time.
One more lifelong Reunion user. Just upgraded to V11.0.
Happy to stay there.
I have use Ancestry for about 20 years now and have had a few problems with them lately. Unable to use my mouse to move around a family tree that I want to look at. They tried to dismiss this as a problem with my computer but after some time admitted it was a problem with their software. Thought I would just wait but now with this news I am no longer sure what to do next. I even had a DNA test done though Ancestry. Still waiting for the fix. Tried downloading a few family tree programs to test them out. None seem as friendly as my Ancestry. Any idea would be appreciated. Thank You. Arthur Kean
Thanks, Ben for giving us some hope. I’ve been with Ancestry.com since 1997. I started with the .AFT files! I’ve been a loyal full-subscriber for almost 19 years and I’ve been through all of the triumphs, debacles and missteps with them.
In 2006 – 2007 we took trips to the midwest, the south and the east coast as well as England and Wales to search my husband’s line in places where online records weren’t available. I hand-transcribed every document into FTM and then they rolled out the NOVA created 2008 FTM platform and all of my work was gone! Sources had been stripped and media vanished. I had backups but they couldn’t make them work. It happened again in 2013, when I switched from PC to Mac with FTM2 Mac and this time the media from the five trees I work were mixed up. Documents from my husband’s family were showing up in my stepmom’s tree! It was a huge disaster and once again, it’s Nova’s fault because they aren’t genealogists and have never taken the beta-testers’ comments as reality. I’ve beta-tested three of their programs and they released the programs with all bugs firmly in place.*
So, this is sad news but also a bit of a relief. If we can get a software program that will interact with Ancestry.com, we may end up with the best of both worlds. We have little pull with Ancestry now, as evidenced by the lack of a personal response from Ancestry.com president, Tim Sullivan, after he received my ten-page certified letter earlier this year which included screen shots and documentation of problems throughout my five files.
I have to believe that at this point, another company advocating for the consumer with Ancestry will be a good thing. They will have more clout than one 19-year-long loyal user.
I do have to say that Ancestry gave me a full credit on one year of my membership but I’ve been repairing the damage in the five files since January of 2014. I’m still not done finding the mixed-up media, not to mention the stripped sources. I work on my genealogy five to six days a week – all day long. I’ll never get that time back.
Nova = Affordable Care Act developers; Nova = Hallmark Mac developers; Nova = FTM Mac all versions. In Spanish Nova = won’t go. We should have known!
Thanks again for your great articles. I’m a huge fan.
*My husband thinks I’m nuts for staying with them but . . . only game in town.
I’m looking primarily at Rootsmagic and Reunion 11. It would be great to have you guys do a review of Reunion 11. Specifically, I’m wondering if the criticism found at the end of the review of Reunion 10 still applies to the new version: “I don’t recommend Reunion for family history research because it limits the citation data that can be recorded, imported, and exported. It has no ability to link multimedia to a citation and has no facility to store citation specific source quality ratings. To make matters worse, when importing citations in GEDCOM files it ignores these two record types without warning leading to data loss.”
I briefly tried FTM for the Mac but beside the bugs I didn’t like the feeling of lack of control with the sync to Ancestry. I am now fully in Reunion and have updated to Reunion 11. I wish you guys would go back to doing tips and videos for Reunion!! Can’t you work something out with the guys at Reunion – let bygones be bygones? I think Reunion is the way to go for Mac!
Reunion’s always done right by me. I was also running FTM for Mac for a client. In addition to the other problems mentioned, the Tree Sync feature breaks permanently if you revert to a backup and it only ever linked with one computer. I managed to scrape up all the invisible files and get the sync to work on my new iMac, but I was grumpy about having to to do this. So au revoir, FTM, you are not missed by me.
This feels very close to the same situation Ancestry stirred up by announcing the discontinuation of MyCanvas and then having their vendor step in to save the feature. I’m sure the result improved Ancestry’s bottom line and that’s undoubtedly the goal here. API seems like the logical outcome, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for Ancestry and Reunion to get together.
With TMG and now FTM biting the dust, I admit I’m a bit nervous about selecting a program that will have staying power and not make it necessary for me to become familiar with another program’s bells and whistles. When I was on a PC, I used Legacy and was quite happy with it – although I toyed with trying TMG and was sure I would eventually take the leap. Then TMG bid adieu! Then my PC crashed and I decided to make the move to an iMac (I’m still torn by the possibility of going back to a PC, although with an iPad and iPhone, I may be in Appellant to stay). Rather than put Legacy on my iMac, I tried iFamily (it was nice, but maybe too different?) and then I tried Heredis. RootsMagic never attracted me, for some reason – still doesn’t. Anyway, I’m now using Heredis 2015 (even though I purchased FTM for Mac, I never warmed to it). Heredis is good and seems to have almost all the features I want. Still, I keep wondering if there is something else I should be trying – Reunion 11, for example. And I’ve heard good things about Family Historian, which would need a program crossover to run on my iMac. I don’t hear much about Heredis 2015 – anyone out there have more experience with it and views on how it compares to Reunion or Family Historian? I dream of settling on a program once and for all, of stopping the search for a greener-pasture genealogy program, and finally getting my 40 years of research in order!
That’s Apple Land, not Appellant! You have it love automatic spellcheck!
Michael, I certainly understand your concerns about commercial software roulette. Personally, I prefer open source software, of which there are a few options for genealogy, like Gramps. Here are the apps I intend to review: RootsMagic, Reunion, Mac Family Tree, Family Tree Builder, Heredis, Gramps, iFamily for Mac, and GEDitCOM. Some of these are free or have free but limited versions. A few come in both Windows and Mac flavors, but I’ll be focusing mostly on apps for the Mac. Apple will have to mess up OS X even worse than Microsoft did with Windows Vista for me to go back to using a PC!
By the way, Part 1 of the series I mentioned in the article above is now posted at https://genealogytools.com/replacing-family-tree-maker-part-1-how-to-scrub-your-data/. This one discusses the problems with FTM’s GEDCOM files and some possible fixes and work-arounds.
Thanks Keith. Just too many choices! I’m looking forward to your reviews – in the meantime, I’ll have a look at GRAMPS and maybe give MacFamily Tree 7 (I have a version of that, and want to hold off putting money into Reunion 11).
Oh me what a headache I have. I am dumbfounded about what is happening. After using FTM for 20 years and now have to
learn a new program, especially at age 77. I have begun looking at reviews of the different softwares and wondered if you have much research on Legacy News and if you would recommend it. Thanks Keith.
Cecil, that’s amazing that you’ve been using Family Tree Maker (FTM) for 20 of its 26 years! It should continue to work for many more years. The only thing that may not work by 1 Jan 2017 is TreeSync, which synchronizes your FTM tree with Ancestry.com. Do you use this feature? If not, then you may want to keep using FTM.
If you’d still like to switch to a different program, then Legacy Family Tree is certainly an option. I assume that’s what you’re referring to when you said “Legacy News” (http://news.legacyfamilytree.com/). Lots of people use it, and they have both a free and a paid option. Personally, I only used it briefly a few years ago, so I don’t have much of an opinion on it right now. I will take a look at it in the near future. In the meantime, you could look at the reviews at http://www.gensoftreviews.com/?p=119&s=legacy%20family%20tree&sel=&new=&lic=&pla=&type=&sort= . The reviews are quite mixed, with an overall rating of 2.81 out of 5, and 2.41 for the current version (version 8). That seems below average to me. But then FTM has only a 1.87 rating! (http://www.gensoftreviews.com/?p=114&s=family%20tree%20maker&sel=&new=&lic=&pla=&type=&sort=)
I’m not going to hold my breath for Ancestry.com to set up syncing with another desktop software. I understand they’d like to get their hands on a new chunk of data, but after all the problems getting TreeSync to work with FTM, why would they want to start over with totally different software they have no control over? Seems to me it would be more of a headache for Ancestry.com to maintain a sync function with other software than with FTM. Sync functions are complicated, especially with millions of individual databases they’re trying to sync with their own huge database. This requires a lot of people and resources to manage. If they’re trying to streamline their business model, be more focused on their online product development, or improve customer satisfaction (marketing) why would they do this?
Personally, it would bother me much more to lose the Webmerge function than Treesync. I can compare versions of facts, merge addtional family members, rename media files and get a lot of my source citation editing started there. You can also copy/paste into notes etc, not just from Ancestry, but from other sites. I use the Treesync function more as a secondary backup now, as a way to generate hints, and to share/connect with other researchers. When I search directly from the Ancestry.com site (as opposed to from FTM3 at times), I download through Webmerge if I can rather than via Treesync. This forces me to do the basic cleanup of my data as I go along, as opposed to rampaging around the Ancestry.com sit collecting a lot of stuff, which I then have to go clean up, rename, etc later – a drag.
I do not intend to change to a purely online tree, as Ancestry.com envisions. This reminds me of all the talk back in the 1990s of “the paperless office”. Now, two decades later, how many offices are truly paperless? Those who tout doing everything ‘in the cloud” probably live in major metropolitan areas with very reliable and very fast internet connections. For instance, I spent months trying different online backup services before I discovered that DSL is very vulnerable to physical disruptions, for instance wind, which we have a lot of here, and the speed is dependent on how close you are to the distribution box in your community. Computer functions tend to develop problems when they are interrupted, and If you are adding/changing data faster than the conduit can process it, you can end up with a mess. I now have a faster cable service, but it is still not nearly as fast as in some areas.
So the jury is out for me. For now, I am going to continue to work on cleaning up my FTM3 files so I can export more complete and functional GEDCOM files when the time comes. I am very grateful to Ben for getting me started in this direction with Practical Citation, and to Keith for the articles he is posting elsewhere on this site on exactly how to do this.
I confess to feeling overwhelmed and discouraged, however. I have already spent a lot of time on cleanup of my data and FTM. I haven’t had that much time to work on it for the last year, and now I realize there’s even more to do. Sometimes I play hookie and just do random research just for fun! Shocking! Heck, maybe I should go along with ancestry after all and just have an online tree, not worry about source citations and GEDCOMs and all that silly stuff.
I exported my FTM tree to RootsMagic, although the Images could be traced they were not linked. However when I went into RootsMagic last night I got a message saying there was an update available (released 17 Dec). When I next went into RootsMagic the images were connected to the right people. I haven’t had time to check out all the features, but it does look RootsMagic have seen the opportunity Ancestry has left open, but more importantly they have listened.
Part 2 of the series I mentioned in the article above is now posted at https://genealogytools.com/replacing-family-tree-maker-part-2-how-to-get-your-tree-out-of-ftm/. This article explains how to export, edit and validate a GEDCOM file produce by Family Tree Maker.
I have been looking at RootsMagic as the software to move to from FTM. I understand it uses Family Search Support. Instead of Family Search Support do you know if its possible to use Ancestry.com for support?
Not in the same way that it uses FamilySearch (or that FTM uses Ancestry). At the moment, you can search Ancestry from within RootsMagic, but if you find something you want to save to your tree, you must copy and paste it. Ancestry has said they may open something like TreeSync to other programs, and RootsMagic has said they would look into it, so we can only hope both companies will cooperate.
By the way, be sure to read my review of how well RM imports a GEDCOM. There are some problems, I’m afraid.
Please see my post, “Should You Stick With Family Tree Maker?“