Genealogy Apps - 52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy

Week 26: Genealogy Apps: Which genealogy app has made your family history experience easier? Who makes the app and what does it do? Share with others the details so they can learn about the app, too.


I started of the year with good intentions joining this challenge and making contributions in the first few weeks of the year then I set off for the US and Rootstech and travelled around for a while. Back home in Australia we took a couple more trips. This morning I said to my husband "Guess what? We are going to be home for three weeks when I get back from Brisbane" (where I'm headed tomorrow). Hopefully I'll be able to find time to contribute more posts duirng that time.


The application I have chosen hasn't made my experience easier YET because I am a novice user but I can see that, as I become more proficient, it will do so. I was given a copy of The Family Historian about 6 weeks ago for Mother's Day and have been playing with it since then.  Family Historian v5 is a genealogy database management program from the UK; it has quite a new nifty features that appealed to me:


* It's bias is towards the UK - the land of my ancestors
* Flexible and can cater for beginners to professionals
* Great multimedia features including facial recognition
—* User interface very natural in its style of dialog boxes
* Files are in native gedcom - export without errors
* Wizards to create family tree websites (no need to purchase a third party product)

* Lots of support from provided manual and User Group
* Display a tree diagram, and access individual records by clicking on a diagram. With one click view ancestors, or descendants, or both
* Great for getting an overall view of your tree
* —Fantastic charts

* Spreadsheet view can be customised and sorted by column 

* 31 included standard report formats plus facility to create custom reports

* —Outstanding queries feature - get the most from your data

* Very easy export to TNG the program I use to publish my data on the web

* Simple synching of data on two devices using Dropbox

* Free plugins extend usability of product

* Family Historian appears to be in active development with regular updates.  
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Some people think I am crazy to have ditched a perfectly good program in favour of another but after 15 years it felt like time for a change;  I believe it is a good idea to check the market occasionally to see what alternatives are around  - otherwise I'd still be using Internet Explorer for web browsing! 

If you are feeling adventurous download a free 30 Day trial of Family Historian. I can't guarantee that it will make your genealogy experience easier in just a month but it will give you an opportunity to look at your data with fresh eyes.