Comments on: Family Tree Maker 2009 Release

By: dsc8w

dsc8w — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:55:23 +0000

I think I am now #181 of comments under this Heading and having read thru a number of them I really wonder if the “Powers to be” ever read what we as users write about. I have been a FTM user since Banner Blue and am currently using version 16 alongside the 2008 Ancestry version and I can only reiterate the various comments about how unsatisfactory the 2008 and 2009 programmes really are and we are being asked to PAY for these so called improvements. I have been registered also and never got any email advising me of the free upgrade to 2009.
Would the Powers to be please tell us what is gloing on.
Regards from the UK
David S C Wilson

By: Peter Byford

Peter Byford — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:04:07 +0000

When are we going to get the improvements (well actually bringing 2009 up to standards of earlier FTMs)? There are loads two simple things: having a usable “back” button to go back to previous people/families etc.
2. Having the index (left hand side with facility to sort names into birthdate (or other ) order and still have names in surname, forename order.
Cheers,
Peter

By: RD Smith

RD Smith — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:29:42 +0000

I also started using FTM when it was owned by Banner Blue (ver. 3?) and have upgraded in the intervening years. I have most recently been using FTM 2005 and just upgraded to FTM 2009. I wish I had read these postings before I did. I find the lack of ease of use of the program appalling. It is extremely hard to navigate around from one person to the next.

I also find MANY things missing:
—no way to sort the media (I would like a choice of what to sort on, i.e. by photo date, photo type, etc and no way in choosing which photo type will be used in a chart, you must go to each individual in your chart and change the photo)
—no direct-descendant only charts
—no way to produce my own book without having to pay ancestry.com to do it (getting greedy I think)
—no all-in-one chart
—no calendar and birthdays
—no way to position photos in the charts where I would like to have them
—no way to choose the size of boxes (all charts with photos seem to be always horizontal–my one page Family Tree Chart turned into 4 pages with small thumbnails added and my 3-page descendant chart in FTM 2005 turned into a 6-page descendant chart in FTM 2009-same info in each)
—no choice of which item to sort on for reports-example: for the Marriage Report, it is sorted on the husband only, I would like to sort by wife also
—no way to add more than one fact to a person, i.e. a new person with sex, birth info, and death info – each fact must be added one item at a time (OH and by the way, when I tried it the first time it closed suddenly and sent an error report…)

I could go on, but I only installed it yesterday and haven’t explored it all yet.

The huge increase in program size does in no way change the fact that it seems you have taken a truly useful program and hopelessly “improved” it into uselessness. It may look pretty, but it has lost too much. I will stick with the old version or find different software.

I have noticed that there have been no official comments to any of the problems posted on this page. Will any of these problems be addressed and where???

By: Gwain52

Gwain52 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:10:40 +0000

It is good that you allow users to include Web Citations. However, although Web Citations appear in several locations, the only place where they are hypertext-enabled is in the Reference Note field in the Sources tab. URLs should be hypertext-enabled in every location where they appear.

I am not a genealogy expert. I am an amateur trying to produce something that family members (who also are not genealogy experts) will find interesting, useful and entertaining.

It so happens that one branch of my family has many royal ancestors who have entries in Wikipedia. I do not want to reinvent the wheel. I would like to make it very easy for family members who use Family Tree Maker to be able to click on URLs entered in the Web Citation field wherever it appears and jump to the page in Wikipedia.

It should not be necessary for users to go to the Sources tab to find a hypertext link for an ancestor. Please add hypertext capability to every instance of a Web Citation. Thank you.

I have an extensive database in Family Tree Maker, but I stopped entering any more data in your program about eight months ago when I realized how difficult it is to enable users to find Web Citations in FTM. I do not know if this problem is the intentional result of some sort of genealogical “snobbery” that has caused you to want to make links to sites like Wikipedia difficult. However, I suspect that I am not the only user of FTM who would like to have this capability. I hope you will fix this problem ASAP so that I can resume using your software and eventually upload my information to Ancestry.com. Thank you.

By: Nick A.

Nick A. — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:20:45 +0000

UTF-8 encoding – when?

I have been waiting for ever and this feature has yet to be included.

I guess you do not want non-english trees.

By: Debbie Candelas

Debbie Candelas — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:44:16 +0000

I have just switched from a different program to FTM 2009. I would very much like to have the calendar function for birthdays and anniversaries. When will this function be available?
Thanks

By: Dean

Dean — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:13:07 +0000

Upgrading from version 4 to 18, I was astonished to discover the calendar had been eliminated. It was my most popular Christmas gift for the extended family. Now I have to maintain the old version, too. Please make it available as soon as possible.

By: Janet Crosby

Janet Crosby — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:45:36 +0000

Can’t believe that that it’s not possible that each person is not given an ahnentafel number! Is it true? My entire system is based on that organization (1 – 2000—) I previously used PAF software and numbers were listed very nicely. Is there an alternative?

By: Susie Martin-Rott

Susie Martin-Rott — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:20:12 +0000

As a 10 year user of FTW I must tell you I’m not very happy with the 2009 version and am starting to regret leaving my 2006 version behind. The user interfaces are clunky to navigate through and some of the more useful reports seem to have vanished or are so well hidden as to not be usable. Particularly important, the “Custom Report” where we could set our own criteria, and the “Duplicate Facts” reports do not appear to be available in the 2009…or are they???

These two reports have allowed me to easily clean up “messy” databases in the past…am I now “blind” or are they not there for me to see?

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:56:50 +0000

The Version FTM 2009 book feature still being worked on – will I be able to open my Version 16 books into this new version or will I have to re-enter all the data and pictures?