1. Family Tree Maker and Alternatives
Jewish Genealogy Society of Cleveland
Norman Henke - March 6, 2016

2. Topics for Today What ‘s going on at Ancestry
The Future of Family Tree Maker
Legacy Family Tree
RootsMagic
Suggestions for the Mac
Topics for Today

3. What is going on at Ancestry
Last year Ancestry announced they were going to stop selling Family Tree Maker on Dec 31,2015. And they were going to end support on Dec 31, 2016
Ancestry is working on a new software interface that will allow other genealogy programs to access Ancestry.com
They are completely focused on the data
What’s going on at Ancestry

4. The Future of Family Tree Maker
The rights to Family Tree Maker were recently sold to Software MacKiev. They are the makers of FTM for the Mac and Print Shop
New FTM has been announced and will be available as a free upgrade to FTM 2014 users.
There will be a charge to upgrade to FTM 2017.
Interview with the President of Software MacKiev is at
The Future of Family Tree Maker

5. FTM Plan – Current Tree

6. FTM Family View

7. FTM Person View

8. FTM Sources

9. FTM Charts

10. Legacy Family Tree
Legacy Family Tree is written by Geoff Rasmussen, President of Millennia Software
Current version is
Free version at
Deluxe version with PDF manual costs $35.
Legacy is famous for their Legacy Webinars at FamilyTreeWebinars.com
Legacy shares many features with FTM and RootsMagic
Legacy Family Tree

11. Legacy Home Screen

12. Legacy Family Screen

13. Legacy Pedigree Screen

14. Legacy Index Screen

15. RootsMagic Full version is $30
RootsMagic is written by Bruce Busby, owner of RootsMagic, Inc
Recently re-written using SQL
Current version is
Free version available at
Full version is $30
Discount for FTM users available at
Webinars at
Magic Guides at
RootsMagic

16. Pedigree View shows you up to 6 generations on one screen

17. Family View shows you parents, grandparents, and children

18. Descendants View shows you up to 7 generations of descendants

19. People View lists every person in your file

20. WebSearch automatically searches popular internet databases for your family

21. Editable Timeline View puts a person's life in context

22. The Edit Screen puts all a person's information at your fingertips

23. Explorer lets you search for people by virtually any criteria

24. Web Explorer lets you search for people by virtually any criteria

25. Documenting your work is as easy as filling in the blanks

26. Choose from over 100 charts, lists, and reports

27. Create and publish your own books with chapters, indexes, and table of contents

28. Create and customize wall charts

29. Publish your family history online with the click of a mouse

30. Put your data, pictures, and RootsMagic itself on a Shareable CD

31. View and explore your places, people, and families on a world map

32. Easily find, compare, and merge duplicate records

33. Take your program and data with you

34. Suggestions for the Mac
Family Tree Maker is available for the Mac.
RootsMagic runs on the Mac with an included emulator. A native version is in the works.
Reunion is widely considered to be the best Genealogy program for the Mac.

35. In Conclusion Family Tree Maker 2014 will work till Dec 31,2016
New Family Tree Maker is available now as a free upgrade from FTM 2014
FTM 2017 will not be a free upgrade
RootsMagic will be fully Ancestry compatible soon. It will then be easy to convert to RM
RootsMagic will be fully compatible to the New Ancestry interface before the end of 2016
Facebook pages for all these companies
Google search “best genealogy software” or “best free genealogy software”