It took me a few years to discover Family Tree Maker software that makes genealogy so much easier to keep a hardcopy of your entire work. Family Tree Maker is a genealogical software made by The Software MacKiev Company. The program is designed to specifically sync to Ancestry® . Even though my tree is always on Ancestry® there are some things I like being able to control and Family Tree Maker is important for doing that.
What do I mean when I say it syncs to Ancestry® and vice a versa? It means that when you make changes, add new information or delete people, photos or documents on Family Tree Maker, those changes will be reflected on Ancestry® as well. The same thing occurs if you make the changes on Ancestry® . They will be reflected on Family Tree Maker.
The best feature about Family Tree Maker is that if there is something you don’t want to be visible on Ancestry® – say the death information of a loved one or photos/documents you want to keep private – then with one click of a button in Family Tree Maker to private, you then just sync your tree and that information is off Ancestry® , but you can still see it on your Family Tree Maker.
Why is this important? Ancestry has only two modes for your tree: private or public. A Private Tree allows you to keep your information private, but it’s almost impossible to collaborate with others when nobody can see your tree. On the other hand, with a Public Tree, once you put a death date in for a loved one, everyone can “see” everything that you have on their page in your tree: documents, photos, etc.
I didn’t know about this important feature until it was too late. My dad died and I put his death date on the tree. I noticed later that a DNA cousin literally copied everything from my tree and reposted it, claiming that all the documents and photos were his from his collection. Thus all of my dad’s information was visible for everyone to see. He didn’t even give my tree credit.
With Family Tree Maker you can have the best of both worlds. You can keep your tree public, but also have things that you want to keep to yourself stay private on your Ancestry Tree.
Other things you can do with Family Tree Maker is print all sorts of reports like family tree charts, such as pedigree, descendant, bowtie and fan charts and even publish a book.
I am so glad I discovered Family Tree Maker as now I have the best of both worlds!
