Details about Family Tree Maker*
Application: Family Tree Maker
Current Version: 2017
Supported OS: Windows, Mac
Mobile Apps: None
Price: $69.95 (Windows or Mac), $89.95 (Family pack including both versions, 3 computers), $29.95 (upgrade from previous version)
Publisher: Software MacKiev
Website: http://www.mackiev.com/ftm/
GenSoftReviews: 1.92 (Windows)/1.60 (Mac) stars out of 5
Versions tested: Family Tree Maker 3.1 22.2.6.867 and 2017 23.1.0.480 (for Mac)
After a two-month hiatus, Family Tree Maker (FTM) is back on the market, now sold directly by the developer, Software MacKiev. MacKiev used those two months to improve the performance of FTM, add artwork for charts and reports, and make needed changes to splash screens and icons to reflect the new publisher.
PROS
+ I’ve already tested the update for Mac, mainly to ensure everything still worked, especially TreeSync/Family Sync, and I can report that Sync does indeed still work. Although I didn’t benchmark it, my tree and all its media seemed to upload faster than with the previous version. In addition, all media uploaded without any errors, which was often the case in the past. Sync, which provides the ability to synchronize a desk-top family tree with one at Ancestry.com, is probably the biggest selling point for FTM. It essentially keeps a back-up of a tree in the cloud. While this feature used to be unique to FTM, it is no longer, since RootsMagic also has a similar feature.
+ I tested several resource-intensive actions, to include merging two trees and exporting a tree to a FTM backup file, and again my impression was that the performance was faster. I benchmarked a few actions that show the improvements:
- Smart Story, add Personal Biography items, including source citations – was 45 seconds, now less than 2 seconds
- Resolve single place name – was over 60 seconds, now less than 2 seconds
- Merge two place names – was over 40 seconds, now about 1 second (but see Cons for problems)
- Switch to Places workspace from another workspace – was 5 seconds or more, now less than 1 second
However, be warned that FTM may appear to stop responding, depending on how much RAM your computer has (at least the Mac version), but it’s still chugging away and should eventually become responsive again. For example, finding 2680 missing media and attaching them using the copy method took about 20 minutes, but it would have taken Finder that long to copy them anyway. Also, FTM 3.1 has yet to crash on me after almost two weeks of use.
+ Several annoyances from previous versions have been fixed or mostly fixed in FTM 3.1:
- Most importantly, FTM GEDCOM files are now labelled as version 5.5.1, which is the latest version and which added support for the UTF-8 character set. FTM GEDOMS have been using UTF-8 for some time now but were still labelled as version 5.5. However, see the Cons section for problems with GEDCOM standard compliance (all of which I reported in Part 1: How to Scrub Your Data).
- The Incorrect Date Format warning was too aggressive. It was appearing even before I had tabbed out of the Date field. This appears to be fixed.
- Some user assigned media categories were disappearing from the media they were assigned to. This appears to be fixed.
- Behavior of pressing a letter key in the Add a Fact window was inconsistent. Clicking a letter key should take the cursor to the first field name beginning with that letter, but FTM was inconsistent about it. Now this is mostly fixed, although clicking the S key provides random results.
The fact that these things were fixed, based on user feedback, is promising.
+ The Web Merge Wizard has changed; you might say it’s been simplified (Fig 1).
Most notable is the elimination of the “Merged Result” column. Now you select the Preferred fact from either the left or right column. If the person from your tree is kept as the preferred fact, then you can select to discard the fact from the web (the default choice) or add it as an alternate fact (more about this in the Cons section). You can also choose to keep or discard the sources and, if there are any, the media and notes. Another change is that the column for the Person From Web Search is shaded. For comparison, the old Web Merge Wizard is shown in Fig 2.
+ FTM’s tight integration with Ancestry.com has always been one of its main features. In addition to Sync, FTM displays hints from Ancestry in the form of a green leaf on a person’s profile. These hints include a large collection of historical records, as well as the public family trees of other users. Furthermore, searching Ancestry from FTM is as easy as clicking one or two buttons, and the search form is automatically populated with the relevant data from your tree. As with the Ancestry website, the search criteria can be refined, and FTM displays the search results almost identically to Ancestry, down to the Search Filters and sliders. FTM makes it easy to add source citations when adding a record or other information from Ancestry.
+ In addition to Ancestry.com, any other website can also be searched from within FTM, since the Web Search workspace is a basic web browser (see the Cons for some of the limitations). The advantage of searching from FTM is that information can be copied and pasted fairly easily into your family tree.
CONS
Many of the problems with FTM deal with handling of place names:
– Sometimes place names are duplicated when adding events; this has been a problem since previous versions of FTM 3 (I don’t know about FTM 2014). For example, I added a new Residence fact using an existing place name, which I selected from the autofill suggestion. I checked the Places workspace and the place name was duplicated, with the existing place name and all its associated people and a duplicate place name with only the person associated with the fact I just entered. It makes no sense to have a place authority database and autofill if place names are going to be duplicated anyway. If a place name already exists in the tree, then it should be reused rather than being duplicated.
– Merging Duplicate Place Names Sometimes Results in Data Loss; this has also been a problem since previous versions of FTM 3. In the Places workspace, I selected the duplicate name with the least number of people attached to it. I right-clicked and selected “Replace with other place name.” From the dialog box I selected the other duplicate name and clicked OK. Sometimes the place names are merged, but the people associated with one of the duplicates are lost. For example, before merging, one place had 36 different people and the other had 3, so the merged place name should have had 39 different people. But after merging them, there were only 36, meaning the 3 people from one of the duplicates lost the place names that were attached to their events. I confirmed this by checking one of the 3 people who were affected, and the place name had been deleted from the associated facts. Fortunately, Undo works to restore the missing place names by restoring the merged place, but merging the place names should also work. If you try to keep your place names tidy like I do, you must keep an eye on this.
– When replacing one place name with another, sometimes FTM refuses to replace a name, although it will work the other way around, but then the problem of losing data is usually encountered. This seems to occur after the following steps are taken:
1. Replace one place name with another.
2. Add a fact using the place name that was merged. This usually causes a duplicate place name to be created.
3. Attempt to replace the newly created place name with the existing one. FTM will go through the motions, but after clicking OK, both place names are still there.
– On the Summary screen of the Web Merge Wizard, there is an option to edit the Source-Citation to be added. After clicking the Edit button, there is an option to choose a different Source title. After clicking this button, all of the source titles in the database are presented, but they are NOT in alphabetical order prior to FTM 3.1 and 2014.1, which makes it very difficult to find the correct source title. Starting with FTM 3.1 and 2014.1, the source titles are sorted alphabetically. That way those genealogists who use Evidence Explained source citations can find them more easily.
– One of my longstanding gripes about FTM is that the Web Search workspace is a web browser with some irritating limitations. As a power user, I prefer keyboard shortcuts over clicking with a mouse or trackpad. Unfortunately, keyboard shortcuts don’t work in the FTM Web Search workspace. The following standard keyboard shortcuts should work (Mac / Windows):
Command-[ / Alt-Left Arrow – Go back one page
Command-] / Alt-Right Arrow – Go forward one page
Command-R / Ctrl-R – Reload page
Esc – Stop loading page
GEDCOM Import
Note: portions of text in all capital letters that aren’t acronyms are GEDCOM tags, with the rest of the plain text field name in lowercase.
– FTM prior to 2014.1 imports the ANSEL character set incorrectly. For example, it imported “Baumgèartner” as “BaumgËartner.” ANSEL is an old character set that predates UTF-16 and UTF-8; many old GEDCOM files still use it. There is no reason for FTM to import it incorrectly.
– FTM imports the NICKname tag incorrectly into the Also Known As field. It should be imported into a separate Nickname field, which does not exist in FTM.
GEDCOM Export (All references are to the GEDCOM 5.5.1 Standard dated 2 October 1999)
– In the GEDCOM file header prior to FTM 3.1 and 2014.1, the SUBMitter record is missing the required NAME tag (p. 28).
– FTM exports the following fields incorrectly:
- Also Known As: Prior to FTM 3.1 and 2014.1, improperly uses the ALIA tag in the GEDCOM file. The ALIA tag is to be used as a cross-reference to another individual’s record who may be the same person (p. 84). The 5.5.1 standard specifically states, “One or two systems used the ALIAs tag for representing multiple names. This form is not supported in the GEDCOM Standard” (p. 69). This can be easily fixed by changing Also Known As to a custom fact using the EVENt & TYPE tags.
- Address: incorrect structure. An address should contain a street address, city, state, country, and postal code in separate form fields (p. 31). The Address structure doesn’t use the Date or Place fields. It must be attached to an event (like a residence), not directly to a person (p. 32).
- Email: must be part of address structure (see above).
- Phone Number: must be part of address structure (see above).
- Web address: must be part of address structure and use the WWW tag (see above).
- Initiatory: While the GEDCOM standard does not include this field, FamilySearch expects GEDCOM files submitted to them to use the WAC tag, which is what PAF and many other applications use.
- Sealed to Parents (LDS): missing required child-to-family link (FAMC tag) (p. 36).
- Multimedia: Prior to FTM 3.1 and 2014.1, missing required file format field (tag FORM), includes an illegal TEXT tag, which isn’t in the specification, and uses the wrong syntax for the date (must use CHANge tag, not just DATE) (p. 26). Starting in FTM 3.1 and 2014.1, TEXT and DATE tags are changed to _TEXT and _DATE, which are product-specific tags but acceptable according to the GEDCOM standard.
– Sources citations in an FTM 3 GEDCOM file don’t include URLs from the Web address field of the Edit Source Citation form. Beginning with FTM 3.1, they are saved in a separate NOTE.
– The PAGE tag in source citations may not have CONC or CONT tags (p. 39). The character limit for the PAGE tag is 248, so if the Citation Detail field is longer than this, the remainder should be put in a NOTE attached to the citation.
– The Repository portion of a source record in FTM uses the wrong Address structure (see above and p. 27 of the standard).
– Sex: It is not permitted to include a source, media file, or note on the Sex field (p. 25), so FTM should not permit them either.
– Some Facts are Events that must have a date and/or place, or else include only the letter Y in the Description box. If either a date or place is listed for birth, death, or marriage events, then the Description box must remain empty (pp. 34 – 36). The Description box for birth, death, or marriage events also may not contain the letters N, U or anything else. FTM should not allow anything but Y in the Description box for those types of events. Technically in the GEDCOM Standard, there are really two major types of facts pertaining to an individual: attributes and events (families can also have events). The following fields are attributes for which it is appropriate to use the Description box: Caste, Physical Description, Education, Nationality, Occupation, Property, Religion, Residence, SSN, and Title. These facts may but are not required to have a date and/or place (pp. 33-34). All other Facts are Events, as explained above.
– Lastly, prior to FTM 2017, it uses the CONC tag for concatenation incorrectly. The GEDCOM standard states, “The CONC tag assumes that the accompanying subordinate value is concatenated to the previous line value without saving the carriage return prior to the line terminator. If a concatenated line is broken at a space, then the space must be carried over to the next line” (p. 10). Furthermore, “There are special considerations required when using the CONC tag. The usage is to provide a note string that can be concatenated together so that the display program can do its own word wrapping according to its display window size. The requirement for usage is to either break the text line in the middle of a word, or if at the end of a word, to add a space to the first of the next CONC line. Otherwise most operating systems will strip off the trailing space and the space is lost in the reconstitution of the note” (p. 37). Prior to FTM 2017, it does not do this; it breaks the text at the end of the word but did not add a space to the beginning of the next line. Starting with FTM 2017, it generally breaks text in the middle of a word.
Software MacKiev President Jack Minsky told me by email that the GEDCOM compliance issues will be fixed in FTM 2017; while they fixed some of the major issues, they didn’t fix all of them. In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, I explained how to scrub your FTM tree and make your FTM GEDCOM standards compliant. You can use those articles to fix the remaining issues, since it does not appear that MacKiev intends to fulfill their promise to make FTM 100% GEDCOM 5.5.1 compliant.
Impressions
I’ve been using FTM on and off for almost 20 years, and I must say that MacKiev appears to be more responsive to user feedback than Ancestry was. For starters, they have easily accessible Bug Report, Feedback, and Request a New Feature forms on their FTM website page. They’ve responded directly and personally to the feedback I’ve provided, stating they would fix what was possible to be fixed, not just providing a canned response. Clearly they have an incentive: they’ve bought FTM outright and need a return on their investment, having done so when many users had already jumped ship to other applications. Now they need to retain the loyalty of the users who stayed with FTM (including the many who complained loudly about FTM’s impending retirement). For the Mac version at least, the latest 3.1 software update and 2017 version are steps in the right direction. If MacKiev makes good on their commitments to fix the remaining problems, including GEDCOM compliance, and continues to improve, then FTM might be worth sticking with. But as with all the other apps I’ve reviewed so far, it’s still too early for me to render a judgment. For updates to this article and future articles in this series, please fill in the “Get Email Updates” form in the right sidebar. Also see my in-depth review of FTM 2017 and follow-up to that review.
GEDCOM 5.5.1 Test: FTM 3.1/2014.1 and 2017 pass the GEDCOM 5.5.1 Test. While they have a few compliance issues, both with import and export, they export GEDCOMs using UTF-8 encoding and correctly label the files as version 5.5.1.
Updates
5 Mar 2016: Deleted the paragraph about the Web Merge Wizard default for information from the web search. Thanks to reader Geoff for pointing out that FTM 2014 allows users to change the default in the general program options. FTM 3 also has this option in the application Preferences.
30 Apr 2016: Added a statement about the GEDCOM 5.5.1 Test.
22 May 2018: Made extensive updates based on FTM 2017.
The Family Tree Software Alternatives Series
Part 1: How to Scrub Your Data
Part 2: How to Get Your Tree out of FTM
Part 3: RootsMagic 7
Part 4: Reunion 11
Part 5: MacFamilyTree 8
Part 6: Family Tree Builder 8
Part 7: Heredis 2015
Part 8: Gramps 5
Part 9: iFamily for Mac
Part 10: GEDitCOM II
Part 11: Legacy Family Tree 8
Part 12: Ancestral Quest 14
Part 13: Family Historian 6
Part 14: Should You Stick with Family Tree Maker?
Part 15: Brother’s Keeper 7
Part 16: RootsMagic 8
How Well Does Ancestry.com Handle GEDCOM?
Family Tree Maker to GEDCOM to Other Apps Crosswalk
The Perils of Following the GEDCOM Standard
Why All Genealogy Apps Should Support GEDCOM 5.5.1
*Information current as of the date of this post
Looking forward to my new updates and to see if the problems I had in the past are gone or on the way out.
Thank You
Arthur
I will be sticking with FTM for the Mac. I too hope the bugs will be fixed and enhancements forthcoming.
Thank you so much for your very careful testing of the FTM for Mac upgrade. I appreciate all your efforts. I too am sticking with FTM for Mac.
Yes, thank you! You have held our hands through this transition.
I think they are making great progress, so I definitely plan to stay with FTM.
Looks like we have to wait another week for the upgrades. Just reading some more on the installs. Roll on the new and improved version for Windows.
Thank You
Arthur
Did you sign up for the MacKiev mailing list? If so, have you received anything from them? Here’s what I got:
How to get the updated editions
What you will get and when depends on what FTM version you currently have:
1. Users of FTM 2014 and Mac 3: Hang in there! FREE updates are coming. They will be available in about a week or so through the built-in update feature. We will send you an email to let you know as soon as they are available.
2. Users of older FTM editions: No matter how old your copy of FTM is, or whether its running on Windows or Mac, you can download an upgrade for $29.95 (vs. $69.95 regular price). Click here to take advantage of this limited-time upgrade offer today.
3. New users: If you have never owned a copy of Family Tree Maker before, for a limited time, you can download a full edition from our online store for $49.95 by clicking here (vs. $69.95 regular price).
Additional Offers:
Family Tree Maker users who do not currently have an Ancestry.com subscription, will be offered a 14-day free trial.
If you would like a backup disc, you can purchase a CD in a jewel case for an extra $10 including shipping and handling.
WOW Keith – thanks for the Follow-up fix requests to McKiev. I was working on Scrubbing and stopped at Addresses. Lots of unnecessary modifications if the new owners are going to make Fields GEOCOM Compliant. I’m on the fence and watching with great interest. I used your link to McKiev and requested mail updates. Instantly with I hit the “Submit” button, I got an email explaining the updates will be out in about a week. BUT I was discouraged by this whole on again off again FTM3 debacle and it will take a lot of fixes as explained in your article, to keep me. Watching YOUR posts on this topic with great interest. Should I hold off on the Scrubbing??
Good question, Jerry. Based on what I’ve seen from MacKiev so far, I think you can hold off on any further scrubbing. Jack Minsky, MacKiev’s president, has committed to making FTM GEDCOM 5.5.1 compliant, and they’ve already taken the step of labelling FTM’s GEDCOMs as such, as well as a few other minor GEDCOM fixes.
I refer to the paragraph –
“– In the Web Merge Wizard, the default for information from the web search is Discard. Most good genealogists would probably prefer the default to be Alternate. If the information is different from what is in their family tree but they are sure it’s the same person, they would want to add the information to their tree as alternate information. What do you think the default should be? Please take this short survey to let us know.”
The Web Merge was changed a while back to default to ‘Discard’, as far as I remember there were differing opinions on this change and then there was a more recent change in early December 2015 (at least in the Windows version), which included the introduction of a General Option in FTM2014 for a merging default. This option allows the user to select either ‘Delete differences’ or ‘Keep differences as alternate’ as the default.
I do not have FTM3 so cannot check if the option was ever included in the Mac version.
Here is the update note –
Family Tree Maker 2014 SP7 Patch Notes
On December 3, 2015, Ancestry Released patch #7 (build .410) for Family Tree Maker 2014.
This update includes the following:
Added new merge option to keep differences as alternates or discard them by default. This is on the “General” tab of the “Options” dialog.
Thanks for that! FTM 3 also now has this option. I’ve updated the post accordingly.
Keith, I add my thanks to your continuing work on this. MacKiev’s handling of things is promising, and I will probably stay with FTM if things go reasonably well with them.
Overall, the program seems to be working as well as before, except WebSearch has started hanging for a long time when loading a record or image on ancestry.com. Perhaps this is a temporary system gitch with ancestry or my browser – I am having some trouble with media completely loading from a URL also.
No problems with treesync, no media processing errors so far.
One of my pet peeves is unchanged so far: typing into Media Caption or Description in the Media Workspace/Collection page is still agonizingly slow, but OK in the Details page, as before. It would really speed up renaming generic-named media to be able to do it on the Collection page. A question: Is this Media Description field the source field for the GEDCOM-illegal text field you mention? If so, too bad – I find it very useful in the Media Details page for transcribing/abstracting info from media images. I wonder what will happen to text in this or other GEDCOM-illegal fields when Mackiev makes the program GEDCOM compliant.
I have been copy-pasting the text from the media details field into the citation text field. There is sometimes quite a lot of info in one image, for instance a census record with large or multiple families on one image. Is there any limitation on characters in the citation text field?
Just checked ancestry.com support page, they do have service alerts for site ancestry.com slowness, and rootsweb site down until March 15 due to hardware failure. I’ll check FTM websearch with Familysearch.
Familysearch loaded quickly through Web Search, so I think it is an ancestry.com website problem. However, I did a copy/paste into notes using web clipping feature – this was fast, but when I switched to People workspace FTM hung for a minute or so.
Thanks for the update. I’ll check on the web clipping feature to see if I have a problem, also.
Websearch is working well today with ancestry.com.
Good to hear. Ancestry has had problems with their website before. Since the Web Search workspace is just a mini web browser, any slowdowns or downtime on a website will be reflected.
Margaret,
RE “typing into Media Caption or Description in the Media Workspace/Collection page:” I notice a little of lag but nothing like it was a few years ago. I suggest you report this as a bug to MacKiev. They’re trying to improve performance and stability.
RE the Media Description field: yes, currently FTM exports it to an illegal TEXT tag. I’ve recommended that it be exported to a NOTE.
RE the Citation Text field: it has an unlimited length because it can have continuation or concatenation tags (unlike the Citation Detail field, which is exported to the PAGE tag, which may not).
OK, thanks Keith!
Some questions re: “perils” of GEDCOM compliance:
1) An illegal feature I find very useful is the Fact description field. I put brief notes here to help me quickly distinguish between different versions of facts in the People Workspace. For instance with variations in birth dates, places or names in different censuses, I note which censuses support that version of the fact in the description field, and link all those source citations to that particular fact. Or, on a residence fact, I might note which name was used for a person in that particular record.
2) Another thing that is GEDCOM-illegal that doesn’t make sense to me:
“Sex: It is not permitted to include a source, media file, or note on the Sex field (p. 25), so FTM should not permit them either.”
This does refer to gender, right? Why aren’t you supposed to provide support for this? I don’t think it’s that rare to find gender recorded incorrectly, for instance with an infant or child recorded with an ambiguous nickname, for instance Georgie. Very young infants often didn’t have a name recorded at all. Some enumerators didn’t record names for anyone, just initials. Other clues as to gender may be absent, for instance, US Censuses before 1880 didn’t record the relationships of household members.
I even had a 15 y.o. “Esey” Tate recorded as male, living in a hotel with Alexander and Sarah Tate in 1870 (before they put the relationship on the censuses). Alex and Sarah had no children in the 1860 census, actually never did per multiple sources. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who this male “Esey” was. Ezekiel? Isaac? Couldn’t find a matching person. Finally, another Tate family researcher helped me determine that “Esey” was actually Esther, female, a niece of Alex and Sarah. You would think anyone could tell a 15 y.o. girl from a 15 y.o boy (at least in 1870!), but I suspect the enumerator just wrote things down from the register and never actually saw or spoke to my ancestors.
FTM does allow you to enter Sex as unknown, but you can’t enter more than one Sex fact for someone in FTM. If someone is recorded under different genders in different records, you can’t easily show that this happened. I think I should be able to document sources to show that Esey, supposedly male in 1870, was actually the same person as Esther, female, in other records. Why does the GEDCOM standard prohibit this?
Also, isn’t gender an attribute, not an event? But you say that attributes are allowed to use the date, place and description fields. So why not SEX? Does this mean it’s not an attribute? Or am I misunderstanding the whole thing?
3) Is race considered to be an attribute? For instance, I did some research for an African-American friend – the same person’s race can be listed as black, mulatto, colored, negro etc in different censuses.
I hope you can clarify some of this for me!
Should I have posted this in a different thread?
No, it’s ok.
Margaret,
RE the Fact description field: according to the GEDCOM 5.5.1 standard, the following facts (which GEDCOM calls “attributes,”) MAY have descriptions: Caste, Physical Description, Education, Nationality, Occupation, Property, Religion, Residence, SSN, and Title. For all other facts, you should put any extra information into the note for the corresponding facts.
RE Source, media, and notes on Sex: yes, this is gender. Both FTM and GEDCOM refer to it as “sex.” I don’t know the background on why GEDCOM doesn’t allow sources, media, or notes. It does seem like a pointless limitation, but until the standard is changed, we have to work with it. I recommend you put any gender notes in the notes for the person.
Sex is not considered an attribute in GEDCOM; it’s just sex. The only attributes are the ones I listed above. I recommend you read the GEDCOM standard; you can download it from https://familysearch.org/developers/docs/gedcom/. You will have to read it many times before you understand it.
RE Race: Race isn’t even defined in the GEDCOM standard. There’s National or Tribal Origin, but it’s defined as “The person’s division of national origin or other folk, house, kindred, lineage, or tribal interest. Examples: Irish, Swede, Egyptian Coptic, Sioux Dakota Rosebud, Apache Chiricawa, Navajo Bitter Water, Eastern Cherokee Taliwa Wolf, and so forth.”
I wonder if it is better to uninstall my Family Tree Maker and then install the new version if this would help me with my problems. I click on the green leaf, up comes a list of web sites. I click on the one I want. Click on the name Click on View Tree. Up comes the page with all the names and icons on it of male and females. This is where my problem starts. I used to be able to use my mouse to move around the page of to click on one person to get more information on them. I could also go to the bottom left of the page and then move around it to get to other locations on that page. Again my mouse is no longer able to do this. I have had this problem for several months now. I have called and talked to several people at Ancestry without any luck. One told me to uninstall the program and try again. I was also told it was because my tree was a large one. I made a smaller tree of six people and again the same problem. I did eventually get an emails telling me they also had the same problem and a solution was being worked on. No other word as I have called and written them about the solution. Any help or ideas would be appreciated. Thank You. Arthur
Arthur, is this the Mac or Windows version? In any case, it’s probably best to wait for the update and, as you said, uninstall the old version before installing the update. If you still have problems after that, you should submit a bug report to MacKiev (not Ancestry) using the link at the beginning of this post.
I use Windows 7 right now. Have Windows 10 on my lap top but not all that happy with it. Still like the old windows.
Keith,
I’m not a computer expert, nor totally dedicating my life to genealogy….But, I switched to FTM on the IMac when I was told it would sync to Ancestry. I’m one of the people who cancelled my membership in Ancestry when they announced the changes. My FTM 3 is Version 22.2.5.820, so I think it has updated itself. Should I go back to Ancestry and become a member again????? WHAT do you suggest? Thanks
Bob, you don’t have the latest version yet. The latest version is 22.2.6.867. Did you try “Check for Updates” from the main menu? MacKiev may not have pushed out the update yet. They had to work some things out with Ancestry to do that.
In any case, whether you sign up with Ancestry again depends on how much you think you would use it. Are you still finding historical records you can use? Do you value the convenience of searching and syncing from FTM, even if your local library has access to Ancestry (you can’t sync your tree there). Was Ancestry’s abandoning of FTM your main reason for quitting? Personally, I’m still finding records and don’t see myself quitting until Ancestry no longer offers new material. I haven’t even gone through all the wills and SSN applications yet.
The promised MacKiev updates for PC FamilyTreeMaker 2014 (Windows) and FamilyTreeMaker for Mac Version 3 would indeed be good news, if they actually existed! So far, despite the promising reviews of the test builds for a new update, the end product seems to be no more than ‘vapourware’ and a largely unsuccessful attempt by MacKiev to stem the tide of users giving up on the product. Do they not realise that failed promises of delivery and lack of effective communication only increases user distrust.
As at 20 April there has been no communication with existing users who have registered for e-mail notifications of the release of these updates, not even the courtesy of an explanation of the change to the ‘delivery schedule’ (see below) and FTM therefore seems to be continuing to lose users to all of its competitor products at an ever increasing rate. In short, MacKiev seems to be effectively continuing what Ancestry started: Death by neglect of both product and users!
– In February 2016, Software MacKiev’s own website said the updates were “coming soon”;
– By mid-March 2016, the website message had been amended to “coming later this month”;
– 20 April 2016, the site now states “There will be a free update available at some point soon.”
Does this look like an approach designed to fill anyone with confidence that the developer is really committed to the product and its users; and has a plan?
Personally, I will continue make use the existing software, for as long as it works, purely to draw down information and copies of source documents from the Ancestry databases. Would I put my trust in it as my main/only genealogy software program, even if the promised update is eventually delivered? Well, I never have and very much doubt I ever would!
I agree that Software MacKiev could do a better job of communicating what’s going on. Judging from answers to similar comments & questions on various Family Tree Maker message boards, apparently the FTM updates are still in beta testing.
Just FYI, the very first thing you see at the top of the Family Tree Maker support page is this FAQ:
“When is the update coming for 2014 and Mac 3 users?
The free updater has not been released yet. We still have fixes to make on it based on what those who have purchased it as upgrades have told us. So please be as patient as you can. And know that we’re working hard to make the new versions everything they should be for you. Everyone who has signed up for the Family Tree Maker mailing list will get an email the moment it’s available.”
You can find Family Tree Maker’s Support Center at http://www.mackiev.com/support. We are indeed thankfully at final beta stage for the updaters. If you have a particular issue that you think may be solved by our update, fill out a technical support request and we’d gladly share the latest build with you to see if it cures whatever you have going on. Otherwise, best to wait for the final release.
Really looking forward to the new updates and hopefully they will get rid of some of the bugs in Family Tree Maker I have had for a long time.
Arthur, you can report any bugs you have http://www.mackiev.com/familytreemaker/ftm3/ftm_feedback.html?type=bugreport&ext=yes.
I was wondering if you have any update as to whether or not to stay with FTM 3 with the new owner or move to the others?
I recommend you stick it out for now. MacKiev will release a free update to FTM 3 very soon that should fix some bugs and provide some performance improvement. After that, you can decide if you want to stay or try something else.
I am frustrated by the lack of the free update to FTM2014, which was promised at the beginning of March. It is now nearly 2 months on, and I have not recieved any communication from MacKiev, despite registering as requested. That is a broken promise, which does not bode well.
There has been no information about what will and will not be included in the promised update.
I asked about the update at WDYTYA Live 7-9 April. I was very unimpressed with the representative, who told me the delay was because they ‘had only recieved the code from Ancestry 3 weeks ago’ (i.e. mid March). If true, MacKiev promised updates to code they did not have. Making promises without having a reasonable expectation of being able to deliver leaves customers like me plain angry.
Sue, did you see my post, “Where Are the Free Family Tree Maker Updates“?
I’m surprised that a MacKiev rep would say that they didn’t get the code from Ancestry until mid March because MacKiev did in fact release an updated version of 2014 on 1st March. It’s been for sale on their website since then. They just weren’t able to release the update to existing users because they didn’t have access to the familytreemaker.com website, which is used to push out the updates. Perhaps that’s the code the rep referred to? Then even after they got access to familytreemaker.com, they decided to wait to push out the update.
In any case, my post linked above explains the reason for the further delay and also offers a work-around for users who are experiencing a troublesome issue that they think might be fixed by the update. If you’re not experiencing any issues, then honestly, the changes are minimal, things like icons, splash screens, additional artwork, and a GEDCOM 5.5.1 header (yay!).
I was a FTM 2014 user with a tree linked to Ancestry. I moved to a Mac and purchased/installed FTM 3.1 for the Mac and moved my files over. FTM is working but when I attempt to upload the tree back to Ancestry it creates the tree name only and no content and doesn’t allow me to delete the bogus tree or doing anything further with it. I’ve tried to enter a support request on Makdiev’s website for FTM but there is no box to enter the issue description. How do you enter a ticket without telling them the issue? I’m now stuck between operating systems and desperately trying to get this resolved.
Tim, First make sure you are at this page and click on the Mac Edition button. Then in the window that opens up, you must fill in all the items marked with a red star. Once you do that, the Problem Description box appears. See a screenshot here.
I suspect you’ll have to contact Ancestry.com to delete the empty tree. They might also have some insight into why the tree failed to upload properly.
I’ve been trying to hang in there with FTM3.1, however I have an Source Citation Corruption issue that I’ve reported several months ago that has not been resolved. Whenever adding new sources, I find that FTM will put a “no source citation” link to a random person in my database. Other sources and citations are also scrambled (linked to incorrect people in the database). Also printing a Source Usage Report is varying sizes and never includes all my sources. I’ve provided screen shots of the issues to a support person at MacKiev, but have not received any further feedback. This issue issue will push me to another software package since I can’t reliably source my data in FTM.
I HAVE FTM 2017 AND WOULD LOVE THE UPDATE BUT WHEN I TRY TO GET IT THEY ALWAYS WENT ME TO BUY THINGS I DONT NEED… I WOULD JUST LOVE THE UPDATE FOR WHAT I HAVE.
Rosemary, just click the “no thank you button” or something similar for all the other offers like hats, mugs, books, etc. You will eventually get to the end of the offers and be able to check out with just the upgrade.
does FTM cost anything, if not how do I get it.
Yes, it costs $79.95 unless you have a previous version, in which case the upgrade price is $59.95: https://www.mackiev.com/offers/ftm2017/upgrade_promo_us.html