Do you and the development team receive info from the error reports that are automatically generated when FTM2008 crashes or freezes? If so what priority is given towards correcting the errors that generate these reports?

I’m in Canada and am eagerly awaiting the release of the Canadian version of FTM. September is nearly over — can you provide an update on progress?

Benjamin it is time for you to develop a new killer app or two - even on the clunky .net framework

1)
kick start the community by publishing the API and a plug-ins developer kit
Google and FlickR do and profit by it
see Google Maps API - Google Web APIs - Flickr Services

2)
Rebuild FTM 16 as a stand alone java app with full functionality on any platform including as a plug in to .net see API java - Google Search

3)
Purchase or copy all the templates of Custodian 3 database as plug ins custodian 3 - Google Search

4)
Create alternative HISTORICAL place name plug ins from the US and UK census editions which TGN already owns . . and then the rest of the TGN properties including the gazetteers in the Ancestry Database Card Catalog - Ancestry.com

5)
BTW
primarily for the ancestrylibrary edition Ancestry Database Card Catalog - Ancestry.com needs a standard OPEC interface to for the individual institutions and World Cat to add to their own catalogues

If you don’t understand any of the above you better engage me as a consultant and trainer

When I open Family Tree it does not have the program that I imported. I keep getting an error report. It never shows the tree except right after I import the file. Is there a good way to learn how to use the program. I am a PAF user.

Thank you

When doing a web search, why does it return records that are outside of the dates shown for the individual, i.e. birth year 1830 but the military search gives me records for World War II? The soldier would be over 100 years old!

Hi Ben,
I sent the following to TGN corporate offices almost a 9-10-07 and never received a reply.
Since that time some 20 new issues/problems have been found. Patches by FTM will nto fix the speed issues with this software. It would require a complete rewrite of the code.

From past experience your company does not listen to the people that purchase your product. This is evident by your lact of support and lack of respose to us.

Fred

Hi,
I am a paid subscriber to some of your services and I have sent several email to Ancestry Help and do not get any reply, so I thought I would write you. Ancestry should communicate and provide answers to its users better than it does. Most people including myself never get a reply from anyone when there are problems.

Why is it you do not have on-line support like most other software products do?

My reason for writing is FTM 2008 software. I like 100’s of others would like to know what is going with FTM software. Are you intentionally trying to kill it off as this was about the best all around genealogy software anywhere. However with the release of FTM 2008 it is for the most part an unusable product. I like others can’t not use it because of everything that can no longer be done in FTM 2008 because of everything removed and how slow the software is.

It is so slow that it takes minutes and hours to what took seconds in version 2006 with a database of 104,000 people. In entering data it takes minutes to enter any data when creating a new person or adding data to an existing person. I have heard similar complaints from people with database of 20,000 people.

Today, I opened my 104,215 database and went to merge another database of 21 that had already been converted to FTM 2008. It took 10 hours and 15 minutes to complete the file merge. I attribute this speed problem to several factors, bloated size of FTM 2008, bloated size of database, and poor programming of the software. It maxes out the CPU to almost 100% when using this product. I checked several other PCs on the network running all kinds high end software and none had any software the required the amounts of memory and CPU usage that FTM 2008 does.

It appears that FTM 2008 was developed by programmers that had no knowledge of genealogy. I am a retired computer manager who managed over 200 IT employees of which approximately 30 of were programmers, both mainframe and PC. If someone that worked for me had released a product like FTM 2008 that person and the programmers would have been removed from their jobs.

I cannot believe your company released a product like this and expect people to pay for it. The release of FTM 2008 should have been delayed and beta tested better than what it was. Below are issues I have found and more reasons why most people cannot use FTM 2008. As the issues below are lengthy, I also have more issues with FTM 2008 if you are open to hear them.

Sincerely
Name, address and phone 3 removed

Items REMOVED, NEW PROBLEM and what FTM says is “NEW IN 2008” with my comments as to what FTM says is “NEW IN 2008”. This is not an all inclusive list of these items as NEW issues are being found daily. The issues below were found using a database with over 100,000 people

I attribute all of the issues with FTM to improper design and programming.

I cannot recommend anyone purchase FTM 2008 and have recommended those that have purchased it to consider returning it.

REMOVED ITEMS:
===============
REMOVED: Double click on GEDCOM file to open.

REMOVED: Option to select what items to include on a FTM and GEDCOM file merge/append.

REMOVED: Capability to save a file back to an older version of FTM.

REMOVED: All Nicknames or AKA were lost on import of file into 2008. AKA that existed in 2006 in the full name edit screen was removed in 2008. You can add them manually back in by using a fact field. So my grandson’s 1st cousin 11 times removed whose name is Wahunsenacawh and had an AKA of Chief Powhatan the father of Pocahontas is lost. It will be next to impossible to fix this manually in a large database as I was not able to generate any report in 2006 to list everyone with an AKA. The custom report in 2006 had a field AKA but when generating the report noting shows in the AKA field on the report.

REMOVED: Capability to change menu bar.

REMOVED: Index of individuals options.

REMOVED: Index of individuals search by given name.

REMOVED: Index of names no longer shows comma in front of name suffix.

REMOVED: Automatic selection of female when entering a NEW person in the database. It now defaults to unknown requiring extra work as you have to change this almost 100% of the time. In 2006 it was set to female and it only required you change the field to male about 50% of the time.

REMOVED: When you have a drawing of a tree on the screen you can’t click on a person in a tree and go to that person. It is this way on all report I tried.

REMOVED: Automatic backup of file on exit. You must now manually go to the menu and select backup every time you want to back up the database.

REMOVED: Reference numbers.

REMOVED: Address labels.

REMOVED: Meciclal labels.

REMOVED: Spell check for facts or anything else except notes.

REMOVED: Spell check does not move through all the notes like it did in 2006. You must go to each person then open the notes to that person and can only spell check that person. When finished a popup window and if you click continue the program crashes and closes.

REMOVED: Edit facts by double click it. Now you have to click on the fact then the fact also shows on the right of the screen. You must then move to the right side of the screen to edit it, rather than allowing you to just click on the field and edit it there.

REMOVED: All-in-one tree chart.
REMOVED: Address report.
REMOVED: Basic register and ahnentafel reports.
REMOVED: All Ancestor tree charts. Now only has a standard pedigree tree chart.
REMOVED: Alternate facts report.
REMOVED: Bibliography report.
REMOVED: Birthday report.
REMOVED: Data error report.
REMOVED: Documented events report.
REMOVED: Genealogy report. This was the major report used by most people.
REMOVED: Hourglass tree charts.
REMOVED: Medical report.
REMOVED: What robust features that did exist on all charts and reports. NEW charts and reports are primitive in design and features. The ancestor tree report looks like something a child would draw.

REMOVED: Books. They now want you to upload your data and design report on-line and then either print at Ancestry Press or download and print on your printer.

REMOVED: Scrapbook.

REMOVED: Research Journal.

REMOVED: View data CD. So none of the CDs you purchased will not work in FTM 2008.

REMOVED: Option to sort reports with data fields on the different fields.

REMOVED: More than one relation to a person in the Kinship report. Now only shows closest relation, so if a person is related more than once to a person, there is no way to see or show the duplicate relationship. No search on a kinship report and in 2006 report on the person Wahunsenacawh was 55 pages now because of the new spacing it takes 86 pages to produce the same number of kin on the 2008 report. It appears that all the reports and charts in 2008 now require more pages to produce the same report information as in 2006.

REMOVED: Fast fill fields do not work as in 2006. Original fast fill type as you go in 2006 which remembered about the last 30 items was removed and replaced with a drop down menu that is slower. When you import a file into 2008 it puts every item you had in any location in the new fast fill database. I don’t know if the slowness of the new fast fill is due to the fact that the drop down menu holds every item you ever used beginning with the letter of each word of the fact that the CPU is maxed out at 100%. Also, I see no option to delete something form the fast field database. If you make any change to the data in the location field it drops down the fast fill box again for you to select from.

REMOVED: Find and replace.

REMOVED: Capability to change the capitalization of a name from CAPS to lower case by changing one letter in the name. You must type everything again, as there is also no find and replace to mast change the capitalization.

REMOVED: Capability to copy selected items on any of the reports.

REMOVED: Capability to copy selected individuals from one database to another.

REMOVED: Capability to generate a tree of a family and then select to delete them from the database.

NEW PROBLEM:
=============
NEW PROBLEM: Requires a PC with more memory, faster CPU and more hard drive space.

NEW PROBLEM: Program uses large amounts of page memory. More than any program I have seen. High end programs such as Photoshop and Microsoft Office do not use anywhere near the amount of memory to run FTM 2008. Which most likely is responsible for the slowness of the program.

NEW PROBLEM: Pretty interface that is slow and unresponsive. The slower response dramatically increases the time to enter data and generate reports.

NEW PROBLEM: Authenticate with the server. An unnecessary feature.

NEW PROBLEM: Registration fails for some people.

NEW PROBLEM: Nag screen popup window to register program. I did not have to register the program to download the update or to use the program. After 4 days the nag screen stopped.

NEW PROBLEM: Nag screen popup window auto-search on starting program asking if it is ok to search the web. I have not found a way to turn this off, but it also stopped after 4 days.

NEW PROBLEM: Maxes out the CPU when checking in task manager to almost 100% making the PC and program extremely slow and unresponsive. I cannot do anything else on the PC until I FTM is shut down because of this.

NEW PROBLEM: Undo of merged/append file. I merged two files and did not find where you can undo it on the menu anywhere. Although this morning when I started 2008 there was an undo on the menu under edit. It was not there before so I checked the version # of FTM and it had not changed. So I have no idea as to where undo feature was before when using the program.

NEW PROBLEM: Imported a FTW file from ver 2006 into 2008 and all went ok. On checking the data, several names were incorrect.

NEW PROBLEM: Bloated program increased in size from 55MB in 2006 to 379MB in 2008.

NEW PROBLEM: Bloated database increase in size from 95MB in 2006 to 174MB in 2008.

NEW PROBLEM: Exported data back to an older version of FTM using a GEDCOM file from 2008 and re-imported back into an older version of FTM and then exporting it from the older version and re-importing it back to 2008 caused data errors with the data.

NEW PROBLEM: Moving from one person to another now takes between 15-60 seconds on ever person I move to.

NEW PROBLEM: Trees contain fields such as B and D when you have no data for them. In prior versions the trees were not cluttered with missing data fields. I have not found a way to remove them.

NEW PROBLEM: For people that are married more than one, you lose your preferred spouse setting when importing a file from prior versions of FTM. All my preferred spouses are gone and if I continued using 2008 I would have to go to every marriage and reselect a preferred spouse.

NEW PROBLEM: Changes to the pedigree report design do not hold when saved. I had made changes several times and saved them only to come back to the same report and it is set back to the defaults.

NEW PROBLEM: Custom report does not allow you to remove items such as dates and the word “in”, even though it has a tab under item to include doing this. It even shows you a sample of how it will look without the data or the word “in” but it does not show up that way on the report. The custom report no longer lists the name to the left and then the items you select directly across from the name so you can readily run through the report and find errors in the names of locations, such as birth, death and marriage. Now it lists these under the name so it makes it much harder to find irregularities in spelling and abbreviations.

NEW PROBLEM: When moving from one report to another you must reselect the individuals you want in the report.

NEW PROBLEM: On merging/appending a FTM file with 21 people to a database of 104,215 it took 10 hours 5 minutes. This is broken down to 7 hours 15 minutes to load the 21 people, 2 hours to do matching people and then another window opened for you to select items to do the merge and click continue and it beginnings merging, another 50 minutes to complete the total merge process. Both files had already been imported into 2008 prior to doing the merge. Windows task manager showed the CPU maxed out at almost 100% the entire time and used over 800,000k memory. I saw no undelete option after the merge. I can’t live with this software taking this amount of time to do something. Although this morning when I started 2008 there was an undo on the menu under edit. It was not there before so I checked the version # of FTM and it had not changed. So I have no idea as to where undo feature was before when using the program.

NEW PROBLEM: There is an Undo feature. This morning when I started 2008 there was an undo on the menu under edit. It was not there before so I checked the version # of FTM and it had not changed. So I have no idea as to where undo feature was before when using the program. It appears to me that certain items do not show up at all times on the screen. Example is the calculator on the side of the date field and the ? on the side of the place field. Do not show up at all times.

NEW PROBLEM: Parentage report with 100,000 people took over 30 minutes to generate, where it took less than 1 minute in ver 2006.

NEW PROBLEM: Most reports will not allow you to set or save defaults. You have to make the changes every time you use the report. If you select certain individuals in one report and the want another report you must reselect them all again. Where as in 2006 you could move from report to report and not have to reselect them again.

NEW PROBLEM: 2008 has database of 3 million place names connected to FastFields that are inaccurate and leave out locations where names changed. I see no way to turn off FTM place names or change these place names or to only use your place names. I have a detailed email outlining the problem with FTM place names if you have not seen it already. There is a setting in the options to not use FastFields for place names, but then your FastField items will also not work. I don’t need FTM telling me how to name a location.

NEW PROBLEM: Program unresponsive and locks up. It appears that unlike 2006 if the program locked up and did not close 2008 properly the data or changed setting are not saved. So in 2008 on a lock up and you have to force the program to shut down or the program crashes on you and closes the data or setting change is lost. I noticed this on the date files as I set the date to show month, day year with full spelling of month. On crash and starting 2008 the date settings were set back to the default.

NEW PROBLEM: Reduced design of reports that still exist.

NEW PROBLEM: Duplication of data on the screen in more than one place at the same time.

NEW PROBLEM: When you close the program, even though it is gone on the screen in task manager it still runs for about 5 minutes.

NOW THIS IS WHAT FTM SAYS IS NEW IN 2008
I do not see where hardly any of these items are really NEW items. My comments are after >> on each item.
=====================================
What’s NEW in Family Tree Maker
Family Tree Maker opens with a whole new look. Every effort has been made to make family history welcoming and fun. The program is now divided into seven distinct areas (workspaces) that focus on the key tasks of research and data management. The following list explains the new features available in each of the workspaces.

Plan

Improved file merge. >>Not the case it took 10 hours 5 minutes to merge a 21 person database with an existing 104,215 person database.

Global task management.

Ability to import PAF, Legacy, The Master Genealogist and various other file formats. >>You could already do this in prior version using a GEDCOM file.

People

Family view that combines the family tree and family group. >>Looks good but is slow.

Person view that displays facts, sources, notes, and tasks in one view. >>Slow and unresponsive and duplicate information shown twice for some item on the screen.

Timeline view that lists personal, family, and historic events. >>Timeline report already existed in prior versions.

Relationship view that lists family relationships. >>Slow and prints a head in the box to the left of the persons information. I see no way to remove the heads. You could produce a similar type report in prior versions. I don’t see much use for this report the way it works. You can select the person relation from a drop down box but to change the person relation to you have to fumble through the tabs of the few people listed at the top of the screen. You cannot pick someone from a drop down box to pick the relation to person.

Index groupings that allow searching by family name, given name, birth date, marriage date, and death date.

History list that displays the changes made to records in the tree. >> History tab existed in 2006.

Places

A database of 3 million complete place names connected to FastFields name completion. >> Slow and these so called Place FastFields cannot be changed. They are inaccurate as to name of locations and leave out locations where the name changed. I see no way to turn off FTM place names and only use your place names.

A map to find each location in the tree. >> Slow and a similar map existed in prior versions.

A view to see all of the people associated with a location. >> Slow and a similar view existed in prior versions.

Media

View all of the images and media in your tree from one location. >> Nice.

Link one media file to multiple people and view all of the people a media file is linked to. >> This might be of use to people.

Sources

View all of the sources in your tree from one location. >>Available in 2006 under edit master sources.

Rate sources using standardized rating criteria.

Full reference notes. >>Notes existed in 2006.

Flexible citation/source/repository model.

Publish >> Existed in 2006.

New charts and reports >> These so called new charts could for the most part be produced in 2006.

Improved chart and report customization. >> Not the case, they appear to be of lower quality and features removed that existed in 2006. The tree chart looks like something a child would draw when compared to the features it could do in 2006.

Output charts and reports to PDF, CSV, RTF, HTML, JPG, PNG and other formats >> Most of this was available in 2006.

Web Search >> Available in 2006.

Search Ancestry.com, Rootsweb.com, and Genealogy.com and merge the results into your tree. >>Available in 2006.

Search anywhere on the Internet from within Family Tree Maker and merge the results into your tree. >> Can do the same thing in Internet Explorer. I don’t need to search the web form inside a genealogy program, although others might want this feature.

Add your own bookmarks to web sites. >> Can be done in Internet Explorer.

Capture text, images, and entire web pages and merge them into the tree. >> Nice but was able to copy and paste into 2006.

Does anyone know of any way to research births in Gibralter. My Great Grandfather was in the British Army and obviously moved around, but I seem unable to verify any details of his Army record or births of children in Gibralter.

My last version of FTM was 2005, I think, and I hadn’t used it since then, so am still getting adjusted to 2008. I like the web search integration, although it still has a long way to go. As someone mentioned above, you really do need to make the dates entered for a search not be ignored by the search. If I’m looking for someone who lived 1640-1700, I really shouldn’t have to wade through results from the 1800s or 1900’s… If looking for Revolutionary War enrollments with the years indicated, I shouldn’t be getting Civil War, WW1 or WW2 reports!
AND…please give the ability to subtract something we’ve already looked at and found not to be applicable! I have many members in my tree that now have little green leaves telling me they’ve found a possible match. Some of them are very much NOT a match…maybe a similar name, or data I’ve researched and found in error. But there is no way to mark “ignore this entry”. I don’t want to do away with the leaf notification, but I DO want a way to have bad information I’ve already checked out ignored…add an “ignore this entry” choice along with the “merge”. Right now the only way I could fix it would be to merge, tell it to ignore every fact, then go and delete the source. And maybe if I delete the source, it would just come back? Please fix this!
Thanks…..

I have read the comments made by other users and I have to say they are right on when it comes to the problems with the 2008 version. I have cursed the product ever since I put it on my PC thinking it was going to be a good thing. It is slow!!! To add info it is SLOW, to change info, it is SLOW. What have you done to a perfectly good produce. Plust you removed the genealogy report and the marriage notes and don’t give us a choice about using ALL the facts we have spent so much time gathering. The only thing that I do like is the media feature. Did you take to the time to test this new version or were you in to big a hurry to market it? I am not a happy camper and have used FTW for many years and this is the worst version you have come out with and I PAID for it.

I have been using FTM 2008 for some weeks now: cleaned up my places on all individuals, added new media and linked old, searched on the web feature and merged data successfully, and have added new individuals. I have had no problems with the facts or the notes … just created new fields when necessary (according to the manual). I really enjoy the ease of adding data and making corrections. I find this version of FTM much easier for me personally than FTM 2006. I can see where this will only get better as time goes on. Thanks for taking the plunge and daring to do some serious revamping.

I’am 70 years of age and my wife and I have been doing our family histories for more than 15 years now
and have always thought Family Tree
Maker was the greatest to use until
your porgramers thought the best wasn’t good enough and decided to make an utter mess of it, makes me wish we would have stuck with Brothers Keeper. My bet it Family Tree Maker will never again be the great program it once was.

1.There needs to be something done about error reporting and recovery. The only error message I have ever seen is “Something’s wrong and we’re going to terminate the program” Not very helpful.

2.If you had a place where you could list a few of the major problems you are aware of and are working on, it would reduce a lot of the frustration users have.

Hi Ben

Good that you have started this

I think we met in Provo in 2005?

Anything that can be done to increase the user experience with FTM is worthwhile

Cheers

John D

Benjamin - You wrote: “In regard to the other stated issues: Many of these items are currently being worked on, some features are still available but in a different area of the program, while other items were removed based on customer feedback. I hope to address many of these items more specifically in future posts.”

Your comment above is extremely disturbing. I had hoped that the mistakes made were in poor decisions on the timing of the release rather than in a change of direction with the software. Removal of the core functionality and capabilities present in previous versions is just unacceptable. Obviously the removal of functionality was intentional. Updates should incude previous functionality as well as new features. I can’t imagine experienced or even new genealogists giving feedback that a large number of reports, features, and tools from earlier versions should not be included in FTM 2008. While some reports and tools may not be used frequently by everyone, it doesn’t mean they should be removed. Many of the removed reports and features were what set FTM apart from its competitors. FTM 2008 is now behind its competitors in core functionality. It also has gained error ridden functionality. Those few people who are using FTM 2008 are not using it as their primary genealogy software. Is that what The Generation Network (TGN)wants? If your company doesn’t want that, we as loyal customers need to know WHAT and WHEN the core functionality of previous versions will be added back. So far, two reports have been specified for the October release and the promise of the book creation functionality for next year. The removal list submitted in a previous comment contains far more than 3 omissions! I don’t want to see FTM release another error ridden, poorly tested product but do want to know if the company going to develop using previous “customer feedback” or feedback from the loyal customers TGN has abandoned with the FTM 2008 release.

I must say that I have to agree with Linda. I’ve used this product for a number of years, and this version is nowhere near ready for prime time.
I’ve worked in software development for many years as well, and prioritization, development, and debugging should take place before release. Here it appears that you have unleashed a monster on us (and made us pay for the priveledge). It is interesting that registration, the “first step” so to speak, does not even work for me.
I’m very very hesitant to buy the “dropped based on customer feedback” line if that’s what has been put forth. In all the years I’ve used prior versions I’ve attempted to provide feedback numerous times, and in my experience I can recall only one case where I actually spoke to someone and felt like they were listening. Nothing I suggested, however, was ever implemented.
I have de-installed 2008 for the time being and hope someday that it might be acceptable, but I honestly feel like you could be as much as a year off from having a releasable product in this regard. I would encourage you to support version 16 for as long as necessary into the future.

Ben,

I too want to applaud you finally providing an “official” FTM interactive voice. I’ve been following a number of mailing lists whose members have been frustrated because they input problems and get NO official reply. I think Dave’s comment is MOST valid -

“2.If you had a place where you could list a few of the major problems you are aware of and are working on, it would reduce a lot of the frustration users have.”

I think we are all adults and know that schedules slip (we’ll assume that’s what happened with initial release of FTM 2008 and you didn’t purposely release a product that was bodgie and bug filled and so many expected features missing!). So giving us a list of reported problems that you have been able to duplicate and then schedule for rectification with a priority code (so we know which ones will appear first) would be MUCH appreciated.

Having the opportunity for users to indicate their vote of importance would also help you sequence the priorities.

While I also commend Fred’s list, I’m going to hope that is not the 1st time you have seen such a list. Many others have posted this kind of comprehensive list of “missing functionality in FTM 2008 that was in previous versions” and “new problems with new functionality introduced in FTM 2008″ in various lists. Lists we were assured were “monitored” by FTM development. In fact I think I submitted something similar to the Dave, Beta Test manager. (Who by the way I think did a great job under tremendous pressure from many directions and under an impractical timetable).

So on behalf of more than 300 members of a FTM Users Group that I facilitate based in Sydney Australia we welcome this Ancestry Blog and especially this Family Tree Maker section with direct output from FTM company people! GREAT step in the right direction. Now let’s make it productive for both FTM and users by publishing some REAL information and not just ongoing marketing hype.

BTW, I for one vote for the return of “in program books” (as opposed to using Ancestry Press) as a high priority project.

Did I, or Fred, miss something? Does FTM 2008 not have the ability to upload various to the FTM supplied users web site?

Regards,
Larry Czarnik
2007OC03 19:25 Sydney, 03:25 UT

I am so dissappointed. I’m not a techy at all, but so so diaasppointed. It won’t do anything I need, i.e.
Annentafel
import my previous FTM file of ONLY 35,013 people.
its confusing and odd.

Dissappointed in place withheldland

Benjamin,

I hope you can solve my problems.

1. I can not import my complete file. I have about 22,000 individuals and 8,000 pictures. If I use a subset of about 1,500 individuals, it will import. So, for now I can GEDCOM import with no photos or ftv with no facts. Neither is a workable solution.

2. When I did a ftv import the response of the system is much too slow to be usable.

3. I have been using FTM from the very beginning of its roots and have grown to expect always more functionality, and it needed more. Like longer names, more customizable charts, and better book creation.

4. Where is FTM 8 going to be in 1 month, 3 months or a year? behind or ahead of version 16. It really isn’t an acceptable approach to be left using version 16 for many more months.

5. But realistically I don’t see where you will be getting all the results you need to improve FTM 8 in a timely manner.

and finally–
6. I need more encouragement than has been forthcoming to date.

I’ve looked and can’t see any way to turn on error reporting directly to FTM. Can someone tell me where to set this up so that FTM can see what’s happening when 2008 crashes?

Benjamin, I have been an FTM user for many years. I was really looking forward to FTM2008. The graphical interface of earlier versions was pretty clunky and difficult to navigate. HOWEVER like many other people have voice on the FTM forum I have been unable to import files from previous verions. Many visits to tech support have been fruitless…so I have given up. No way can I manually enter all of the data and source files again. Also I am not willing to upload my 600MB file to tech support with no promise of return or comment. It is also a privacy issue.

I just cannot understand how fundamental issues such as being able to importing previous generation files could be missed. How much testing was done on this product before release ??? Was this a business decision that forced a pre-mature release ??

I look forward to your return comment

Paul

Ben,

As an experience FTM user for more than 10 years in an effort to provide an independent review of FTM 2008 for the many email requests I have received from prospective buyers, I have produced the online location Critical Review.

I have provided many feedback comments and questions to your development team requesting verification of the many problems I found with the RCI beta - most of which continue with the released version.

Although I now don’t expect to receive any response to my many emails, I hope you will at least answer the following questions with a response posted in this blog.

1. Specifically, what features of v16 will NOT be included in the immediately forthcoming updates/service packs for v2008?

2. Will the inordinate slow processing of files over a few ten thousand individuals be corrected and if so how soon?

Thanks,

Larry Chesebro’

When will the API for PLUG-INS be documented and available for the public?

I have used FTM for years and have updated every time a new version was released, until this time. If you hadn’t offered the Beta testing, I would certainly have bought 2008 but by showing me in advance that TGN has no interest in the needs or wants of their loyal customers, no understanding of why or how we use a genealogy software, and so little respect for us that you would knowingly release software that was no where near technically stable, I was able to avoid wasting money on this version. I was so disappointed in FTM2008 that I decided to look around and to my surprise, I found something so far superior to FTM v16 (which, by the way, is far superior to FTM2008) that I have been kicking myself for waiting so long to look around. So, I just wanted to thank you for pushing me away. I might never have realized there is a much better product out there if you hadn’t.

Right now, TGN is focusin on the errors and missing reports but there are many secondary and tertiary issues that are quite important to those of us who use the program every day.

I would like to see a posted list of “Known Issues” that categorizes problems as “Being fixed”, “will fix”, “will not be fixed”.

I would also like to see some way to comment on the things that were “removed based on customer feedback”. My impression is that the wrong questions were asked about some of those features and users should be given a better form to submit feedback.

Finally, I wish we had true “custom” reports. It should be possible to generate a report based on values in any combination of fields and multi-sort the resulting list.

Benjamin,

In version 16, if there was one user interface feature that set FTM apart from all the others, it was the ability to move in and out of charts with one key stroke, by just clicking on an individual in a tree you would go to that individual’s family page where you could make changes and additions. Then tab back, again one key stroke, to the chart to view changes. I think for a lot of users this functionality was indispensible; especially when you begin to manage large trees.

Will this feature be reintroduced? And if so how soon?

Having used FTM since v6 I was looking forward to FTM2008, having seen the preview videos the Input screens seemed to answer just about everything I wanted - however the reality is this version has lost its ease of data entry, and appears to have decided we no longer need to output the data in any format. Even those features that appear to be improved in actual use are very downgraded shadows of their former functionality. The Individual Index lacks any method of identifying same name individuals, the family view and Pedigree View have lost their data entry, although the improvements generally allow a wider input and encourgages me to make full use of the Source Screen. I was extremely disappointed to find that the output, a perhaps even more important as a function, had been virtually abandoned in this version gone is virtually all the formatting of reports and with it the usefulnes of this program. In order to try and salvage a report it now appears I need to export to gedcom load into v16 and then create the report. When the Generaslogy Classes I teach resume next week I will be recommending PAF, instead of FTM for the first time in 10 years.

Ben

I have been using FTM for a number of years and currently am using FTM Version 16.

After reading the many negative comments about FTM 2008 on this message board

http://boards.rootsweb.com/topics.software.famtreemaker/mb.ashx

I will not be upgrading unless I hear a lot of positive comments about future upgrades. I number of users have already switched to other programs and I am thinking of doing the same thing.

You should monitor and participate on this board if you want to know what your users are saying.

Curt Miller

I hesitated to post anything since I have decided for the next year not to use 2008 which I own but to continue using V 16. Some are using both but I do not know of anyone that is using 2008 as their primary database. This seems like a waste of time to me as I have lots of data to check and enter without doing it twice.

I was Technical director for a startup database for people selling items on the internet. we kept the site closed with limited access. Part of my task was to listen to the beta team 300 selected people who looked at and used the site from their input we formed the structure of the database and the web layout and constructed the sellers area and the public area. It was not easy and took several hours a day to keep lists prioritized and post weekly letters to the testers.

None of this happened with 2008 that I am aware of I also directed the testers to test areas we were concerned about. The 2008 beta was for what could bwe seen a freeform repetetive uncoridinated group. I viewed my testers as at least 1 to 2 additional employees that I did not have to budget for. By telling them where and what to test the programmers were free to write code. We launched almost two months ahead of schedule. Was their some functionallity missing yes but the abiity of sellers to upload their inventory using a variety of programs was completed and working with out errors customers could search using a variety of key words. Reports on customer queries were produced and could be viewed by the customer. I suggested this to the development group several times because testers just looked at what they used many items saw no beta testing and so their status was not known.

A short list 6 to 12 items in the que for attention is enough and a weekly report is often enough and is in line with the basicc corporate status meetings for projects so it fits right into the process without causing undue extra work. A short note is all that is needed in work second revision is being tested specifics will confuse and cause more concerns.

I would consider reopening the Ohana test forums they are still working and using those 30 to 50 most dedicated people to run beta tests on specific areas of the program If these people are utilized and directed then you in effect have an extra person on the team helping to test the changes so that the programmers can focus on coding.

Bill Lewis

I am very disappointed with FTM 2008 also.

The descendant chart created does not allow each fact typree to be shown in a different colour, also no word wrap facility.

Apart from the links to the mapping facility, I think it is WORSE than previous versions.

TGN putting out a product that was not ready and ignoring feedback should not surprise anyone: they forewarned us of this type of behavior when they changed the boards last December. Ladies and gentlemen, 10 MONTHS have passed and they have yet to return the boards to the core functionality off the old boards…If you’re expecting FTM 2008 to be substantially fixed, are you also interested in buying a bridge?? If they hold true to the form they set with the boards, you’ll get a few band-aids over the next couple of months and then…NOTHING!

TGN has incompetent programmers and the “development team” members have little or no genealogy experience - as proven in their own self-written bios!

Benjamin..so if it wasn’t the customer feedback that resulted in the decision to remove core functionality and reports available in previous versions, what was the reason?

Since TGN has not acknowledged that those items removed (Fred’s list plus other items submitted to feedback and discussed in the FTM message board at Ancestry.com) were important to the customers, I’m assuming at best only some of the functionality will be “reintroduced”.

Benjamin, it really is incomprehensible how you and the other decision makers at TGN could decide to release such an obviously poor quality and incomplete product. Unlike another poster, I put full blame on the management rather than the programmers and testers. Programmers and testers don’t need genealogy experience if the specifications are well written and the input from customer groups is correctly analyzed and applied. I was a QA manager for a software company and if our application was anywhere near the condition of FTM 2008, we would not even had considered release. We had one major rewrite too so that isn’t an excuse. Bad quality is more costly than delays in release.

I had hoped that the loyal customers would receive an apology and assurances that the next full release in a year or two would include the capabilities of versions prior to FTM 2008. Except for saying a few popular reports and charts and the offline book creation will be “reintroduced”, we know nothing else after two months of expressing our concerns. As TGN applies its resources to trying to fix all the problems in a production version with patch after patch (bad development method), your competitors are going to be able to improve their products in the areas that FTM was once superior. I’m sure they will be patient enough to release only after thorough testing and won’t remove functionality or reports that are valuable to existing customers.

Good luck to all the FTM customers who are holding false hope that TGN will release patches that will bring back the functionality and fix the technical problems soon and to their satisfaction. With TGN’s priorities, you guys wanting API capabilities may get it before the errors are fixed or the functionality restored. But in that case, there won’t be very many customers left to buy the plug-ins you want to sell. I’ll continue using FTM 16 for awhile but philosophically, I can’t purchase another FTM product from TGN. I’ve lost the little hope and confidence I’ve had in TGN for the last couple months.

Communication? I don’t think so. So far, Ben, you really haven’t addressed any specific issues. All we have is another promise of releasing a road map. I posted this blog link a few days ago on Ancestry.com FTM message board and those who responded were negative that anything will happen or started discussing alternatives to FTM. Ben, you really should read the Ancestry.com FTM message board postings since the release of FTM 2008. It is far more than just a few minor problems or getting used to the new interface inherant in release of a new version. The Ancestry.com FTM message board is more of a central places for communication of issues and concerns than this blog will ever be. You are quickly losing the customers who really care. I’m now joining them. Let’s be honest. TGN made a BIG MISTAKE releasing FTM 2008 in August!

I tried the beta version for Family tree maker 2008 and was looking forward to the new release. What I loved about it was the web search, I though it was superior to Version 16 which I have currently running. However the main thing I don’t like is that I now can not access my test file that I did with Beta 2008 b/c it will not load and is not compatiable with V16. Silly me, I never though to save a gedcom and I thought the beta would be active longer than it was. If I want to be able to retrieve it I have to purchase the full program but after reading several reviews on several different sites I am leary to purchase. I was as stated really looking forward to it b/c of the web search and dread going back but not prepared to put out money if I can not have all the other functionality I loved with V16

I need help. Where do I go to find an answer for inputing FTM infor? How do I input adoptive parent and birth parent?

THANK YOU!

Looking at Mark Niller’s comments I want to add that I have used FTM 2008 for 8 days and it has frozen 11 times. There is a serious problem with this software.

For information to Users - The Soted Index of individuals is in a different order when the merge individuals comes up. Creating chaos in the merge individual process.

When you have say 3 people with the same name and you have decided to merge individual 1 and 3 from the main index. They could be individual 2 and 3 in the individual merge window index.

I have been working with FTM since 1994 and have about 30 000 individuals in my family tree. (I am not a novice with FTM)

Having been working with FTM 2008 for about 4 days I have come to the conclusion that something is seriously wrong in this rewrite!!! I am seriously considering going back to FTM 2005 or finding other family tree software.

Those people who have re-written this software have lost some of the core aspects of how software supports geneologists in their quest to share and gain information.

The reporting functionality is now a disaster, the reduction of reports and the inability to include items (eg the Outline Decendents Chart) makes some of the reports useless. Never mind not having an Ancester Report???

I tried to use the Book feature to do the report only to find that that part of the software has been removed to Ancestry.com. This means that your info has to be uploaded and then downloaded when you want to use it. How many of the users are on ISDN telephone lines or limited DSL lines. This part of the new software is limited or useless to most of us in Africa.

Worst of all so far is that thr Reference ID fileld has only carried forward the numeric index numbers. Most of my 30000 individuals have a letter in front of it as was allowed in all the previous versions. I have much of my media information offline and index by the Reference ID field. I am now doomed to manually capture this back into the system for about 24000 people. This is months of work that the software writers in their absentmindedness have condemed me to doing. THIS IS A POOR SHOW!!

I think a software patch for this should be issued immediately.

Family Tree Maker 2008
I have been working with FTM since 1995 and have about 28,000 individuals in my family tree. (not a fist time user with FTM)

Reading the REMOVED LIST on the “Family Tree Maker Blog” I now find that all the AKA’s have been removed WHY? You can put them back manually if you want to - MANUALLY - what happened with the programming? AKA’s help differentiate whos who when you have all the eldest sons in a family with the same name! In previous versions you could search for an AKA and find the right person.

The Reference Numbers have been removed, you can put them back MANUALLY as well - why have a computer at all?

Just try doing a merge without a Reference Number and you have 15 people with the same name some of whom also have the same parents - you have no clue in FTM 2008 who to merge who with - its a nightmare.
Did the programmers understand how a one name study works? I have lots of groups of around 20 - 30 people with the same name.

I use the OUTLINE DESCENDENT REPORT to send to friends and family and also use it on my web page. The freedom to choose what FIELDS I want in this report have been taken away. Why? Its a simple report and helps people with the same information check easily and quickly what is different and perhaps missing on their side. It also uses the least paper and file size for emailing and is therefore the quickest option.

The Title in the Outline Descendency Report can be changed - MANUALLY, but now appears at the top of every page like a Header. The option in previous versions took the name of the first person on the list and only appeared at the top of the first page.

Being able to overwrite a name without having to click OK is a serious error - did no one even look at how the previous program worked before starting on this one?

If I cut and paste in NOTES I get double spacing for some reason - is there any way to fix this?

Also having to click on NOTES and then click on it again is such a waste of time - who thought that one up?

INDEX
For the Index the option is that you can have Birth Dates OR Death Dates - why can’t you have both as in previous programs?

If you type a person’s name into the Index just to check something, the page now changes to that person before you click on the name in the Index.

Regards
Diane
nilocr@mweb.co.za

I started my family tree on Ancestry.com in June. It was exciting, particularly when I found another family tree which included my Grandmother. She had died when my father was eight. Since we knew almost nothing about her or her family it was an exciting discovery. I even corresponded with someone whose great grandfather was my grandmother’s brother.

I wanted to share my discoveries with my sisters, so in August I order FTM 08. Based on what I read, I assumed that I would simply click on a button or two and my Ancestry.com tree would be transferred to the FTM 08 program on my computer. I could then share it with my sisters. Imagine my surprise when I could not even register the program. After a 45 minute wait at FTM 08 tech assistance, their telling me it was my firewall. I removed the firewall with no success. This was followed by long conversations with my ISP and loading new programs and by long conversations with my computer maker and their online review that concluded all was well. Several days, many hours of effort later and I still could not register the program. Finally, thanks to someone on the Ancestry Boards who told me that I needed to turn off my accelerator for my dial up, I was registered.

Problems solved. Are you kidding!! In order to transfer my 128 people in my data set to FTM 08, I had to make a GED file. Ok, but the most important things to me did not transfer. The pictures I had found on the web, the stories I had written about what I had found, the comments I had included, and other stuff detailed elsewhere were not transferred . How can you say that the linkage between Ancestry and FTM is better? You lose all the good stuff, or a least the stuff that is important to me.

Ok, with a small data set I could copy and move. A number of hours later I got most stuff moved from Ancestry to FTM 08. If I found it a problem with only 144 people, I can imagine how angry users with larger data sets are.

I then tried to merge data from Ancestry.com to individuals in my data set. The exciting thing was that I would get a copy of the census sheet that listed my ancestors. Wow! I tried and the computer screen got a somewhat scrambled look and appeared to lock. After about a minute, I ended the program. I discovered that the information was transferred, but not the image. After a number of tries and a suggestion from another user, I discovered that I needed to wait 4 or 5 minutes for the transfer to be made. Wow. I know I have dial-up, but it has been satisfactory for using Ancestry.com. Why should I assume that I would need a broadband connection to use the program?

Based on what I have read, I am exactly the type of customer for whom you designed FTM 08. I am not a hard core genealogist. I get excited when I find a relative in the Census data. I am really not interested in going back beyond the 1800’s, but I do want to find out all I can about our family in the last 200 years. I have discovered that family stories are only partly true, but the real truth is even more interesting. I come from a remarkable family.

FTM 08 will NOT be part of my telling our story. It is SLOW, clunky, full of errors, and requires a computer far more powerful than I need to do word processing, internet exploration and play bridge on line. I returned FTM 08 for a refund. Hopefully, I will get my money back. Of course, I will not receive a refund for $9 in shipping costs. I have purchased FTM, ver 16. However, I am looking for another program that will be faster and allow for better transfer of documents from the internet into my family tree.

I’ve been using FTM since it was a sapling, was pleasantly surprised when v16 allowed larger notes fields. When can “old” users expect a stable, workable 2008 version? Thank-you for your blog and replies thus far.

Best Regards,

Benjamin,

I feel you should recall the “faulty” software and provide your customers with a full refund.

Some new problems with FTM 2008 and additional comments.

I don’t know who the people were that you listened to remove the items you did but I don’t see how you could have listened to anyone based on all the complaints I am hearing. For example it makes no since to remove the default selection of female when entering a NEW person and now require everyone to be forced to now enter extra key strokes. The same can be said for Automatic backup of file on exit. Almost every other software program has a feature that the customer can select to automatically back up the file on exit. These so called features TGN took out of the program should have been options the customer could turn on and off if they wanted. You need to check out other software packages and see how they go about giving the customer what they want. My personal feelings are that TGN wanted to force these changes on us and it has backfired. All of these items are not removed from a program without some reason. If TGN was listening to customers like you said, then why aren’t you contacting people that have an IT background like others that have posted here and me to try and get to the bottom of these problems and listen to what we have to say?

As someone else stated “TGN has incompetent programmers and the “development team” members have little or no genealogy experience - as proven in their own self-written bios!” I concur with this and the fact that TGN should scrap FTM 2008 and recall it and go back to the beginning and start over with a brand new product. From my IT experience, patches will not correct the speed issues associated with FTM 2008 or the fact that it takes over 10 hours to merge a 100,000 person file with another file with only 15 people. One item that is causing this slow response is this new locations PlaceAuthority mapping that you forced on us with a separate data file that takes up 297MB. The next largest file is 3.21MB. The PlaceAuthority which is inaccurate is one item that needs to be changed.

New problems found problems in FTM 2008.

In FTM 16 a person’s height as 4 ft. 11 in. After importing data into FTM 2008, I find the person to be listed as 4 ft. 10 in.

It appears that FTM 2008 will only run on VISTA under an administrator account. This needs to be changed.

FTM 16 I had a few over 300 master sources and a few hundred that were single instance or just did not fit into any of the master sources after the 2008 import I was left with over 4500 sources with no master sources.

Sources organized under Master Sources in FTM 16. When imported in FTM 2008 the data the sources were back like they were before I spent hundreds of hours organizing them.

There is an issue with FTM 2008 not showing marriages and adding a cause of death. It is showing 000 Not Encoded 4 Jan 1918 Sarah; Cause of death: Single.

Fred

It is unfortunate that you omitted features that most people liked. The non-transfer of AKA information is a grievious problem in my view.

But the single most pressing issue is the abominable performacne of the code. It takes minutes to add a neww PLACE, and FTM 2008 appears to freeze the entire computer while it is doing its index management. The same poor performance is evident in other data operations as well.

As an experienced software deveoper with 50+ years of experience, I think that the product has serious, perhaps unrepairable, architecture problems. If I am correct, you will NEVER be able to improve peroformance with a set of band-aid patches short of a complete re-write. in that case, your loyal users - including myself - should quickly look for a better alternative genealogy software system.

TGN would do us all a great service by simply being honest enough to report the facts instead of rationalizing about customer feedback surveys. Are you addressing the performance issues, what have you found, what course of action are you proposing, and what is your timetable for accomplishing them?

A simple list of the top 5 or 6 most pressing issues, along with your approach for remedying them, would be a nice first attempt at being open and homest with your immense loyal customer base.

I find the interface to ancestry.com unusable in ver 2008. In ver. 16 it opened ancestry.com hits into a separate browser window. This made recording info from that separate window to ver. 16 very easy. Under Ver. 2008 you have to keep going back and force bewtween the two internal windows. This requires much more work. The internal windo is much to small.

I will not buy the new ver of FTM 2008.

>>I These so called features TGN took out of the program should have been options the customer could turn on and off if they wanted

Exactly. My impression is that much of the new design was based on user complaints rather than consideration of the overall user base. If some people want “X”, why force everyone to go that route? Why not make these things user configurable?. I always felt that FTM was short on user configurability and FTM2008 is even worse in that respect.
I also agree with the comment here that the program window is unusable. If you don’t have a giant widescreen monitor, trying to get anything done in web search is torture. I don’t want to have to use sliders to see the actual Ancestry web page, I want a hit list. And I don’t want to have unnecessary web communication just to change the search criteria. People who pay for a desktop software program should get a more efficient tool, not just a scrunched up, unusable web page.

Note: I don’t know why my reply above was chopped off.

Where did the function of asking “Is Bob Smith the same person as Bob Smith” go? I have people in my tree who married other people in my tree: ie: 3 sisters married 3 brothers and other stuff. Could you tell me if you will be able fix that in the future, or if I’m just missing this? My family has a lot of people who inter-married, and it was so much easier before when the program asked if it was the same person.

A room full of monkeys must have directed the lack of development of this new program, not an upgrade. The code is so bad I do not believe there is anyway it can ever be fixed even if someone did think they might like the new program if it happened to work with a reasonable sized file, which it does not. I feel defrauded myself. I think the product should be recalled. I think that refunds should include postage and handling both ways. If TGN feels otherwise I’d like to know why. Short of a recall and fair total refunds I believe the bad public relations this diaster will create with long 19 years users of the real original Family Tree Maker program will gradually be the death of what was the best program for the typical and average user such as myself. TGN could step up to the plate and do the right thing on this, but TGN needs to do it now. Everyday that goes by is another nail in the coffin. Bye Bye.

Wow. What a disaster.

I’ve only been doing genealogy for a matter of weeks. I got my hands on an old version of Family Tree Maker, and was about to upgrade to the latest and greatest: FTM2008. I had my order on Amazon all filled out, and was about to click on the final check-out button when a little voice in the back of my head told me to go check the reviews. Am I glad I did.

It sounds like this release was completely botched, and was driven more by the marketing department’s desire to force people to pay to use more of Ancestry.com’s functions (e.g. creating books), than by a real desire to serve the customer by putting some polish on a winning product.

Some functions that were previously free now must be paid for (did they think people wouldn’t notice?). Some functions are gone based on “customer requests” (you must be kidding). Performance has gone down the toilet. And users are supposed to pay for this?

I’m definitely not going to buy anything from these folks, unless they get it together QUICK, and I start seeing a bunch of glowing reports posted on these message boards. In the meantime, I’m going to start investigating alternative products.

I think what concerns me most is the mindset behind FTM 2008. I have been subscribed to the FTM tech list for two years and never saw comments asking that any features should be removed from FTM. I never saw a request to change the data entry screen. Also, I never saw a request that scrapbooking capabilities should be added. I realize that it was time for a major re-write because the program was old. But, re-writing the program did not necessitate the dramatic changes that were made. This new program should not have been called FTM at all.

I hate to repeat what I’ve emailed to TGN and other forums, but I refuse to use FTM 2008 until it is fixed. This product never should have been released so soon with all of the bugs it has.

I’ve been a Family Tree Maker user since whatever version was out in 1998. This is the only version I wish I never upgraded to.

I sent the techies at TGN files and information related to importing The Master Genealogist files with external images not embedded in the data file. It was deleting my original files and copying them over with meaningless file names to be used in FTM. Apparently this has been fixed in the first service release, but importing TMG data still needs more work.

The Source Repository drop-down list has wrong information in it. Converting from my FTM 2006 data file, it is listing addresses for source repositories. The original item “Book” (from FTM 2006 drop-down list) is listed under Comments. This will be a major hassle recreating source repositories for thousands of items.

Places is picking up items from census transcribed text, alias names, and other notations and creating erroneous “place names.” Shouldn’t place names be extracted from Birth, Death, and Burial locations, and not from text in notes? I noticed you can delete places. With a list of mistakes, is it possible to delete more than one item at a time?

The place and map feature is a nice feature, but tries to update it to current times–not historic times. I know this probably has a lot to do with current maps.

I have one observation I would like to report, and one “wish”:

1) I still have FTM 2006 on my system (just in case), and I noticed that when I have FTM 2008 create a GEDCOM file for export, I get a message when it is finished asking me if I want to open the GEDCOM file to look at it. I answered “yes” one time, and the file opened in FTM 2006. I called technical support to see if this was something that could cause potential problems, and the person said he had never heard of this before. I now realize that the reason the message comes up is that the GEDCOM file that is created in FTM 2008 has an FTW extension, instead of FTM. This hasn’t caused me any problems in uploading my GEDCOM file to my tree at rootsweb.com, but it is an odd thing, and perhaps the file extension should really be FTM instead of FTW … food for thought.

2) For my wish … the only reason I hang on to FTM 2006 is that it can produce a customized report that lets me decide what to include in the fields. I find this extremely useful right now, as I am cleaning up errors in my FTM 2008 file by producing reports with certain “fact” criteria so I can alter or delete data for consistency. This would be a very useful report feature to incorporate in FTM 2008. Everyone has to clean up their files at one time or another, and this function keeps you from having to hunt through all the entries individually.

Thanks for all your hard work! I know this hasn’t been easy for any of us, but the manual I purchased has really helped, and I am looking forward to the Webinar this month.

Does FTM plan to fully integrate some future version with the online Ancestry.com Family Tree capability? I’ve spent a lot of time moving data from FTM v16 to my Ancestry.com family trees to more easily share with family and friends. I’ve also added additional data to the online trees. Until I can readily sync the online trees with FTM, I’ll probably stop using FTM - I don’t want to.

I am not going to list out the errors, missing items, many have already done this.
I will not be switching to 2008 I will stay with v.16 or I will be looking elsewhere for another program at this point.

There was also some discussion about my reference to items that were not included in Family Tree Maker 2008 because of customer feedback. I should have been more clear. I was not referring to any core capabilities of Family Tree Maker 2006 or 16. Here are a few examples of items that were removed or changed due to surveys, focus groups and comments submitted through the feedback form or Member Services:

.. but there were many core features that were removed, or forgotten about, were they just missed in the requirements gathering for this project? Was adequate analysis of the existing program not done?

• Scrapbook – This feature was replaced with a media model.
• Research Journal – This feature was replaced with the new task feature.

I can understand a change, but the fact that all of the work users have put in has not been imported into the new program, that essentially thousand of hours of collecting and compiling documents and images and items that do not fit into a “source” are no longer available and are missing, fine change it, remove it and add something else, but do not just ignore the data that has already been collected. My scrapbook items should have been imported into the media Model, just as my Research Journal should have been imported into the tasks.

Items that were removed or changed due to surveys, focus groups and comments submitted through the feedback form ….

I too am in the IT industry, I am a manager for a web application development team. What i see in FTM 2008 is that like many in the industry a focus group at some company that provides this service was used. Here data and useability and changes were compiled based on the focus group. Now I ask how many in the focus group were genealogists? how many were amateurs? how many professionals? How often do they normally spend using the software?

I for myself will admit to being addicted, like many others i know it is not uncommon for me to spend 7 days a week, with FTM open and working in it. ( which if you leave it unused for 1/2 and hour ftm 2008 goes blank and un responsive and freezes) I will many times spend hours on end, all day, all night … depending on what information I am looking for or what I may have found. Many of the changes that may have passed as acceptable in Quality Assurance, or load testing or what ever testing was done, do not pass the test when you are looking through 10,000 records and want to move seamlessly and quickly. I did a test run, I found data on ancestry.com that I was hand typing into the program. I did it for FTM 16 and then the same people and data into FTM 2008 It took me 2 hours in 16 and 4.5 in FTM 2008, I can say there is a factor of being slower because of lack of familiarity with the program so we can say that 1.5 hours were due to this, that still leaves 1 more hour, and most of it is caused by the sluggishness and slowness in moving from one person to the next, the having to click more often to get where you need to go, and the awkward dropdowns for fast fields and Sex, and the layout of where things are for adding when you are typing in information I needed in the new program to continually stop grab the mouse point, click choose, then go back to typing, this is very cumbersome and inefficient.

I think one thing in the new program that was not understood is that most who use genealogy programs want efficiency.

.. new source citation takes 2 clicks one to open the choice one to choose which one, The old way 1 click, then choose an existing or add new, since i would say the majority of the time I use an existing master source, that it should open there first.

The new source linking is a great addition, but how it eliminated my master sources is not, it has made a mess.
I do not think it was developed as sources are used.
I had one master source for the 1860 United States Federal Census
then many sources for individuals that used that master source.
I like that I can include the page, data and information for one Source to may individuals in the same family. But I should still be able to tie that to a master source. as I tie my Master sources to a repository. This is in my opinion an added value being added to reduced functionality.

One think I have not heard about is the new look colors, I find the new version much harder to read,the font is too small and the “brighter” look is more indusive to eye strain.
It may look neater and more modern but all the gradients and text on color and sometimes text in color, is more difficult to read. My husband is color blind, the blue on blue is almost impossible to read, The use large fonts is still not large enough, if this is to be truely cusomizable then let me pick my font, let me pick the colors and “skin” i want to use, this would go a long way towards useability.

on the positive side, I love the addition of research notes for each person, I have used in FTM the scrapbook for stories and notes, and the Notes for research notes. I like the addition of both.

In the end I see countless hours over many months where i would have to re bring all of those old scrapbook items into the new version. If I add the location - description clean up ( other genealogy programs when importing from FTM let you choose will this fact be a location or a description, FTM should at least do the same for their own imports), the fixing all of my sources, hand adding all of the existing reference numbers for close to 10,000 names ( my file is small)( why were they not imported?)

I think i can cancel my ancestry subscription since I will not have time to add any new information for at least the next year while I “upgrade”.. my choice is to not upgrade, I have FTM 2008 I paid for it, it will now sitwith all the other programs I own that I use for one thing or the next, I have most programs available, some I use just for a specific report option they have, or for the better gedcom exports, or file clean up. FTM has been my main program, and 16 will continue to be 2008 will nto it does not meet the needs I have for a genealogy program.

The Title tag after import is miising all of the data just like the AKA.

Also when doing a web merge data, if you want to edit the source or citation information you can not go back the the web page and copy or click elsewhere, essentially meaning you would neeed to type any changes in.

To add data to the children in the family view you need to click on each child to edit it, rather than add birth and death information to all of the children at once, This makes this part of the interface much slower than ftm 16.

I’ve used FTM for years but 2008 is a huge disappointment: nothing more than a front end for having Ancestry.com publish (at a cost) any useful output. All the meaningful reports have been removed–as the ability to make books (now it will cost you). But whenever I try to see what that feature is like, it crashes.

In fact my version crashes at least three times a session. It vanishes from screen and some 15 seconds later a box comes up to apologize for having to close.

Unfortunately I stuck it out for about a month, but even so, I’m switching to something else.

Hopefully this gets through to the appropriate person(s). Finding an email address is like finding hens teeth.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.

Family Tree Maker 2008 (17th Edition)

There was a sense of eager anticipation as I installed the latest version of Family Tree Maker 17th Edition (FTM 2008). This new version promised to be bigger, better and brighter (well, don’t they all) than the 16th edition (FTM 2007) and there were a few improvements I would like to see, so hopefully they will be in the new version.

The new version started with a completely new screen telling me that getting started is easy and I can now start a new file or as it says on screen:
“FTM 2008 can import the following file formats
• Family Tree Maker (all past versions)
• GEDCOM files
• etc”
No problems, import my main file and we’re away. Believe it or not, the importing took all day to finalise as the process would crash out because of an unknown error. It consistently crashed at different places and in the end I exported my old file as a GEDCOM and imported it that way. Only thing wrong doing it this way is I loose all my photographs. That’s no good, so back to the drawing board. Tried once again to import the old file and it work! Only took approximately 2 hours but it worked and I had my photographs. But hang about, I have now lost other important information such as the Also Known As (AKA) field, my Books from FTM 2007 weren’t there, and all dates listed as Unknown were blank. Not looking good.

By way of explanation I should explain why the AKA field is important to me. My main genealogy file covers approximately 10 families who are linked through various people and instead of 10 or so files, I have one big file which has 33, 216 people with 9,595 Families. My main interest is the McGuinness family and unfortunately there are many ways to spell this name and in case you were wondering, there are 106 ways. To enter a name as found in official and other records makes it very hard to find/trace ancestors in FTM 2007 when looking to see if you have a previous entry and if you are not careful, duplication can and did occur. To overcome this, I spell the name one way only (McGuinness) and all the variations I find go into the AKA field. This provides an important cross referencing tool/record and also helps to provide a record of all unusual or totally misspelt names found during research. For example, a distant relative’s name is spelt Kalmbach but it is not unusual to find it spelt/recorded as Cullenbach. While this is only one example it highlights the value of this information and it is also a major time saver. You find it once and once only.

Whoever penned the words the “program has a fresh new look and feel” “we’ve made it easier than ever to enter, view and edit you data” and “and a wide variety of output choices.” obviously hasn’t used it or if they did, not very thoroughly or rigorously.

My overview of the new version of FTM 2008 is that new program is too busy looking at things over the Internet and at ancestry.com.au databases in particular (with associated fees of course!) and this to me, is highlighted by the words “Using Family Tree Maker with Ancestry.Com.Au” which appear on the inside cover of the box the discs arrived in. Because of this, other things (that should be) in the program have suffered and suffered badly.

Anyone serious about researching their family tree will tell you there is no such thing as Instant Genealogy. Each month I read my copy of Australian Family Tree Connections and somewhere in the magazine this point is emphasised. They state “You must verify every single piece of information you are given, especially if it comes from the Internet” and unfortunately the creators FTM 2008 are trying to head us in the wrong direction by encouraging such an “instant genealogy” approach.

Well, what do I like in the new version on Family Tree Maker? I like the following:-
a) the Home Person concept which Legacy have had for a while, however it does not recognise the wife of the home person. States no direct relationship, and while this is strictly correct, she is still his wife and should be identified as such;
b) the age of the selected individual is shown;
c) World Place Advisor or some similar program is built in and appears easy to use; and
d) Maps – a built in program which looks like it could be useful. Haven’t fully tested it yet.

That’s the good new, now for the bad points:-
a) The new Family Screen is very busy and appears to be a cross between the Family View and Pedigree View and has an Index down the left side of the screen and is totally different to FTM 2007. So much so, it will take a long while to get used to it. I prefer the Family View of FTM 2007;
b) Not all data came across (see above). The recorded “unknown” dates were not brought across. If you knew a person was dead but hadn’t discovered the date, unknown indicated that. With the field left blank this could mean anything. Overall it downgrades your information and research efforts and in Reports tends to indicate the person is still alive;
c) Because of the size of my file and no doubt the age of my computer, running reports is a signal to go and make a cuppa. It is slow! I know you advised users to have the latest all singing all dancing computer equipment, but these all cost money;
d) In FTM 2007 I spent a lot of time and effort setting up the Master Source list. Then I had one list, now I find I have two. One list of Sources and a list of Repositories. The program has made an arbitrary decision to spilt my list and I’m not happy with this – two places to check;
e) My Bookmarks are gone and need re-setting. Time wasted.
f) My Books are gone and will need re-doing. More time wasted.
g) The reporting side of FTM 2008 has not improved one inch, in fact it has made a giant leap backwards. Up to FTM 2007 any reports produced were limited in that you had to print a whole report (for me all 33,000 names!) to find say 30 people who had a FACT recorded against them. FTM 2008 is a database, all-be-it a special kind, but no doubt similar or the same as Microsoft Access so why can’t we make the same type of reports/queries as one can in Access? This would allow me to print one (1) page in lieu of 1,278 pages! This type of reporting did not happen in FTM 2008 as I hoped.
h) The Outline Descendants Report in FTM 2007 used to be useful. Each report could include a wide or small range of useful information and I would use this type of report in PDF format to exchange information with colleges. Not anymore! All you can do now is change the heading and it took me a while to work out how to do that! All you get now is Name, and year born and died making it a totally useless report;
i) The Genealogy Reports are gone. As you no doubt remember, these reports could be arranged in Register Format, NGS Quarterly Format (both descendant ordered) or Ahnentafel (ancestor ordered). Again these were useful for exchanging information and could be exported as PDF files;
j) Custom Reports? Gone! There was a reasonable range to choose from and one I did use was the Data Errors Report. While you did not have any control over what was included/excluded in the report, at least you could note the errors and if necessary, find and fix the error. Not anymore!;
k) While discussing these reports another point of issue. In FTM 2007, you could double click on a name in a report and the Individual Dialog or Family View page for the individual would open and any corrections required could be made. This was a quick and accurate way of editing/fixing information. In FTM 2008? Forget it, its gone;
l) Master Sources – big icon on main screen which I clicked on but could not find how to add a new one. Found that later in a different place. Overall you have taken a straight forward easy to follow system for Master Sources from FTM 2007 and made FTM 2008 very confusing and hard to follow;
m) Inserting a new Source record in not straight forward and is very confusing. I entered a source record against a fact to see how it works and then I tried to delete it – and I couldn’t! Absolutely brilliant;
n) There is a totally new set of shortcut keys. F2 still exists, but F3 to F8 are gone. F8 and Alt F8 in particular were very useful, so I suppose why keep them;
o) Entering new Facts. In FTM 2007 I use “Fact” to record the details of any Convicts. The entry in the Description space for any such ancestor read for example “Convict (Lady Juliana, 2nd Fleet - 3 June 1790)” and when printing Family Trees for Ancestors (or descendants) I included this fact in the report. This allowed people to see clearly who were convicts. Because of the way Fact is structured in FTM 2008, this information was not imported, i.e. LOST. More time to be wasted in finding and re-entering the information;
p) In FTM 2007 when you pressed F2, the Index of Individual pops up. It does the same in FTM 2008, BUT in the 2007 version , when you highlighted a name, showed that persons AKA and Spouse name. Not anymo