Details about MacFamilyTree 10*
Application: MacFamilyTree
Current Version: 10
Supported OS: Mac
Mobile Apps: iPhone/iPad/iPod touch (MobileFamily Tree)
Price: $69.99 (limited demo available), $29.99 (MobileFamily Tree)
Publisher: Synium Software
Website: http://www.syniumsoftware.com
GenSoftReviews: 4.15 stars out of 5
Important update regarding MacFamilyTree 10: Reader Peter McGregor is a long-time MacFamilyTree user. He says, “I’ve recently bought the latest version of MacFamilyTree and am writing here mainly to alert your readers to the (wrong) way MFT appears to be going in its regard for GEDCOM compliance.
Versions tested: MFT 7.6.2 and MFT 8.0 (thanks to Synium Software for the redeem codes).
Portions of text in all capital letters that are not acronyms are GEDCOM tags, with the rest of the plain text field name in lowercase. References to the GEDCOM standard are to version 5.5.1.
Importing a GEDCOM file into MFT is straightforward, but MacFamilyTree has an article, “Switch from Family Tree Maker to MacFamilyTree and import your family tree,” on their website. However, see the Cons section for my take on the “Attention: Media file import” section.
PROS
+ Upon importing a GEDCOM, a “GEDCOM Import Warnings” log is produced listing not parseable tags and unreadable data entries. This is a good thing; a genealogy app should always produce a GEDCOM import log listing any data that could not be imported.
+ Found no unreadable data entries in my GEDCOM, which is also a good thing since there weren’t any.
+ Imported tag WAC for LDS Initiatory.
+ Imported Family Tree Maker’s invalid ALIA tag as an Other Name, which is then exported correctly back to GEDCOM. However, MFT8 does not import a valid ALIA tag correctly; it simply imports the pointer (cross-reference), e.g., “I008.” There doesn’t seem to be a proper ALIA field in MFT.
+ Exported GEDCOM file is labelled as version 5.5.1, which is the latest version.
+ For sources, lists all citations for each source and the events they’re linked to. It’s also possible to edit citations from this list.
+ For source citations, it is possible to copy and paste them, similar to the way one can in Family Tree Maker (FTM).
+ Allows associated persons to be included, but they are limited to godparents, birth witnesses, death witnesses, and marriage witnesses (but see below for problems with the latter).
+ All events can include an Address, Agency, and Cause as allowed by the GEDCOM standard. But see the Cons sections for problems with addresses.
CONS
GEDCOM Import
— While importing a GEDCOM, MFT prompted me to select the location of my media files (Fig 1). This was unnecessary because the full path was specified in the GEDCOM. It should only be necessary if the path is invalid or the media are missing from the specified path. Furthermore, it is entirely possible that media files could be in more than one folder, but MFT expects them all to be in the same folder, which is nonsense. In the article about switching from Family Tree Maker that I referenced above, Synium states, “Unfortunately the developers of Family Tree Maker made the very poor choice of not importing media files but just linking them. Just Family Tree Maker knows where these files are and there are just links to those media files.” This is rubbish on two counts:
- When a family tree is saved to GEDCOM, the only way for media to be exported is by including the links to them anyway—GEDCOM did away with embedded binary objects in version 5.5.1 (the latest standard).
- When a GEDCOM file is imported by another app, it should be able to read the media file links, regardless of the location of the files.
Furthermore, as reader Karen pointed out, “MacFamilyTree stores everything – data and media – in a single file package. In my case, it’s HUGE – over 4 GB. It seems as though any change to your data necessitates a re-write of the entire file to the cloud” if you use the option to store your tree in iCloud. It seems to me that it’s the developers of MFT who have made a poor choice of importing media files.
— Failed to parse valid GEDCOM 5.5.1 tags FACT, EMAIL, PHONe, and WWW, but at least they were listed in the import warnings log.
— Failed to parse valid EMAIL and PHONe tags in a repository record (also listed in the import warnings log).
— Failed to import the following tags, but there was no import warning: city, state, and postal code on an address; name prefix and name suffix. However, it exported the name suffix field correctly.
— Failed to import the required submitter record, nor does there seem to be the option to include one in an exported GEDCOM file.
— Imported an invalid event description. While laudable to preserve data, it would be better to import it into the corresponding event’s note field. It also exported the invalid event description to GEDCOM.
— Imported a Relationship Reference Number (tag REFN) as a relationship note rather than a fact, even though it’s allowed by the GEDCOM standard (p. 24). In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a place in MFT for a Relationship Reference Number.
— Labeled “Adult Christening” as “Adult Baptism,” which is not the same thing; the CHRA tag should be imported as “Adult Christening,” as defined in the GEDCOM standard (p. 85).
— Problems with importing source citations:
- Imported Source Citation Text into the Source Text field and, in doing so, combined the text from all source citations into one field, without any spaces between the entries (Fig 2). Source Citation Text and Source Text are two separate fields. MFT doesn’t even have a separate field for Source Citation Text, which is unacceptable. MFT8 at least has line breaks between the entries now, but there is still no separate field for Source Citation Text.
Fig 2 Citation Text Moved to Source
GEDCOM Export
— Offers two character sets as options that are not in the GEDCOM standard, OS X Roman and Windows. Selecting these options could cause problems for receiving systems or applications.
— Exported the following standard fields incorrectly:
- Ancestral File Number (as REFN instead of AFN), even though it imported the field correctly.
- Nobility title (exported to NPFX instead of TITL).
- Phone (exported the PHON tag directly under the individual record instead as part of an address, which in turn must be attached to an event, as required by the standard (pp. 31 & 32).
- LDS Child Sealing (missing required FAMC tag, even though it was in the original GEDCOM that I imported).
- Source Reference Number (used tag REFN instead of CALN).
- Middle Name (Second Given Name) used tag SECG instead of GIVN (thanks to reader Peter McGregor for pointing this out).
- DATE tags use invalid date format DD.MM.YYYY
- Death tag includes invalid descriptor (only Y or nothing is allowed).
— The following user-defined tags were missing the required initial underscore: COLO, DEED, EMAI, EYES, HAIR, HEIG, HOBB, HONO, MISS, NOBI, MISC, and WEIG (see the GEDCOM crosswalk for the definitions of these tags). Also, email has a standard tag, so a user-defined tag isn’t needed, as long as the correct structure is used (see above for phone).
— Exported Witness to Marriage incorrectly: MFT8 exports the marriage witness as an ASSO structure, which is correct, but it’s attached directly to the Family record, along with any date entered, which is wrong. It should be attached to the records of each Individual that got married without any date in the ASSO structure. The GEDCOM standard even explicitly states, “The association pointer only associates INDIvidual records to INDIvidual records” (p. 31). My advice is not to use MFT8’s marriage witness and store the information in a note attached to the marriage instead.
— Missing the mandatory SUBMitter tab in the header.
— Includes invalid CHANge Date tags under tags like BIRT, DEAT, OCCU, BURI, and MARR.
— Problems with exporting media:
- Failed to export citation media, even though they appeared to be imported correctly; the media were attached to the corresponding source record, however.
- Changed media file names from what they were when imported to the corresponding cross-reference number. For example, if the cross-reference number of “Mary Larko.jpg” was “OM2759,” then the file name was changed to “OM2759.jpg.” Some users might prefer that the files keep their descriptive names. Furthermore, MFT exported only the file name, not the “complete local or remote file reference to the auxiliary data to be linked to the GEDCOM context” as required by the GEDCOM standard (p. 54).
- Missing required FORM tag subordinate to the FILE tag (p. 26).
Other
- The demo is fully functional except for saving and printing. The inability to save is a serious limitation; you can’t close MFT as long as you are demoing it, and you can’t test the GEDCOM export function.
- The Address field on Events and Source Repositories
Fig 3 GEDCOM Address Structure is incomplete: it contains only one box for the first address line. Address is not a single field but really a structure consisting of up to 13 fields, per the GEDCOM standard (p. 31, see Fig 3). However, only the ADDR and CONT tags are mandatory, but they must be formatted as they would appear on a mailing label. It seems to me that the only way to implement this is to use separate fields for each line, rather than just one Address box.
- Fields can only be exited by tabbing or clicking out of them. I would like to be able to use the Enter key to have the data accepted and move to the next field, which is the behavior that FTM uses.
GEDCOM Crosswalk
I added the MFT fields to the GEDCOM Crosswalk at Family Tree Maker to GEDCOM to Other Apps Crosswalk. This table shows at a glance how the major genealogy apps name their fields within the app and how they are exported to GEDCOM. The color coding indicates areas of concern: fields in red are not imported and/or exported correctly, while fields in yellow use custom tags that may not be recognized by other apps or websites.
First Impressions
MFT has a nice-looking user interface that is easy to navigate. I could usually find what I needed without resorting to the help file, which was fairly complete. MFT is laid out with separate windows for people, families, media, places, sources, and web searches, similar to FTM, except that the buttons to select them are along the side instead of the top (Fig 4). However, users who are bringing an existing family tree to MFT via GEDCOM may be disappointed by MFT’s poor handling of GEDCOM, especially with respect to media and sources. MFT might be better for users who are starting a tree from scratch, but even then there are problems with exporting to GEDCOM. While this review focused on GEDCOM handling, MFT has many useful features, such as integration with FamilySearch, built-in web search for a variety of websites, and the ability to produce a variety of charts and reports.
GEDCOM 5.5.1 Test: MacFamilyTree passes the GEDCOM 5.5.1 Test. While it has some compliance issues, both with import and export, it exports GEDCOMs using UTF-8 encoding as the default and correctly labels the files as version 5.5.1.
Updates
21 Apr 2016: Synium just released MacFamilyTree 8, which they say is a major update; you can find the details on their website. Since they only sell it through the Mac App Store, there is no upgrade price.
29 Apr 2016: Added a statement about the GEDCOM 5.5.1 Test.
3 May 2016: Updated the review based on MFT 8. While some problems were fixed, most GEDCOM problems still exist.
17 May 2018: Made extensive updates and added information about how Marriage Witness is exported to GEDCOM. Thanks to reader Andrew Martin for pointing out where to add a marriage witness in MFT8.
18 Oct 2019: Added several problems with GEDCOM export.
4 Apr 2022: Added information from reader Peter McGregor about MFT 10.
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
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
I am sticking with FTM. I bought a new laptop solely for my genealogy. Now my problem is how do I move my FTM info to my laptop from my desktop computer. GEDCOM???
Cecil, you do NOT want to use GEDCOM. Basically, you back up your tree on your old computer and then restore it on the new computer. If your tree is linked to Ancestry, make sure you sync it first. This article describes the steps in detail: http://help.ancestry.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5527/~/moving-my-linked-tree-from-one-computer-to-another
Keith,
Thank you very much for your invaluable series of articles.
I recently migrated to MFT. After using it for 3 months, I sent Synium 1,200 words of feedback and asked them for their thoughts on the points raised.
To sum up: I said that I preferred MFT’s uncluttered look, feel and functionality to those of Reunion (“precise”, card-like, not very intuitive and lacking some basics like attaching media to places) and FTMM3 (middle-ground in layout, full-featured but terribly cluttered like my car which has 5 ways to measure full consumption but needs a reversing camera to see out the back). Both FTMM3 and Reunion had a “tacked-on” feel while MFT felt “all-of-a-piece”.
However, I said, MFT lacked some essentials like proper source and media management and some basic “bare-bones” reports I found very useful in exchanging data with other researchers. Also, using “BEF” 07 Mar 1712 doesn’t list it before 07 Mar 1712 – you need to use BEF 06 Mar 1712.
In conclusion I said that I would not yet recommend MFT to beginners because of the missing basic reports, or to experienced users because of the inadequate media and source management and “immaturity” suggested by the last point above. But that I do recommend it to people like myself: relative newcomers with access to FTM for the missing reports, hoping that MFT will mature along with my tree but without developing the cluttered feel of the other programs. However I would keep an eye on how MacKiev develops FTM.
I also mentioned that you had raised some technical concerns in your article.
This is their reply:
“First of all, thank you very much for your detailed feedback. Very much appreciated.
“You must have spend some time in checking and comparing which is impressive. Moste things you have stated, I will agree and we are about to change things.
“Therefore such feedback is important for us as we want to carefully decide which changes or Features can be done nicely and will fit to our imagination of MacFamilyTree.
“We are about to release a new major version – MacFamilyTree 8 and the working progress for release has just ended.
“Some of the behaviour you have mentioned such as the “BEF AFT.. thing” is known and we will definitely change that in the near future.
We are looking forward to improve our source citation and media management and we will also have look on how we can improve our charts and reports for the future.
“Unfortunately we can not satisfy every customer since every person is unique and has his own little preferences.
“E.g. the virtual globe indeed is very popular by most of our customers.” [Perhaps a misunderstanding here. I love the Virtual Globe; it is the 3-D Tree I don’t find overly useful. Peter]
“We will keep up the work to get the most lovely experience of MacFamilyTree for our old and new customers.
“Thanks again.”
I look forward to seeing what is changed in Version 8.
Cheers, Peter
Peter, excellent points about the design, especially in comparison to Reunion & FTM. Thanks for telling Synium about my review and letting us know what their response was. I’ll have another look at MFT after version 8 is released and I’ve finished reviewing the last two apps on my list.
I do have a question about “attaching media to places”; what apps have you tested that allow this? I haven’t noticed any that do, although I wasn’t specifically looking for it. While it’s a nice idea, media can’t be attached to place structures in a GEDCOM, so if an app implemented this feature, the developers would have to make sure they didn’t attach the media to the places in an exported GEDCOM. But GEDCOM isn’t everything, and apps certainly shouldn’t limit themselves to what’s permitted in the standard.
I don’t understand the technical aspects, Keith, but in MFT if you go to any Place page and hover over the Media section it gives the option of Slideshow or Add Media. Clicking on the Add Media button opens up a box giving 10 ways for attaching media plus one for assigning media already attached. I find it particularly useful for attaching old maps of now-defunct Scottish farms, supplementing the built-in modern day maps.
Cheers, Peter
I like it! I usually attach place media to the corresponding people, since I haven’t seen any other apps that allow attaching media to places, but it certainly makes more sense to attach them to the places themselves. I tested how MFT exports them to GEDCOM, and it doesn’t export them at all, so be aware of that.
TNG – The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding supports attaching Media to a place in GEDCOM.
And I believe that Legacy and RootsMagic also do, and that TNG can import these items.
Here is the structure of a TNG GEDCOM export…
0 _PLAC Dovecote Hall, Cockburnspath, Berwickshire, Scotland
1 MAP
2 LATI 55.9294425
2 LONG -2.3726177
2 ZOOM
2 PLEV
1 NOTE Dovecote Hall is shown at 2° 22′ 40″ W 55° 55′ 47″ N on Ordnance Survey Map Sheet 33
1 OBJE @M64@
and then later in the GEDCOM file
0 @M64@ OBJE
1 FORM JPG
1 FILE ~/Documents/Documents/Genealogy/Roger/ReunionPictures/photos/places/Dovecothall.jpg
1 TITL Dovecothall – the house at Cockburnspath
1 _TYPE PHOTO
1 NOTE Dovecothall is the house that Robert Houliston his wife Alice Wright, and their children lived in before leaving for New Zealand in 1860. Their eldest daughter Ellen Shiels Houliston married William Moffat in this house.
2 CONT Helen Houliston was born here in August 1859.
Seems legit to me. I’ve been nagging Leister Productions for years about adding this to Reunion, but so far to no avail 🙁
Roger
Roger, what GEDCOM version does TNG use, 5.5 or 5.5.1? The structure is legit, but only because _PLAC is a custom tag (not the standard PLAC tag). The question is, will other apps import this structure?
Leister Pro needs to fix their GEDCOM import and export; of all the apps I’ve tested, Reunion does about the worst job (along with Heredis). They’re very unwilling to accept feedback, from what I’ve seen. I do not recommend those apps, at least if you want to get your data out intact.
TNG named it as GEDCOM 5.5, but it uses UTF-8 – the encoding I’ve chosen to run TNG as. TNG supports UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1 encoding.
RootsMagic 7 was able to import that to get the media item linked to the place record, although it didn’t get the path exactly correct, so the Media item can’t be found and displayed…
The path in the GEDCOM file that I specified was
File: ~/Documents/Documents/Genealogy/Roger/ReunionPictures/photos/places/Dovecothall.jpg
but RootsMagic imported that as
File: \~/Documents/Documents/Genealogy/Roger/ReunionPictures/photos/places/Dovecothall.jpg
and the leading backslash breaks this on my Macintosh.
Roger
TNG should label its GEDCOMs with version 5.5.1, at least those that use UTF-8 (and why wouldn’t you)? Since it also uses multimedia records with cross-references, the GEDCOMs must be v5.5.1.
RootsMagic file paths are a known problem that I identified in my review at https://genealogytools.com/replacing-family-tree-maker-part-3-importing-your-ftm-tree-into-rootsmagic-7/. I also described a fix, although if you have the premium version, you can use the find missing media tool.
> Leister Pro needs to fix their GEDCOM import and export; of all the apps I’ve tested, Reunion does about the worst job (along with Heredis). They’re very unwilling to accept feedback, from what I’ve seen. I do not recommend those apps, at least if you want to get your data out intact.<
But I am able to get almost ALL my data from Reunion to TNG using Custom GEDCOM tags that Reunion lets me define and that TNG lets me recognise. The only thing that is in the GEDCOM file that TNG doesn't handle are the Child Statuses. Everything else – all my custom notes, events and facts gets imported in to TNG.
Roger
I’m glad TNG can recognize Reunion’s GEDCOMs, to include custom tags; that’s very unusual. It sounds like TNG is very customizable, while most apps are not. Reunion’s custom tags are dangerous, since they allow users to create any tags they want without including the mandatory initial underscore.
I’ve always wanted to try TNG; you’ve motivated me to do it once I’m done testing apps!
My Dell PC died a few months ago and I am making the transition to a Mac Mini. I have found excellent Mac alternatives for nearly everything, the exceptions being Quicken (personal finance – the Mac version is not fully featured) and Legacy (genealogy). These products are important enough to me that I have installed Windows on my Mac computer (via Parallels).
MacFamilyTree announced their new version last week and I was intrigued enough to actually buy it. It has a lovely interface – perhaps the best I’ve ever seen. I also bought the iPad app so I could test the entire ecosystem. Both the desktop version and the iPad app can sync to iCloud, which sounds like a very elegant solution.
Sadly, its flaws are serious enough that I will stay with Legacy.
MacFamilyTree stores everything – data and media – in a single file package. In my case, it’s HUGE – over 4 GB. It seems as though any change to your data necessitates a re-write of the entire file to the cloud. Maybe I’m mistaken but that’s how it seemed to me. My iPad app and desktop version somehow lost their sync and the 4 GB file had to be re-uploaded again for that reason as well. I really prefer having the genealogy data (i.e., GEDCOM data) separate from the media, and I really prefer organizing my media into a subfolder system.
Another problem I noted was that data entry in MacFamilyTree would be horribly inefficient. I really like the “clipboard” feature in Legacy that allows you to copy an entire event or source citation and apply it to multiple individuals. (Note that I’m not talking about “shared events”, which are not GEDCOM compliant. I’m talking about the ability to copy an entire event, like a census entry, to every individual who appears in that census entry without having to retype everything.)
I am worried about the long-term future of Legacy. I love their product. But their website looks very dated. I understand that their software is built on the Microsoft Jet Database Engine which is I hear is deprecated. I just wonder if and when they will transition to a modern structure.
Seems like the whole genealogy software business is in transition right now.
p.s. I am also a TNG user. I use TNG to display my genealogy data publicly, but I still use Legacy Desktop as my primary genealogy tool.
Family Tree Maker also allows you to copy and past events and source citations. I have high hopes for FTM now that Software MacKiev has bought it and are actively improving it.
Legacy still seems to be actively developed, and they certainly put a lot of effort into their webinars. I agree with your concerns, though. Not only does Legacy use a legacy database, it also doesn’t fully support Unicode, per Tamura Jones. That’s a serious shortcoming.
BTW, you can run Legacy and many other Windows apps like Ancestral Quest, RootsMagic, Family Historian, and Brother’s Keeper on your Mac using Crossover or free implementations of WINE like Play on Mac or Wine Bottler. I find this more convenient and less resource-intensive than Parallels, VMWare, VirtualBox, and suchlike. AQ and RM have even put out special versions for Mac users that have Crossover bundled with them so you don’t have to buy a Crossover license and fiddle with the installation. You might want to check out my reviews of those apps. Of all the Windows apps, I probably like Legacy the best, because it’s the most like FTM and exports 5.5.1 GEDCOMs. RM also exports 5.5.1 but dumps your sources into free-form text instead of separate author, title, and publication fields.
On the Mac, your ‘package’ file is not one monolithic 4GB file, it’s a folder containing 4GB of contents. If one part of that 4GB changes then only that part needs to be backed up or uploaded to their CloudTree (which is very quick as you’d see if you try it!).
For interest, locate the file in the Finder, right-click and choose “Show package contents” and then you can see all the folders and sub folders. The Mac does this to hide the complexity from the user and treats such items as a single document even though in reality they are not. This is something many apps on the Mac do.
I’m also interested in MacFamilyTree – I’m currently running FTM2012 on my mac using parallels – for the same reasons as Karen, above. But I’d really like a native Mac package then I can just use parallels for my accounts package.
I’ve never moved to FTM3 – I understood it was not as good as FTM – though I get the impression from this site that it is almost as good. The current Mackiev offer allows me to crossgrade to the Mac version – which was impossible before afaik.
Media management is important to me – I’m a photographer, so as well as having lots of current family to manage, I also have a large collection of old family photos from various branches of the family. I certainly don’t want to keep those in a single package within my library folder in MacFamilyTree. I’d prefer to reference them, and then manage the media separately from the genealogy data. Is this what FTM3 does?
I have found that you can link to data in MacFamilyTree, thus abstracting things – but you don’t get a nice thumbnail of the item referenced. Thus you could manage your pdf’s/jpeg in Devonthink or Evernote and still have them in MacFamilyTree (with the advantage that your pdf’s become searchable in DT or evernote)
But I do like the look and feel of MacFamilyTree. So am I stuck in that conundrum that many users are, using two similar programs and syncing the data between them??
If media handling is an important criterion for you, then I think you’d like FTM3 better. It can import just about any major media type (document, HTML, image, audio, video) and leave the file in its existing location. You can then see thumbnails, add captions, dates, and descriptions, and put them into categories. Most media can be viewed directly in the app or opened in an external viewer/editor. PDFs are one file type that must be opened externally.
I’ve used both FTM3 and 2014, and the Mac version has almost all the same features as the Windows version. It’s very stable and runs well on newer Macs. After reviewing about 14 apps, FTM3 is still my main app.
I haven’t fully tested MFT8 yet, but it would seem it still has serious problems handling GEDCOM, judging from its import error log. GEDCOM is how you’ll move your tree from FTM2012, and I think you’d be disappointed, especially with how it imports and exports media. The fact that it stores all files in one package is only one problem. MFT has a pretty Mac interface, but it may not be fully up to the task yet. I’ll know more when I complete my testing of MFT8, which I’ll post to the review above.
Thanks for the quick and comprehensive reply. I’ll try FTM3 then..
I see there is no demo version available though… 🙁
The lack of a demo is a definite shortcoming, which MacKiev president Jack Minsky has said they’ll probably remedy in a future release. For now, at least the upgrade is only $29.95. FTM3 doesn’t have the eye-candy of MFT8, but I honestly think it’s a better app.
I recently upgraded to MFT8. I have to say, I absolutely despise the new user interface. Big, bloated, messy, lots of gigantic icons that get in the way of me actually DOING stuff with the software, and it feels like it was modeled after a Windows version of Family Tree Maker I used way back in 2002.
I’ll be sticking with MFT7 or migrating to something else. Version 8 is truly awful.
Synium Software says “Version 8 is the largest update in MacFamilyTree’s 18 year long product history and comes with a completely new interface…” I wonder if they tested the new interface with focus groups before releasing it? While MFT8 did fix a few problems, finding things was a bit of a chore, since I had gotten used to MFT7.
I totally agree with Bill. I am still using MFT7 as I found that 8 was almost entirely a cosmetic upgrade with only a few actual improvements, but many disadvantages. I have a tree with over 70,000 people, which MFT handles well, but the tiny tree window in Person mode no longer correctly displayed the photos or icons that are essential for my research
I did given them a great deal of – hopefully constructive – feedback. They did promise to take on board the points I raised and improve the program based on my comments, but we are now on MFT8.2.3 and the program is still like a priceless piece of art – flashy to look at, but not something you would actually want to work with on a day to day basis.
So, I am still using MFT7.
I’ve been an FTM user since version 2 (Windows), and I stayed with it because of the sync to Ancestry and their apps. But I have had disaster after disaster with syncing errors and then trying to resync/download/merge and losing/truncating data. I can’t stay with FTM. I have RootsMagic that I have used through the years for peripheral gedcom sourcing. I need to get out of FTM, but I can’t decide on what to switch to. I will be staying with Ancestry for their online resources and app.
bottom line – what do you recommend?
Diana, have you switched to the Mac platform? If so, then the bottom line is that I recommend sticking with FTM. You will lose data if you switch to a different app due to all apps’ problems handling GEDCOM—with the exception of RootsMagic. Since RM7 can read FTM files directly, you will at least not lose any information, but you will lose data, because RM7 imports source records into free-form text. Thus, the separate fields for Author, Title, and Publication Facts will all be combined into one field. Personally, I don’t want to do that. But if that doesn’t bother you, then RM7 might be a good option. If it does bother you, then why not stop syncing your FTM tree with Ancestry and just stick with using FTM on your desktop? You can still take advantage of everything Ancestry has to offer, like shaky leaves, viewing and merging records, etc.
Thanks for the reply. Unless Mackiev gets their act together fast I’m going to have to switch. I have untold damage to my trees I’m still cleaning up and probably will be for the next few years. It took me over a month to get any kind of response back from them. That doesn’t bode well for the future. And I have a major research trip coming up this fall that I have to have everything happy and synced for.
Is there a way to keep ancestry current using RM – and vise versa – keep RM current to Ancestry?
I’m still on Windows. I do have RM7, and I don’t think I’ll care about the separate fields, as long as it doesn’t eat all the transcriptions I’ve added to all my citations (census, wills, etc.).
Keeping my ancestry trees up to date is VERY important.
I use the ancestry app extensively to find and add sources (especially censuses) and photos from other people’s trees (a goldmine), I use the DNA match feature, and to have my trees on the road with me. After I find a bunch of new hints on the app I then sync to FTM and go there to clean them up. Then I resync so that Ancestry is current.
I also share my ancestry trees with my family and am collaborating with several cousins I found via ancestry on our common lineage. In fact I have found numerous cousins through Ancestry.
“Allows associated persons to be included, but they are limited to godparents, birth witnesses, and death witnesses (but not marriage witnesses).”
This is incorrect. In MFT marriage witnesses can be added as associated persons, however not to a person, but to a family. This makes sense to me. If you open a family view, you’ll find a place to do it.
Hey Keith, it’s been a while since you wrote this article, so maybe they came along in a later incremental update, but the current up-to-date version of MFT8 does allow you to add marriage witnesses. It took me a while to find them, but if you go to the ‘Families’ tag, search for the couple who married, you can then scroll down and add the witnesses in as ‘Associated Persons’ there. I really wish it was possible to add them on their person details screen (where you add godparents and death witnesses etc), rather than on the family screen of the couple who married, but at least it’s there. Having migrated from Reunion to MFT, i’m now moving my custom events to this MFT format. Bizarrely, you also have to add in the date for the marriage witness, which given that you have to enter it on the ‘family’ screen that details the marriage, surely it should inherit the date automatically 😀
Andrew, Thanks for that. I had another look to see how MFT8 exports the marriage witness, and it’s done incorrectly. It’s exported as an ASSO structure, which is correct, but it’s attached directly to the Family record, along with the date, which is wrong. It should be attached to the records of each Individual that got married without any date. The GEDCOM standard even explicitly states, “The association pointer only associates INDIvidual records to INDIvidual records.”
My advice is not to use MFT8’s marriage witness and store the information in a note attached to the marriage instead.
Hi,
Thank you for the excellent summary.
I use MFT8 (Version 8.5.3 ) and would like to highlight a new feature that I find very useful. You can now export single branches of your family tree, split a giant tree into two smaller ones or remove a branch. Very useful if you want to share specific parts of the tree with other researchers. See documentation: http://download.syniumsoftware.com/Manuals/MacFamilyTree_8.5_EN.pdf
Charles, thanks for that information. Family Tree Maker has had that feature for quite a long time, so I guess it’s about time MFT 8 did!
Keith, once again, my thanks for your invaluable site.
I just want to add to my comment of April 2019 that I now use MacFamilyTree 9 (Version 9.0.7) and the associated mobile versions (for iPad & iPhone) MobileFamilyTree 9
Lots of little teaks and improvements …. but the big deal (for me) is that one can now share databases of any size (the limit of 5000 entries no longer applies) with friends & family.
If you have time to update your review, you’ll find a short summary here:
https://www.syniumsoftware.com/macfamilytree/whatsnew
They do mention “Improved GEDCOM import & export” but I’m not quite sure what that means.
If you need info, I suggest you contact them; I have found their customer service to be very responsive.
Once again, thanks for your very useful site.
Oooops …. Sorry ….. Don’t know if I should have addressed my comments to Keith or to Ben Sayer. Thanks to both of you anyway.
Charles, I wrote the article but Ben owns the website. I will contact Synium to see if they’ll provide me with another copy to test. I would like to see if they have really improved their GEDCOM import & export.
Keith, I’ve recently bought the latest version of MacFamilyTree and am writing here mainly to alert your readers to the (wrong) way MFT appears to be going in its regard for GEDCOM compliance.
For a long time I’ve liked some aspects of MFT, and I do like some of the things they’ve added to the new version. I run it alongside Family Tree Maker and a primitive but elegant little app called Branches. Despite its faults, I’ll probably keep running MFT, because I’m aware of the faults and I can work around them.
But… this is getting close to the last straw.
With the new version (10), I think MFT’s disdainful (mis)use of GEDCOM has become reprehensible, because many users who might move from it, for whatever reason, will likely blame the other apps for MFT’s faults. “Everything worked in MacFamilyTree”, they might say, “But now I’ve lost so much of my data in this other stupid program!” If you always use MFT and only use MFT, it all works wonderfully well. But if you ever move your tree(s) elsewhere without compensating for MFT’s GEDCOM shortcomings, you’ll lose quite a large amount of data.
Below I’ve set out the sins I can think of; there may be others. They already had plenty of illegal tags in older versions; the ones I’ve previously noticed I’ve set out in the first few sections below. Now, in Version 10 they’ve introduced a substantial sources templates system—on face value a good thing—but most of the fields in these new templates use illegal tags (58 of them!), making the new system completely useless for anyone interested in protecting their data. I’ve detailed these in the last section below.
[I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible in this but my own grasp of GEDCOM is not wonderful, so I hope I’m conveying the right messages.]
ILLEGAL GEDCOM TAGS USED BY MACFAMILYTREE
Given Names: MFT uses a separate box for entering second and subsequent given names. Under the GEDCOM standard all given names use the tag GIVN. But MFT uses a different tag in this separate box: SECG. Other apps don’t import SECG. So, please ignore that box if you want your people to keep all their given names. Just put them in the first box.
Other Fields
Some of MFT’s illegal tags were once used legally under past GEDCOM standards, but they are now defunct and most likely won’t be recognised by any apps that follow the current standard. There are also instances where MFT compounds the crime by giving new meanings to defunct tags. One example is MISC, used way back in GEDCOM 3 and 4 to mean Miscellaneous; MFT uses it to mean Miscarriage.
Custom tags and user defined tags are permitted by the GEDCOM standard, but these must be preceded by an underscore; e.g., _COLO. I tested a sample of the tags below and found none that included an underscore, making them illegal and thus very unlikely to be imported by other apps.
Person Fact Types: People using MFT should disable all of these:
Blood Type BLTY
Clan CLAN
Color COLO
Eye Color EYES
Hair Color HAIR
Height HEIG
Hobby HOBB
Honors HONO
Ethnic Origin RACE
Skin Color COLO
Tribe TRIB
Weight WEIG
Person Event Types: Likewise, disable or don’t use these:
Apprenticeship APPR
Circumcision CIRC
Document/Deed DEED
Excommunication EXCO
Funeral FUNE
Illness ILL
Land Transaction LATR
Military Award MIAW
Military Discharge MIDE
Military Induction MIIN
Military Service MISE
Miscarriage MISC
Mission MISS
Nationality NATY
Nobility Title NOBI
*Other Event EVEN
*EVEN is in fact a proper GEDCOM tag, and MFT exports it correctly with the description against the level 1 tag EVEN. But Family Tree Maker (and perhaps others) won’t import it because they expect it to be in the form 1 EVEN 2 TYPE, with the description against the level 2 tag.
Because I’m always passing GEDCOMs back and forth between MFT and FTM, I needed a work around. One way is to do this:
Other Event (EVEN): Description: [Ignore] Time: ;Cause: Address: Authority: [Put your description into any of the other boxes, which are all level 2 and will be imported by FTM.]
But because I can’t trust myself to always remember to not use the “Description” box, I prefer a second alternative: Disable the Other Event (EVEN) tag and use “Occupation” (OCCU) for all “Other events”. While not ideal, if you think of the broader meaner of “occupation”—to include “avocation” and not just “vocation”—it sort of works.
Source Templates: Here are the 58 illegal tags used in their new templates. I ignore them and continue to use a generic template which employs GEDCOM compliant fields. Please, to reduce data loss, disable these fields:
Author Address AUTA
Author Credentials AUTC
Book/Periodical Name PERI
Cemetery CEME
Census Year CENY
Church CHUR
Collection COLL
Compiler CPLR
Congress CONG
Contact Person CNTC
County COUN
Court COUR
Date Viewed DATV
Detail DETA
Edition EDTN
File Number FILN
Film Number FILM
Film Type FITY
Folder Label FOLA
Format FOAT
Informant INFT
Informant Address INFA (Another particularly bad one, once used as a tag for Infant)
Informant Name INFN
Informant Relationship INFR
Interviewee INTE
Issue ISSU
Location LOCA
Microfilm Roll Number ROLN
Military Division MILD
Number of Rolls NURO
Order Number ORNU
Organization ORGA
Other Authors OAUT
Other Subjects OSUB
Owner OWNR
Owner Address OWNA
Owner Location OWNL
Presenter PRES
Publisher PUB
Recipient RECP
Record Group RECG
Recorder RECO
Reference Type REFT
Register REGI
Schedule SCHE
School SCHO
Serial Number SENU
Series SERS
Series Title SETI
Session SESS
State or Country STCT
State/Territory TERR
Subject SUBJ
Township/Civil District TOWN
Tribe TRIB
Vessel VESS
Volume Number VOL
Volumes VOLU
I hope the above is of some help to other users of MFT. And thanks again, Keith, for your wonderful series of articles. They certainly helped me.
Peter
Excellent analysis, Peter! I had some of these illegal tags in my GEDCOM crosswalk, but it seems they have proliferated in MFT 10. As you said, they’re a problem for users who export their trees to GEDCOM for whatever reason, and many people wouldn’t even realize that the problem originates with MFT. I contacted Synium Software in 2016 about MFT’s handling of GEDCOM, and they claimed that MFT 8 would correct the problems, but it did not. Now it appears that the problems are even worse in MFT 10!
Thanks for the remarks about MFT 10. It’s a beautiful program and has lots of nice qualities, especially the integration with FamilySearch. I wondered about data loss using the new MFT 10 templates. Suspicions confirmed. For all family tree software, I’ve resigned myself to using only the “generic” source template, as it seems to be the only one that transfers data without loss between programs. I have been using GEDitCOM II (a Mac only program) for a year, and love it because of its simplicity and functionality. I like that the underlying GEDCOM can be edited directly, if need be. It’s not as pretty as MFT 10 but works really well and has loads of under-the-hood power. Also, thanks for the tip about the Branches program.
I reviewed GEDitCOM II here.
I believe it is worth pointing out that the FamilySearch sync feature of MFT has serious problems.
The biggest problem is that, unlike true synchronization, all it does is compare the current local data and FS data, without regard to the change histories. The result is that any difference it finds between the local data and the FS data is interpreted as an addition, even if the difference was caused by a deletion. MFT will not offer to replicate a deletion on the other side, it will instead offer to add back the data that was deleted!
For example, if two person records on FS are merged, MFT sync will not offer to perform a similar merge on your local data. Instead, it will offer to upload the extra (now obsolete) person in your local data to FS, thus effectively undoing the merge on FS. Naive users will not know that they should never upload anything that they have not changed locally. As a result, MFT has gotten some bad press for “automatically” reverting changes made on FS.
More experienced users will recognize a deletion on FS and try to replicate the deletion locally, but it can be tricky, even impossible, to determine exactly what to do. Remove a person from a family? Which family? Delete a person? Sometimes there is not enough information to determine the right thing to do, and the only option is to delete more items until a new sync produces a good result.
There are other problems. Sometimes performing a download fails to result in consistent data. A download should change the arrows to equal signs, but sometimes the arrows remain, with no explanation. I suspect the problem here is that some information is not copied by the download, but it is still compared to determine the download/upload options. As not all data is displayed in the sync panel, it is easy to make a bad decision when uploading to FS or using MFT to delete data on FS. For example, there could be two marriage events on FS that appear identical in MFT, so you would like to delete one. However, the FS marriage events may contain additional data, such as notes or reasons, that are not displayed. That data could be lost if you delete the wrong event. In some cases, unseen data from the two events should be combined. The only way to know is to open the record in FS and do the deletion or merge there.
Sometimes the download arrow does nothing, with no explanation of the underlying problem. Again, the solution appears to be deleting local data, but with no guidance of what to delete.
I use MFT despite these problems, but it requires extra care and extra work. More importantly, I use MFT only as a local cache for data on FS that I am interested in. I never enter any data directly into in MFT, so the concerns about data loss related to GEDCOM do not affect me.
Alan, that sounds like a major problem with MFT’s FamilySearch sync! Have you notified either Synium Software for MFT or FamilySearch? FamilySearch has enough problems of their own without third-party software adding to them. The fact that you use MFT only to store a local copy of FS Family Tree profiles and not for data entry speaks volumes. I’m sure many users aren’t as careful as you, or even aware of this terrible sync problem.
I’ve been using MacFamily Tree since version 7 and was generally happy. In different to the discussion above I’m not so concerned with GEDCOM compatibility as I essentially work entirely within my personal setup only – though I do admit that simply knowing about those issues bugs me. Nonetheless, overall I was always rather happy with the app – until version 9.
Strangely, since version 9 the backend programming was changed to avoid recursions. Those might happen if the same persons occur several times in your ancestry, e.g. if two distant cousins got married and therefore their respective ancestors would be partially identical. In that case, MacFamily Tree will only show such recurring branches once in any of its diagrams. In all other instances those branches would be omitted entirely. In the case of a fan chart this means huge gaps in the diagram for family branches that are already resolved.
As I’m using MacFamily Tree also to do some more comprehensive genealogical research (e.g. producing local heritage overviews for entire villages) this issue has become a real nuisance. It is impossible to generate a valid visual report of the various families and their branches.
I was in touch with Synium about it. It took a while but they eventually explained to me what the problem was (i.e. recursions). They couldn’t explain though why recursions weren’t an issue until version 8, and then became such a problem since version 9. The issue remains also in version 10 and they have no plans to resolve it anywhere in the near future.
Based on this experience, I believe MacFamily Tree is fine for standard straight forward family trees without any more winding relations. But when it gets complicated, you won’t be able to get a valid diagram from the programme.
Despite its other undisputed benefits, I am now looking for other options.
Peter, thanks for letting us know about the recursions problem with double cousins. It’s a shame that Synium refuses to correct the problem, but that seems rather typical of them.
Hi, I have a some questions about MFT10. First time user wanting to choose the correct software.
I am wondering how many events, stories and media can be used for a single person before it gets buggy/slow/problems occur?
Would MFT10 handle logging hundreds of events and corresponding screenshots/media to a single person?
What if I had 50 single people with that same ammout of entry data in one tree?