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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18 in Software
• Brand: Avanquest Software
• Released on: 2009-10-08
• Platforms: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
• Format: CD-ROM

Manufacturer's Description
Ancestry.co.uk Family Tree Maker has always made it easy to discover your story, preserve your legacy and share your unique heritage as you explore your family tree on your personal computer. And now, Ancestry.co.uk Family Tree Maker 2010 introduces even more storytelling and organisation tools that can add new life to your family history.

Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting on your family tree, Family Tree Maker 2010 can help you create a family tree faster, easier, and better than ever before. The end result is a family history that you and your family will treasure for years to come.

Ancestry.co.uk Family Tree Maker 2010 lets you easily:

• Organise your family story privately and conveniently on your personal computer
• Create charts and reports in a variety of formats to share with friends and family
• Discover new information anywhere on the web and add it to your tree instantly
• Integrate with the 820 million historical records on Ancestry.co.uk. Even receive hints linking you to matching records
• Incorporate photos, documents, audio, video and other files into your tree
• View Interactive maps and lists that give you a bird's-eye view of where members of your family come
• Create Timelines that highlight personal, family, and world events
• Document AND rate each of your citations with powerful sourcing tools
• Merge duplicate individuals, calculate dates, create to-do lists, and more with easy-to-use-tools
• Import data from other genealogy programs, including Personal Ancestry File, The Master Genealogist, and Legacy Family Tree

What's new in Ancestry.co.uk Family Tree Maker 2010?
Ancestry.co.uk Family Tree Maker has always made it easy to discover your story, preserve your legacy and share your unique heritage as you explore your family tree on your personal computer. And now Ancestry.co.uk Family Tree Maker 2010 introduces even more rich storytelling and organisation tools that can add new life to your family history.

• New tools and charts that let you tell a richer story
• Better ways to organise photos and other media
• Slideshows you can create with images in your tree
• Publish beautiful family books made from your tree to share with family & friends
• Standard source templates that help you reference the right information
• New Person View - A view of your relationship to everyone in your tree
• Extended family birthday calendars
• Scanner support - Add scanned images directly into your tree
• Family migration paths over time
• Easy family tree download from Ancestry.co.uk
• Better Performance - Experience faster load times and navigation

Family Tree Maker 2010 DELUXE comes with 3 months of free* access to the UK's largest online collection of family history resources.

How can you make the most of Ancestry.co.uk?

• Your software works seamlessly with the site so you can easily search for your ancestors and automatically add the information you discover to your tree.
• You could find missing facts about your family in census records, military records, image collections and other historical resources.
• Learn family history hints and tips at the Ancestry Online Learning Centre.

Search and access over 820 million names - The UK's largest collection of online family history records!

• Census records including the 1841-1901 censuses for England, Wales and Scotland
• Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes from 1837-2005 for England and Wales
• British WW1 Military records including pension and service records and medal indexes
• Newspapers and periodicals
• British Phone Books 1880-1984
• Deeds, court documents and wills
• University Alumni

Bonus Materials Also included:

A 3 Month Essentials Membership to Ancestry.co.uk
Search and access over 820 million names - The UK's largest collection of online family history records!

Family Tree Maker 2010 Getting Started Guide
Follow simple instructions to begin a project and master the program's basic features.

Discounts on Ancestry.co.uk products
Save 20% on Ancestry DNA testing. Discover your ancient ancestry, validate existing research and break through genealogical dead ends.
Save 25% on MyCanvas. Create beautiful pages to showcase your documents, photos and charts and print professional books and posters.

3 Free Issues of Your Family Tree Magazine
Subscribe to the most respected genealogy magazine for 1 year, and receive your first 3 issues FREE+. The magazine offers practical, expert advice on all areas of family research, an array of essential resources, genealogy questions & answers and cover gifts on every issue.

Save up to £44 on Arrowfile Genealogy Storage Products
Organise and Safeguard your Family History for Future Generations. Used by museums, Arrowfile's refill pages are ACID-FREE to protect your precious photos, documents and certificates. Spend £19.99 or more on refill pages and claim matching leather albums worth £44.90+

Interactive Training Tutorial
Step-by-step hints and tips to help you grow your family tree.

Family Tree Maker 2010 DELUXE - Contents at a Glance

• 3-month Ancestry.co.uk Essentials Membership* (worth over £32)
• Family Tree Maker program CD-ROM
• Family Tree Maker Getting Started Guide
• Family Tree Maker Training Tutorial
• 20% discount on Ancestry DNA Testing+
• 25% off Mycanvas Printed Books & Posters+
• Save up to £44 off Arrowfile Genealogy Albums & Acid Free Archival Pages+
• 3 FREE ISSUES of your Family Tree Magazine when you subscribe for 1 year+

+ Terms and Conditions Apply

* Subscription Activation -Terms and Conditions apply.
The Ancestry.co.uk Essentials Membership begins upon activation of the free subscription with a valid credit or debit card but no money will be taken during the free subscription period. To cancel your membership without incurring a charge to your credit or debit card, go to www.ancestry.co.uk, simply login and go to 'My Account', click on 'Cancel Subscription' at least 2 days before the free trial subscription is due to end, otherwise 100% of the monthly Essentials membership price will be automatically debited from your credit or debit card. Use of ancestry.co.uk is subject to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. See www.ancestry.co.uk for full details.

Recommended System Requirements:
Windows XP SP2/Vista and Windows 7, 1 GHz Intel Pentium III (or equivalent), 460 MB or installation /512 MB of RAM, 32X CD/CD-R, 1024x768 resolution monitor, All online features require internet access

Minimum System Requirements:
Windows XP SP2/Vista and Windows 7, 500 MHz Intel Pentium II (or equivalent), 460 MB for installation / 256 MB of RAM, 2X CD-ROM (required for installation), 800x600 resolution monitor

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Customer Reviews

Poor performance in some fields
Having used FTM since the first issue way back I looked forward to 2010 with the improvements promised by Ancestry on a poor 2009 issue. In 2006 there were multiple realtionships obtainable via the relationship calculator, and those were shown in the kinship report as well. In 2009 there was only a so called direct realtionship shown in the kinship report. This was to be corrected in 2010 but when my first kinship report was calculated using the multiple relationship choice I was horrified. a 5 page report had become a 15 page one with very peculiar relationships shown. For example a 6th cousin became "the 4th gt grandniece of the 2nd gt grand aunt" - that is mindboggling. The same relationship is shown against the cousin when that person is looked up. The common ancestor of 7th gt grandfather is just ignored. I may say that the same data used in 2006 gives correct relationships and in 2009 they are mostly correct but there are a few slip ups, one being that a 3rd cousin becomes a 4th cousin as its calculated by using a less direct common ancestor.

When looking up an individual in the index if you have a fairly common name - the index does not list them chronologically by date of birth so a "James blogs" entry of say 150 persons of that name, takes a while to find. This despite Ancestry taking it on board to correct after the 2009 edition.

I certainly would not trust any relationship calculation that this edition churns out.

Although this review is my own I have checked with various relations who are now all on the lookout for a better, more accurate programme to fit their needs. A very disappointing piece of software indeed.

Altogether - like its predecessor - this programme is badly flawed and provides a lot of gimmicks at the expense of what a genealogist really requires - accuracy, first and foremost, and ease while searching for a particular individual.

It is a over a month since I complained to Ancestry about the kinship horror but this has just been ignored so far

Very good, but with a few flaws
I've been using Family Tree Maker 2010 for about 3 weeks now, so it's probably a good time to reflect on its features. To put the review into context, I went for FTM having outgrown some of the limitations of the free Personal Ancestral File (PAF) program. I use it for my own family tree, which is about 400 people. I have no experience of using it for large databases.

Hardware - Most of the time, I use it on my 5 year old desktop system running Windows XP, and performance is fine. Initial loading is much slower than PAF (50 seconds versus 5 seconds), but once loaded it's fairly slick in use, and repeat loads are much quicker, presumably because a lot of material is still stored in cache. I've also installed it on my Samsung NC10 netbook, and while the smaller screen does give rise to bit more scrolling and resizing of windows, it works very well. That's ideal for accessing your family tree out and about, say at libraries or record offices, or working on it while waiting for teenager children using the family taxi....! The Ancestry license allows installation on two computers, so you can even do this perfectly legally. I've also tried a test installation on the evaluation version of Windows 7. The first time I tried to run it, it gave me an error message, but has been fine since, so there don't seem to be any fundamental problems with Windows 7 (as there shouldn't be - despite the marketing hype, Windows 7 is only a refreshed version 2 of Vista - the core system is exactly the same).

Ease of transferring data from PAF - FTM can import PAF files directly, or you can export as a GEDCOM file and import into FTM. This was more difficult than it should have been. The basic data and notes were fine, but I did have problems copying the media files (mostly photographs, GRO certificates and census forms). Where a media file was linked to more than one person (say a census form), FTM insisted on giving me multiple copies of the file, so I ended up with about four times as much media as I started with. The workaround was to export from PAF without media using the options within that program, then manually relinking the media files within FTM. This was a little tedious, but it did give me a good opportunity to work through and tidy up the source data. FTM also made every fact "Private". Not a big problem, as you can include private data in trees and printouts, and gradually correct it as you revise the person's data, but it could be an issue if you have data genuinely marked as private (that skeleton in the cupboard that can't be revealed until after Aunty Emma has died.....).

Ease of use, and program features - In just three weeks I have certainly not tried every feature, but I do have some clear plus and minus points. On the positive side, the displays are clear and well presented, and navigation around the program is relatively straight forward. Treatment of sources is much better than in PAF, and it is easy to see all your sources listed in detail. This makes it easy to check for consistency and completeness - I found several errors in my old PAF data that were only apparent when listing all the sources together. Each person fact (birth date/place, address, occupation , census entry etc) can have multiple sources, and a single source can be linked to any number of facts or people. This is particularly useful with things like census records, which could link to every member of the household and be the source for multiple facts (approximate date and place of birth, occupation, etc). When producing printed reports, a single source gets only one reference, rather than the duplicate references used by PAF, so each fact has the same footnote number and point to a single source citation.

The ability to map places of interest is useful, but the strong US-bias of the default options has already been noted. These can be overwritten with your own input, though. Personally, I don't like the Ancestry habit of standardizing place names, and I keep them as they were when the event was recorded. For example, my tree has references to Chelsea, Middlesex and Chelsea, London, even though both point to the same location on the map.

My biggest gripe with FTM regarding data recording is that it does not have the ability to record approximate date ranges. A date can be a defined range (say between Jan and Mar 1845), or marked as approximate (say ca. 1890), but these cannot be combined. It may be a pedantic point, but it means recording birth dates when all you have is the GRO quarter in which the event was registered could be incorrect, as the birth could have occurred in the previous quarter. PAF was able to say "About Jan-Mar 1845", but FTM leaves off the critical "about" qualifier.

I have also tried exporting a modified tree from FTM as a GEDCOM file and re-importing into PAF, just in case I go back to the old program. There does seem to be a problem exporting references to media files in the GEDCOM output, so media was lost again between the two programs. There were also errors in date and note formatting that seem to arise from FTM not following the GEDCOM standard accurately. Nothing that a bit of patience with a file editor couldn't correct, but that shouldn't be necessary, and it does require a working knowledge of the GEDCOM data format.

I have not tried registering with Ancestry to use the subscription trial. I already subscribe to the site, so I will wait until this is due for renewal before registering and claiming my free period.....

There are eye-candy frills that do nothing at all for me, such as fancy backgrounds and templates for reports, but it's no problem ignoring these and concentration on the core functions. I'm also not bothered about any issues with the relationship calculator (although if it is wrong it does not reflect well on the software authors).

Overall, I have been quite pleased with FTM, and will continue to use it. It is not perfect (particularly the untidy GEDCOM import and export, and the lack of "about" date ranges), but it is a very big step up from PAF. It's relatively easy to use, and does seem to operate on a wide range of hardware. I particularly like the way you can organize and sort the source data. This is after all the core data - the trees that we so carefully record are simply our interpretation of that data!!!

Not to the standard expected
Disappointed and returned the product as we couldn't get this to work on Windows 7, despite the information on the box. Finally tested it on XP - it did load but the software was still not as desired. Relationships are still not designed well (see previous review) and disappointing that a fact can't be applied to multiple people (e.g. census data). Overall, software not as flexible as expected.