Table of Contents
What to Know Before You Buy—A Reunion 10 Review
Leister Productions, has created two helpful videos to give you an overview of what’s new and changed in Reunion 10. Review those first, so you can see what it looks like then come back here to get the details and some more detailed videos. Here are the links to their overview videos:
I publish step-by-step, how-to videos on this site. Sign up for my email list so I can drop you a note when I publish new articles and videos. There’s a sign-up form in the sidebar to the right. See it? Good. Please sign up now so you don’t forget.
What Reunion 10 Will Do That 9 Won’t
- Merge people by dragging and dropping
- Search web repositories for information about people in your family file
- Publish a pedigree chart for the web
- Create a chronological list of selected events for marked or all people in your family file
- Display multimedia usage and whether or not the file is missing
- Create a narrative obituary from events and facts
- Filter on privacy flags in descendant charts and reports, pedigree charts, and relative charts
- Document civil unions and domestic partnerships
- Automatically maintain links to multimedia files when they are moved or renamed (Reunion stores links to items, not the items themselves in the family file. It does store thumbnails of pictures in its database to speed operations)
- Show more non-blood relationship types
- Display people’s ages in different ways on the ages report
- Export birthdays, anniversaries, and other events to iCal
- Revisit a recently viewed couple by selecting them from a list of recently viewed families
- Fit column sizes to contents in one or all columns in a list automatically
- Set an unlimited number of bookmarks
- Geo code and map places
- Share a family view (previously known as a family card) by email, copy and paste, or printing
- Share your family file with thumbnail images without copying your multimedia files
- Import and Export sources without people
- Share a subset of your family file and associated images
- Exclude places (like iPhoto) from multimedia searches
- Exchange contact information with Apple’s Address Book app
- Find all events that happened in a particular year, month, or day
- Find text in multimedia comments field
- Find half siblings, full siblings, or all siblings
- Link to Microsoft Word 2011 documents as multimedia files
- Simplify sharing and splitting a tree by marking every person linked to a person
- List the members of a family on a specified date
- Mark maternal or paternal ancestors, parents of spouses, siblings of ancestors, and non-blood relatives
- Store bigger event memos (up to 2,500 characters)
- Get a list of couples in the family file
Why Not Stay with Version 9?
While it’s not going to win any design awards, the look and feel update is reason enough for me. I find navigating my family file much easier with the tree view! And the sidebar makes common tasks like citing an existing source easier.
Will It Mess up My Family Files?
Loading an older family file in Reunion 10 will not mess up your version 9 family files. A new copy is automatically created when you load the file and you are given the opportunity to save it with a different name. That said, it’s still a good idea to back up your family files.
If you’ve created perspective events you’ll be glad to know they’ll not be affected by the upgrade either. Reunion 10 uses the existing Application Support folder where they are stored.
Can I Keep Reunion 9 on My Mac?
You can keep older versions on your Mac because Reunion 10 is installed as a new application leaving your existing applications untouched.
5 Things Reunion 10 Won’t Do for You
- Create these reports: DNA, documented facts, LDS ordinance, marriage, notes, parentage, photo album, source bibliography, task, and who was there
- Create these charts: bowtie, DNA, and extended family
- Search New Family Search (nFS)
- Syncronize with an Ancestry member tree (AMT)
- Publish to iDisk and MobileMe
How Much Does It Cost?
A new copy is $99 USD and an upgrade from any previous version is $49.95 USD.
Are There Any Discount Codes or Coupons?
Leister Productions doesn’t normally offer discounts for a new license. There isn’t even a spot for discount coupon codes in their checkout pages.
The upgrade is %50 off for owners of any previous version.
It’s available on Amazon.com too. If you buy it through my Amazon.com link, by clicking here
To Buy or Not to Buy
I don’t recommend Reunion for family history research because it limits the citation data that can be recorded, imported, and exported. It has no ability to link multimedia to a citation and has no facility to store citation specific source quality ratings. To make matters worse, when importing citations in GEDCOM files it ignores these two record types without warning leading to data loss.
See the Comparison of Mac Genealogy Software Feature Comparison and PC Genealogy Software Feature Comparison for other options.
What to Know If You Buy
How to Get the Most Out of Reunion 10
Sign up for my email list so I can notify you when I publish new articles and videos about Reunion. Do it now so you don’t forget. Neither of us wants that!
I’ve already created some videos I think will help you make the transition. You’ll find them in the sections below. And they’re indexed for your convenience, in the Reunion 10 for Mac Tutorials page.
How to Upgrade without Messing up Your Family Files
Reunion 10 installs just like other Mac software. Follow the directions that come with the package.
Back up your family files before you open them with the new version. See How to Backup a Reunion 9 Family file or one of these videos from the article.
Backing Up a Family File with Reunion 9
Backing up a Family File with the Finder
Reunion will convert the file and ask you what to name it.
Give your converted family file a new name. Installing the new version wont mess up your older family files unless you give them the exact same name.
When to Delete Reunion 9
Delete the old version after you’ve backed everything up and it no longer works with your version of Mac OS; that could be a while, or not.
How to Do What You Used to Do
Add a Source
Click Sources in the navbar then the plus button at the bottom of the sidebar
Cite a Source
Click the Add source button on the Edit Person view (as before) or select the event or fact then drag a source from the Sources sidebar and drop it in the Source Citations section of the Edit Person view.
Add a Person
Click the add person button on the appropriate family view.
Edit a Person
Click the person button
Match and Merge People
Add and Edit Facts, Events, and Multimedia
Add pictures to person buttons by dragging and dropping. Edit, remove, or flag (preferred and or sensitive) them by clicking the image on a person button.
Navigate
Access frequently used functions quickly with the Navbar on the left side of the screen. It puts views, charting, reporting, searching, mass updates, marking, logs, and all the sidebar selections where you can get to them with one click.
Navigate your family file with an hourglass or pedigree chart called tree view.
View lists of people, sources, multimedia, relatives, ages, places, find results, bookmarks, treetops, clipboard, calendar, reminders, and contacts at the same time as your family or tree view and when entering or editing information, creating reports and charts, finding, or marking with the new sidebars.
Enjoy more pictures of your family by adding them to parent and child buttons in the family view
Toolbar items have been moved into the new navbar
Chart
Click the Charts button in the navbar
Report
Click the Reports button in the navbar
Publish Family Cards and Reports for the Web
Click the Reports button in the navbar then Web Project in the list of reports
Import and Export
Import all or part of your family file in GEDCOM, text, or Reunion Family File formats.
Export GEDCOM, text, and Reunion Family File formatted files.
Create event calendars in iCal by exporting events you’ve entered in Reunion
Find People
Click the Find button in the navbar.
Ages
Drag the person button to Ages in the navbar.
List Mailing Address
Click Contacts in the navbar.
List Relatives
Drag the person button to Relatives in the navbar.
List Sources
Click Sources in the navbar
Set Home Family
Drag the person button to Home button in the status bar.
List Treetops
Drag the person button to Treetops in the navbar.
Manage Speed Names
The speed names feature and preference pane are gone. The functionality is still there, it’s just referred to as auto-completion. This video will show you how to remove incorrect last names from the auto-complete list.
How to Use the New Features
Customizing
Customize the look and contents of the family view to your liking using the Family View Preference Pane (Reunion -> Preferences… -> Family View on the menubar).
Maintaining Your Family Files
View multimedia usage for your entire family file, including whether or not the linked files are missing.
Rebuild Reunion’s cache if it’s acting strangely by selecting File -> Rebuild Cache Files… from the menubar.
Organizing
- Record and Manage Places
- Track and use consistent place names with the help of the new Place database
- Merge places
- Store notes about places
- See places on a map from Google or Bing
- Store geo codes (automatically or manually) for places
- Use (or not) silhouettes in place of photos on person buttons.
- Record domestic partnerships and civil unions by clicking the marriage button on the family view, then click Marriage followed by Civil Union or Domestic Partnership as appropriate
- Include images from web sites (e.g. FindAGrave.com) by dragging and dropping to a person or source record
- Sort all children at once or just those with a marked parent
- Save time during multimedia searches by excluding locations
Discovering
Search selected websites for information about a person in your family file.
Choose when you want to maximize the space available for the family or tree view by hiding and revealing the sidebar area with a click or keyboard shortcut.
Find and chart the relationship between any two people related by blood or marriage.
See who was in a family and how old they were on a certain date using the On This Date report. You can include historical and add a perspective event set to see the family in the context of history.
Display people’s ages in different ways (days, months, years, years and months, months and days, years months and days) on the ages report.
Export birthdays, anniversaries, and other events to iCal by clicking File -> Export -> iCal… on the menubar.
Automatically fit column sizes to contents in one or all columns in a list by control-clicking the left separator bar for the column then selecting Auto Size Column or Auto Size All Columns.
Navigating
View and navigate your family file as an hourglass chart.
Revisit a recently viewed couple by clicking the history button in the status bar and selecting them from the list.
Sharing
- Discover and share information about your family with new reports:
- Create an obituary automatically
- See the makeup of a person’s family on a specific date in time with the on this date report
- View a list of events for people in your family file. Choose everyone or just marked people and what events to include.
- List multimedia usage
- Display a list of everyone with a specific last name with the last names report
- Present your family information graphically with new charts:
- Chart the connections between any two people related by blood or marriage with the new relationship chart
- Email, copy and paste, or print a family view by clicking the share button in the status bar
- Share a part of your family file with associated multimedia files by marking the desired people then clicking File -> Export -> Reunion Family File, and selecting what to include
- Drag and drop contact information between Apple’s Address Book app and Reunion 10
- Get a list of all people and their spouses by clicking People in the navbar then clicking Couples in the List window’s sidebar.
This is a fabulous site / help, even for long-time Reunion users. Thank you, Ben Sayre!
What happened to the digitized manual that came with Reunion 9? Is there only the tutorial manual for 10? Thanks for this comprehensive review of Reunion 10, it truly is easier to manipulate than FTM 2012 for Mac for me.:-)
Hi, Patricia. The built-in manual is still there. Click the question mark in bottom left corner or Help -> Contents on the menu bar. —-Ben >@<
Please tell me how big the file size of New reunion 10 is? Do I get a disc or download online? I use Reunion 9.
Hi Val, I recently downloaded the app from the Reunion website. Finder info tells me the .dmg was 54.2 MB and the app itself is 74.5 MB on the disk. Hope that helps.
I want to get back into doing the family genealogy. I own Reunion 8, but it won’t install/work on my newer Mac, so I was going to get Reunion 9. Now I see there is a reunion 10. Do I have to purchase both or can I just purchase the upgrade?
Will either of these work since 8 won’t work on my present computer? I downloaded the files, but get a message that says this version wont work on my computer. Please advise so I can get back to work on this! Thanks.
Hi Sherry. You can upgrade directly to Reunion 10. That version works on newer Macs—-Ben >@<
I have Reunion 10. It’s a fabulous program, but there seems to be a bug in it.
Very often the program stops suddenly. When I restart it I have lost all the new data. What can I do about it?
How can I convert my family genealogies from their present environment created by Reunion 4 to a Reunion 10 on my Mac OS X 10.5. The genealogies were recorded on an iMac which, I understand, is not acceptable by the Mac 10.5?
Hi James. The makers of Reunion can convert version 4 files for you. Here’s their page with instructions.
I’m a recent convert from PC to an Apple laptop. I used FTM on my old PC which won’t boot up any more. I had backed up my FTM data onto a USB drive & also onto a disc. I now would like to purchase the Reunion 10 program for my Mac. Will I be able to transfer my data from the USB to my Mac in the Reunion 10 if I purchase it? Would appreciate your guidance.
Hi Kay.
Your FTM file isn’t directly readable by Reunion. It’s got to be exported in GEDCOM format from FTM. Reunion will be able to import that file.