Most importantly, Legacy Family Tree was one of only two programs with 100% accuracy in GEDCOM tests. The interface is very dated, and the website is terrible, but it's very effective and easy to use. Legacy Family Tree did well in tests because of its excellent data management and research tools. Legacy Family Tree: Best family tree maker for accurate imports Read our full Family Tree Heritage Gold reviewĤ.Once you’ve built your tree, you can zoom in on individuals and populate their entries with loads of interesting information about their lives and relationships. There’s plenty of help, though, and the developer’s website contains tutorials to lead you through all the common family tree building tasks.Īlong with the collaborative functionality, the app’s multiple ways of displaying data should attract people to Family Tree Heritage Gold. The toolbar contains buttons that seem to duplicate one another (what’s the difference between Find and Search anyway?) and setting up a FamilySearch account from within the app simply doesn’t work. What really lets Family Tree Heritage Gold down is the clunky interface, which is really in need of an update for the Windows 10 era. The app’s ability to display your data in different ways, from the traditional tree, to lists of names, to views that concentrate on individuals, is a strong feature, while the option to save photos, supporting documents, and even sound clips as a scrapbook is a nice touch. It’s heavily linked to the FamilySearch site, and can synchronize its records with those you’ve found there, but despite the ability to send a search term to other sites such as, the addition of records you find elsewhere is a manual process. With the ability to work collaboratively, as well as import GEDCOM files, Family Tree Heritage Gold is a great choice as a family tree maker. Family Tree Heritage Gold: Best family tree maker for collaborative projects Still, we love how easy it is, and if you're not looking for a physical copy of your tree, we heartily recommend Ancestry, as it's easily the most powerful software when it comes to building and researching the tree itself.ģ. Sure, you can share it easily, and populate it with images and info in the same way that other family tree packages allow you to do, but it isn't pretty. However, it's mainly functional, rather than being something you can print out and hang on a wall, which is why we haven't listed it in the top spot of our guide. There is also the option to input all data manually, or via GEDCOM files too.Īncestry has all kinds of features for researching, and the tree builder is very, very simple to use. So, you research while you build the actual tree. Simply clicking these leaves will take you to records within that could inform and fill-out your tree. Starting a basic family tree, going from yourself to your parents to your grandparents will often generate 'matches' within Ancestry, that appear as leaves on your family tree. This has the added advantage of allowing you to build as you research, all within the same program, and you can actually work from the tree first. While there are many specialized software packages for creating family trees, we found that one of the easiest to use is part of your subscription. But if you’re someone who likes to have access to your family tree on the go via your cell, or you’re on an Apple product, you might have to opt for our second favourite family tree making software.Ģ. Family tree makers often have slightly dated interfaces, so we haven’t counted this against the product. There are only two main flaws we could find with the software: it has a dated aesthetic and it’s not compatible with smartphones or Macs. There are also new tools for serious genealogists, relating to source citation and data entry flows, along with a wide range of new language options. You now have more text formatting options, so you can do things like change font color and size. You’ll often find nudges and suggestions appearing on your tree, when the software thinks it has found a distant ancestor that you might be related to.Ī new edition of the software has brought some much needed upgrades. And the fact that it integrates with online databases, like MyHeritage, makes it a powerful genealogical tool. It also has an easy to navigate interface, which allows you to quickly and efficiently add data and images into your sprawling family tree. A lot of other programs struggled to represent these types of relationships, which is why Family Historian has earned the top spot in our list. When we’ve tested the software by importing GEDCOM records, it performed flawlessly, accurately interpreting tricky data relating to things like polygamist families and same-sex marriages. Family Historian is one of the biggest names in genealogy software - and for good reason.

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