GenealogyTools

Genealogy Software Tutorials for Mac & PC

Ben Sayer

Family Tree Maker 2013 Availability

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News came from Ancestry.com today that there won’t be a Family Tree Maker 2013. The firm is focused on enhancing the existing version. They’ve already released updates with the following enhancements (listed in their blog announcing the direction):

  • Numerous enhancements to TreeSync so syncing your tree to Ancestry.com is faster and more reliable
  • A new Family View Report that displays a person’s ancestors, spouse, and children together (similar to the Family View in the People workspace)
  • A new Undocumented Facts Report that lists people’s facts that have no source documentation
  • The ability to merge info from multiple versions of the same fact
  • New source templates for the 1940 U.S. census and improved support for city directories
  • Dozens of report enhancements including performance improvements and new options in the relationship chart, family group sheet, Individual Report, Notes Report, Data Errors Report, Outline Descendant Report, Media Item Report, photo albums, Media Usage Report, Documented Facts Report, and calendar

And more enhancements are promised.

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Reunion for Mac 10.0.3 Update Available

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A new maintenance release is available for Reunion 10. Besides a slew of fixes, this version includes an overhaul of the web search feature.

The choices on the context menu that appears when you select Search the Web on a person button has been rearranged for efficiency. Search Favorites now appears at the top. You can also search custom groups of sites–a feature introduced in this release.

The preference pane for web search received an overhaul to support creation of custom groups as well as editing the same and the favorites group.

Finally, there’s a button on the Web Preferences pane that you can use to update search sites similarly to the way you can check for updates to the whole application.

I updated the original article on this topic, Using Reunion to Search the Web, and re-recorded the video.

Your Source and Citation Information Is In Danger

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Today I finished methodically testing which source and citation information reliably survives GEDCOM import and export. It’s not a pretty picture! A mere five of fourteen key GEDCOM tags are safe across the nine leading genealogy software packages I tested.[1] Fortunately, the ones I previously identified as essential to source citations are among them.

Why You Should Care

The ability to move your family history data from one application to another is important. Even if you have no intention of changing software or sharing your research you ought to be concerned. It’s entirely possible that the person or people that inherit your research will choose a different package. They may load your data and probably won’t even know they lost anything in the transfer. Well, that fate needn’t be yours if you know where you can safely store information.

What You Can Do

This research is part of the work I’ve been doing to create the very first GenealogyTools ebook and video course: Practical Citation. After completing the course, you will be able to safely and confidently record sources, citations, and quality in your genealogy software without having to consult a book or quick sheet. Say “goodbye” to uncertainty about citation templates and formats.

Notes

[1] I tested Family Historian 5, Family Tree Maker 2012, Family Tree Maker for Mac 2, GEDitCOM II, Legacy 7.5, MacFamilyTree 6, Reunion 10, RootsMagic 5, and The Master Genealogist 7.

Reunion 10.0.2 Update Available

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The second maintenance update for the new Mac genealogy software Reunion 10, was released today. There are many fixes included. See the release notes for details. Here are the highlights:

  • Get precise coordinates in the geo code place window by moving the pin
  • Find relationships between two people feature now shows multiple blood relationships if they exist
  • Search favorites selection is now at the top of the list of resources when searching the web
  • Additions to the web search resources: Ancestry.com.au, Ancestry.ca, FindMyPast.co.uk, GuildOfOneNameStudies
  • Pressing the left or right arrow key in family view moves to the previous or next marked person
  • Crash fixes
  • Performance improvements
  • Updates to the manual