Family Tree Maker 2012 Essentials - complete package

• Average user rating: 1.5 stars out of 2 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars

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• 1 stars

  Good for family history work -don't upgrade for SYNC

  by barbjth2 on February 28, 2012

  Pros: Leaf icon shows which people in the tree might have new information available
  Input is reasonably easy

  Cons: SYNC is a disaster!

  Summary: After multiple problems with SYNC I called Support. I was advised to stop using it. It causes frustration and multiple errors in the trees. I was advised to unlink my ...

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  Summary: After multiple problems with SYNC I called Support. I was advised to stop using it. It causes frustration and multiple errors in the trees. I was advised to unlink my trees in order not to get duplicate names in the files. That was the best they could do. "Wait 4-6 weeks and try again" In the meantime I have 30 family members with access to this tree so I can't delete the on-line tree and start over without having to re-invite everyone. And I found on-line info for the tree that did not show up in FTM searches and I don't want to manually add multiple multiple updates to FTM. FTM is good, but don't buy this for the SYNC feature.

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• 6 stars

  Great Ideas but too Unstable and Complicated!

  by notsosuretoo on January 12, 2012

  Pros: Direct synchronization with your Ancestry.com on-line family tree which enables you to add data from anywhere you have an internet connection. Intuitive search engine suggests Ancestry.com source material and will automatically add to your database.

  Cons: Desktop software crashes far too often. Ancestry.com on-line version can only be downloaded as a gedcom, limiting your options in case synchronization fails. Synchronization errors will make it impossible to continue synchronizing your trees.

  Summary: I have been an FTM customer since the late 1990's. Each new version brought new innovations and most often these were very useful changes. FTM 2012 is so completely ...

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  Summary: I have been an FTM customer since the late 1990's. Each new version brought new innovations and most often these were very useful changes. FTM 2012 is so completely different that it was like having entirely new software when upgrading from FTM 16. The entire format is different and somewhat difficult to get used to. I also feel that the new format makes it more difficult to view families and navigation is a lot more complicated. I find myself referring back to my Rootsweb database when it comes to checking out whole families in a glance. This is difficult to do in FTM 2012. I do like the ability to synchronize my family tree with a family tree on Ancestry.com. This allows me to update the tree no matter where I might be. I don't have to save the information and add it to my database later when I'm home. I can enter it direct into my tree on Ancestry and then synchronize it with my desktop version of FTM when I get home. Ancestry also has an intuitive search engine that will make suggestions for source information, and will allow you to automatically add the information to your tree (complete with images, which really is pretty cool!) NOW, for the down side. FTM 2012 has crashed often in the few months since I downloaded it. I haven't lost data that I know of, but it has been quite an inconvenience. Also, while synchronizing, I received an error message and from that point on, I was not able to synchronize my tree at all! I've had to reload the tree and synchronize it again as a NEW tree. Ancestry.com will only allow you to download your on-line tree as a ged-com, which limits your ability to download your hard work (if you can't synchronize with FTM, a ged-com is your only choice--bad design!)I tried to merge the resultant ged-com with my FTM desktop software, but it crashed after working on it for an hour, and I lost the merge completely. Be sure you ONLY add changes from one direction or the other. DON'T make changes on both sides and try to synchronize. It seems to confuse the software and you may lose your ability to synchronize at all! SO . . . being able to synchronize is a great thing, if it works. Being able to directly add citations and data direct from Ancestry.com is also very cool. However, the software is entirely too unstable at this point in time, and the synchronize function has serious design flaws in it. Maybe I should have waited to upgrade?

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