I received an email from Jack Minsky, President of Software MacKiev, with the following news:
The Family Tree Maker development team just finished up another free FTM 2019 update, version 24.2. It has significant improvements in performance and security and some useful new features – most notably a very handy relationship management tool. Joining existing tools for managing facts, historical events, sources and repositories, the new Relationship Manager tool in version 24.2 can change one relationship or thousands at a time. It is especially helpful when things have gotten off track. For example, you can use it to find all married people in your tree whose relationship type is mistakenly shown as “Unknown” and change them all at once to “Spouse”. If only fixing real relationships were that easy. Click here to get your copy of version 24.2.
“Family Tree Maker – an Update for You,” email dated 19 Feb 2023
I installed the update on my Mac without any issues and immediately tried out the new Relationship Manager tool. In the Mac version at least, it’s found in the Edit menu > Manage Relationships. Clicking on it brings up a window where you can choose a variety of Couple or Parent-Child relationship types in the upper drop-down, select the people you want to change, and choose the new relationship type in the lower drop-down. I didn’t even know I had 79 child relationships in my tree with an “unknown” relationship type. I was able to change 77 relationships to “biological” with the click of a button. As with any batch process, make sure you really want to change everyone. I had one child whom I still don’t know how he was related to the adults he was living with, so “unknown” is the most appropriate relationship.
It’s heart warming and amazing that that the Software MacKiev staff are still able to improve Family Tree Maker 2019 from the middle of a war zone in Kyiv, Ukraine. Ten percent of the sales of many genealogy products in the MacKiev store go to Ukrainian relief charities.
Enjoy using Family Tree. Have found many members of my family through Ancestry and added them to my tree.
Thanks for the heads up, Keith! FYI, I just checked for updates via FTM2019 – not available that way. it says “You’re up-to-date! Family Tree Maker 2019 24.1.0.520 is currently the newest version available.” Your link does take me to the 24.2 update page, however.
I suspect MacKiev sends an update notice through FTM on a rolling basis so their servers don’t get overwhelmed. I don’t know how many copies of FTM 2019 there are, but I’m sure it’s in the 10s of thousands.
I like Family Tree Maker 19 for its ability to sync with Ancestry.com and download one’s recent search results on the web. A very handy backup.
I have mentioned Practical Citation to members of my Genealogy Club. Is it still available?
Practical Citation is available at https://practicalcitation.com/