Family Tree Maker 2009 Essentials

My wife is an avid genealogist and has been using Family Tree Maker for many years. I purchased this for her to replace FTM 2006 that she has been using for the last 3 years or so since that version would not run properly on our new Windows Vista PC (by the way, this 2009 version runs fine on Vista 64 bit, SP1). We had purposefully skipped the upgrade to FTM 2008 because of all the negative reviews we had read.

My wife has been using FTM 2009 for about 3 weeks now, and she loves it. She tells me that there is nothing she could do in FTM 2006 that she cannot do in FTM 2009. (One caveat here - she uses FTM extensively as a research tool and as, of course, a database, but she does not do much printing / publishing with it). She did say there is some "re-learning" to be done, figuring out where to go in the new interface to get things done, but she found the included printed documentation helpful in that regard. Furthermore, she loves how well integrated the Internet is with the rest of the application; e.g., she really likes the integration of Microsoft Virual Earth under the "Places" tab.

One minor issue we had getting it all set up was the download & install of the Enhanced Image Viewer. While the installation file itself downloaded from Ancestry.com OK, it was not an executable file as downloaded. In order to run it, I had to manually add ".exe" to the end of the file name to make it an executable. Then, every time we tried to run it, we got a generic error message that said the installation had failed & to contact FTM support. Only after rebotting the PC & restarting FTM 2009, would it then install. But, in the end, I did not feel this minor annoyance warranted taking away a "star" from my ranking.

Works great . I like the product. Finally updated old 1996 version .

Some what generic looking in appearance but well thought out. I've been using the version 7 for almost 10 years. I tried to load the old version 7 onto my Laptop containing Microsoft XP and failed the attempt. So, I thought it was time for an upgrade. I'm very happy......Family Tree Maker 2009 Essentials

I've been doing genealogy on and off for years, and haven't used FTM for a while. I've been rebuilding my family history [...] and decided it was time to get desktop software, and decided to get FTM 2009 because I figured it would make things easier to switch back and forth. Now, I've been using computers since I was a child, and am quite comfortable with them, but I am having a terrible time navigating around this software. It does not recognize sources that I linked to people in Ancestry, and keeps giving me hints for these sources. I am having to go in, person by person, and ignore all these hints so I don't have the little leaf on every single person. The help files have not been useful, and the email I sent has yet to be answered. I am having problems with merging information as well. I still find it difficult to move around the tree to different people and get their information up.

I don't want to scare people off of the software. It has a lot of room for your notes and sources and media and all kinds of fun stuff. It hasn't crashed (I've got Windows XP). It just isn't really intuitive, and it's likely you'll have to sit down with the instructions to figure out how to do some really basic things (no, the 1920 census is not an "alternate fact" to the 1930 census--it's a completely new source! Gah!)I have issues with any software that you end up having to buy another instruction book to really make use of it, but that's what I guess I will have to do here.

This version is soooooo much better than the prior one. Runs quickly, easy to import pictures and video. I run this on my old junky laptop and it runs really well. I have very little time anymore so when I sit down to work on this I need it to be easy to figure out, easy to manage, and I need it to run quickly. This version does all of that.