Family Tree Maker: Five Reasons to Use (and love) It | Ancestry

hi everyone Kristiania with another episode of the barefoot genealogist today we are talking about Family Tree Maker for those of you who aren't aware Family Tree Maker is a desktop software program you put it on your computer and then with version 2012 Family Tree Maker you can actually sync it with your online tree on ancestry.com so that you have that information readily available in both places also serves as a little bit of a backup now for those of you who have Family Tree Maker hopefully today there will be one or two new things that maybe you didn't know Family Tree Maker could do that will spark your interest or help you use it a little bit better for those of you who don't have Family Tree Maker I certainly don't want this to sound like a sales pitch however I'm really passionate about it I use Family Tree Maker and love it and I'm so excited about the power and the possibilities and the just what's available to me in the software so it was really difficult for me to narrow it down to five things that I loved about it but I've tried to make them a little bit broader topic so that I can talk about a few extra things under each topic so if you have any questions about Family Tree Maker or after the presentation pay attention some of your questions may be answered but if you have any questions after the presentation and you're watching this live I will be available on chat immediately following the presentation to answer some of those questions so let's dive in with reason number one why I use Family Tree Maker and love it it is just the ease of use and the navigation and I'll show this to you in just a minute I don't expect you when I show you my Family Tree Maker I don't expect you to be able to read everything on the screen and it's a little bit smaller and maybe a little bit blurry for some of you depending on your internet connection speed the purpose is not for you to be able to read every birthdate and place on my screen the purpose is for you just to get a general idea of the layout and how it all works so reason number one that I love Family Tree Maker is the ease-of-use in the navigation all information is available on one screen so it's all in one place and this is my personal favorite I don't have to wait for pages to load every time I click to a new person or want to look at a list or whatever like I'm not waiting for the internet to load that particular page so let me just show you what that looks like here is my family tree maker you can see there is a pedigree this is my grandfather here there is a pedigree chart right here I can click on his name and over here or my you know whoever right you'll notice every time I click on a name in my tree it does two things one it changes this personal information panel over here on the right-hand side so I just click on it and it gives me the information about that person it also changes the family or the family group sheet information down here at the bottom of my screen so in one pedigree view I can just click my way around my tree again noticing I'm not having to wait for an internet page to load every single time I do that I can just click my way through that pedigree or through this and family group sheet and get the personal information about the person over here now this panel over here is fully customizable there's a little customize button down here and so I can put whatever information I want in this screen I've chosen to put birth death marriage and then I have some personal values that I have added things about DNA and online trees and Facebook and whatever like this is just information that I've added into my database as and customized FAQs and I include that in that screen for my purposes but I could add a burial fact christening fact and anything that's in your family tree either online or in family tree maker I can add to this view now if I want to see the full information about the person I just click over here to this person tab and now this is the person that I was on and I have information about him and the notes that I've included about him and I have access to all of that information from this screen as well but I really like I do most of my work probably about Oh 80% of my work from this particular view where I just have access to all of this information now there's this other handy little thing that I can do I can pop out a list over here and this is a complete index of everyone in my tree so if I wanted to jump to somebody specific in my tree I could do that just by typing in their name and now here I am on that person in my tree so I have again I'm not waiting for this list to load I'm not having to click through screens to get to the esses or having to do a search I just type it in and up it pops so the ease of use not waiting for pages to load being able to just navigate my way around my tree very quickly and easily is a huge benefit the other thing and this is just kind of a fun thing that I really enjoy here is when you're looking at anybody in your tree actually that's pull up Walter when you're looking at anybody in your tree and I'm set as the home person in my tree you can see that over here because it gives me the relationship of this person to me and when I'm looking at this family group I don't know if you can tell this and there's little arrows and I love this a dark arrow means they have children clear arrow means they do not now obviously he doesn't have children because he died as an infant but I don't have to click down to view his information or his family information in order to see that I can tell right from this screen dark arrows have children white arrows do not now there's this orange arrow and that's there because that's my grandfather so I can tell just by looking at this list of people who my direct ancestor is because I'm set as the home person in this tree so again that ease of use and navigation and moving my way around my tree I just love that because it's fast and I'm impatient maybe okay number two and this is important to a lot of us I can in Family Tree Maker privatized specific media so I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pictures of my ancestors and that's great because I want to upload those to my tree I want everybody to be able to have access to those and to be able to see those I also have a lot of pictures of living people where I do a lot of descendancy research so I have myself and my brothers and sisters and their kids I have a lot of my cousins and their children and I have pictures of all of them and I've attached those pictures but I don't want to upload those pictures to my online tree because I don't want the pictures of those living people made available publicly now you may have different reasons for what you do or don't want to make public or private you may have some document that you've received that that tells a story that is maybe a little bit more scandalous or that is sensitive that you don't want people to necessarily have access to you may have a a set of pictures that you got from a relative and part of the agreement when you received those was that you wouldn't make them publicly available whatever your reason is a lot of people they have little things like that and so they choose to make their entire tree online private just to keep those few pieces of media private well when you have Family Tree Maker you can do that at a an individual picture or document level you can just say you know what I want to keep this private and that one document or that one picture that you privatized will then never be uploaded to your online tree so there are a couple of different places you can do this when in every person screen there is a media tab and so I could click here and say you know I want to mark this specific piece of media private there is also a whole media section where you can see all of the media that's in your tree I mean every single piece of media in your tree you can sort it by category I categorize my media by you know census records or photos or whatever and so I can I can look at my media in that fashion and then any single piece of media I select I can just come over here and I can mark it private and then that single piece of media will not be uploaded to my online tree you'll notice there's a little I can't you you might not be able to see this but there's a little lock that appears on the picture so that I can tell at a glance what media has been privatised in what media has not and you know if the person passes away or if enough time passes or whatever reason I may have I can then unpriced of it it's then available in my online tree so remember with Family Tree Maker and I sync it with my online tree and then these specific pieces of media do not get synched if they are marked private that's how that works so media privatization is something that is important to many of you and that's something you can do with Family Tree Maker 2012 so you can still make your tree publicly available at ancestry.com still have that media attached to your tree in your software on your desktop okay reason number three that I love Family Tree Maker is the opportunity and I hope I explain this right I played around with the language a little bit but the opportunity to explore possibilities so my tree online at ancestry.com is public don't go looking for it because I don't need you all pointing out all of my errors and mistakes but it gives me the opportunity to explore abilities so if I get information that you know here's an ancestor go check this out often times I want to explore that I want to see if this really is the right person I want to put them in my tree and see what hint ancestry.com comes up with but I don't want it in my online tree where just anybody can see that and take it and copy it as if it was you know the truth before I've proven it and so it allows me to do some of that I just don't think my tree my desktop tree with my online tree I don't sync them until Ivy you know proven or disproven that theory and of course then if I disprove it I can really easily and quickly delete those people and there whatever media I may or may not have attached and out of my tree without it affecting my online public tree so it allows me to explore possibilities it allows me to check out hints for people it also allows me to if I have information like I've received Jed comms from cousins and family information from other people and sometimes I want to take the time hope when I have the time to verify that information before I make it public and put my name on it sometimes I want to you know check their research make sure that they've done it correctly so all of this the Family Tree Maker allows me to do all of that on my desktop software I just don't sync it to my online tree until I know that that piece of information is accurate or somehow verified and so it's just it's just a handy way you'll see here and I'm sure I'll get asked this question I have these two little arrows up here it means that Family Tree Maker has changes that need to be synced with my online tree I have my sync options set to do it manually I do not do it automatically for a couple of reasons one because I want to control when i sync my tree or don't sync my tree another reason is when it's automatic some there's some times I have discovered that there are some problems depending on what internet I'm connected to and whether the Internet is is you know running at a high speed at the moment or if there are interruptions it just and sometimes if it causes if it hangs up or causes a problem then I have to you know go through the whole unlink my tree relink my tree resync everything and it's just kind of a big pain and so I've decided for myself that I am going to only sync my tree manually I also show the changelog before sinking because I want to see exactly what is going to sync and I also have this selected download citation media from ancestry which means that if I've attached a census record it doesn't just attach the citation that they were found in this census but it actually downloads the image of the census to my computer as well so again that's found in your sync options if you just come up here click on sync options and switch this to manual of course that remains you have to remember to run that sync it's not going to happen automatically for you without thinking I am I you know if I've been doing a lot of work and Family Tree Maker and I haven't synced my changes in a while then you know I may run the risk of losing that as if I don't know if I have it backed up or whatever so you have to remember to actually run that sync but but it allows you to do some of these things where you can play around with some things or some possibilities or options before you actually do that okay number four and this is probably the number one thing we get asked the most questions about whenever we put up a request on Facebook for suggestions or ideas and one of the things that comes up over and over and over again is this idea that people want to be able to query or search their own tree based on whatever criteria and probably the number one request we get is by place they want to be able to pull up a list of everybody in their tree who ever lived in this specific location or who died in this county so that they can go you know look for tombstones or you know I mean just there's there's also the option of querying by timeframe of course we know that all women should be entered into the family your family tree by their maiden name right we don't include their married names in their in their name because we then marry them and that shows up that way but family tree maker allows you to search by whatever kind of query or parameters you want to search by if I want to pull up a list of everybody who's ever been affiliated with Henderson County North Carolina that's on my mind or if I want to do a search for anybody in my database who is a male who was born in the timeframe that would have required them to be registered for the World War one draft or if I want to pull up a list of all women named Sarah who are married to a Shipman man right I can do that in Family Tree Maker I can't do that in my online tree that kind of query power or database power and just isn't there and yet it can be or is in your software now I could do a whole presentation I probably should on how to run these queries but let me just show you a few examples I do most of my queries just for queries sake in this index panel here I have a filter button and it brings up this list so I can say you know I want to find out all of the let's pull up Jacob Shipman and I want the Jacob Shipman that was born in nope let's try that again Jacob Shipman um I don't think that's the right let's try this one and I want a list of all of the descendants of this person so everybody who descends from this one man I can do that and it tells it creates a list over here and it tells me that there's five thousand three hundred and fifty eight people in my database who are descendants of this particular Jacob shipment when I click OK what weapons then over here is that's all that shows up in my list so I can work my way through this list of people over here as descendants of this man and it gives me a focus for my research so I it's just a it's just a different way to view your data and I can again like I said I can do it my place if I wanted to see let me just exclude all I want to filter in anybody who has a place that contains Henderson North Carolina anywhere in you know they were born they're married they're died there whatever anybody who's affiliated ever in their life with this particular location it's going to query my database and sometimes because my database is big these queries take just a few minutes and then it gives me this list of 459 people in my database who are affiliated with that particular location in this case she was born there she died there her children were all born there right and I can then work with a specific location that way I could also further filter my list so I have this list I could say you know what I want to filter out so I filtered in everybody associated with Henderson County I now want to filter out anybody who was born after 1900 for people who were born before 1900 or lived there before 1900 and now my list is down to 161 people so if I'm working with the census in that location and I want to see what surnames I should be paying attention to in that place as I go through the censuses in that County then there's a list right so that's just like I said I could do a whole presentation on filters I love them I use them extensively in my research and it helps to keep me focused it helps to give me search direction and opportunity it also helps me to make sure that I'm collecting information about entire families which always helps me break through my brick walls okay well I have a couple more minutes so let's move on number five and it's kind of related to number four another thing that we get asked questions about a lot and are how to create charts or reports I want to create a pedigree chart I want to see a list of you know all the people in my tree I want to be able to print out something a lot of you are still very much tactile people like I am you want something that you can hold in your hands or hang on your wall I've got a fan chart and a pedigree chart both plastered on my wall in my at my desk here at work so I need that I want to be able to have that readily accessible to me or to share with other people and so in family tree maker there is just about no end to the kinds of genealogical reports and charts you can create you can also run customized lists based on any one of those filters that we just talked about so I could run a list of date the data error report I did a whole presentation on this and I'll link to it when I upload this video to YouTube the data error report is fantastic it lets me go through or it does it for me it goes through my database and it looks for obvious errors things like you know mothers who are you know under the age of 13 when their children are being born or children who were born after their mothers died or you know marriages before the age of 10 or whatever like it runs through there's I think there's um Oh probably 13 or 14 different types of data errors that I could have it check for and then it creates this list so that I can go through and make some of those changes clean some of those things up figure out where I went horribly wrong or did I just type the wrong century which sometimes happens too I can also create to-do lists which you can do on your online tree but this allows me to print that list out I can create those location-based lists if I'm going to traipse around a cemetery and for example and I want to print out a list of everybody I know who died in that county to take with me to the cemetery I can do that let me just show you where to find those reports they're going to be under this publish button here you can click on here and you can see over here I have charts so pedigree chart it's descendants charts relationship charts I mean just any kind of possible way to view the information in your ancestry I also have jenny ology reports where i can actually print out i know a lot of you like to print out all of the details about somebody and put it put them in binders or folders it allows you to do that I can put reports about individual people and notes here's my task list I can do a timeline report for individuals or for families which I love because it puts the timeline of the whole family in one view and I can do surname reports that's always fun just lots do anything anything like there's really like we've created some standard reports but you also have the option to create any kind of a custom report any piece of information that you want to pull out and create a report or a list about you can do that and you can create reports about your media how it's being used who it's attached to and you can create reports about your sources if you want to check what things you've documented or what things you haven't documented with actual records and proving this or disproving this information and then of course you can create books or things that you can publish yourself or have us publish for you now every one of those reports anytime you create a report you have the option over here to share that report and that can be their exported to a PDF it can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet it can be exported to and to create a web page if you want to put it on your own blog or create a page a separate page for your family so there's lots of options to take this information you don't have to just print it out you can also export it into other electronic formats I know a lot of times people will take these person reports create a timeline report for the family export it as a PDF document and then attach that document back to that person as a piece of media that they upload to their tree so that it's then available for everyone so the possibilities are only as limited as your imagination or as what data you have available so lots of ways to create those reports and charts now of course I couldn't limit it to five I tried I really tried so you're going to get a bonus tip here right at the end and that bonus tip is something that is important to a lot of you it means that if you have your tree in software instead of just online at ancestry.com you have that tree available to you when you are offline if you're not connected to the internet you still have access to your tree if you want to take a break from your ancestry.com subscription for a month or two no problem you still have access to your tree which actually used you do on ancestry.com as well or maybe you didn't know that if you let your subscription lapse for a little while you still have access to your tree what you don't have access to are any of the documents that you have attached to your tree out of our databases so if you've uploaded media pictures whatever on your own you still have access to those but if you let your subscription lapse you can't click through like to the 1910 census and view that image but if you have synced your online tree with family tree maker that 1910 census image has been downloaded to your computer so you do still have access to it there even if your subscription is lapsed for a period of time for whatever reason so that that offline availability is fantastic I use it quite regularly any time I'm on an airplane or you know if I'm sitting you know in a in the home of a family member and I want to show them the family tree or what we're doing I can do that without having to be connected to the Internet so lots of really great reasons to love family tree maker I have done some previous presentations that dive a little bit more into detail on how to do some of the things that we talked about today as I mentioned when I upload this to our YouTube channel I will be sure in the in the description to list links to some of those other videos so that you can view them if you choose to do so hopefully this has been helpful for you if you're watching this live I will be on chat in just a few minutes to answer whatever additional questions you may have and we've got our may calendar I've started uploading it on to Facebook it should be finished probably by today or tomorrow we should have the whole month uploaded so that you can see what our events are for the month of May until next time this is Krista Cowen have fun climbing your family tree

Channel: Ancestry

Views: 99,983

Rating: 4.7061224 out of 5

Keywords: ancestry.com, ancestry, genealogy, family tree, family tree maker, ftm, barefoot genealogist, FTM2012, FTM2014

Id: DLw27aIbvKE

Length: 26min 42sec (1602 seconds)

Published: Thu May 02 2013