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We test the latest version of Family Tree Maker
It’s been a while coming, but Family Tree Maker 2019 has arrived, and a clutch of new and improved features ensure that the software gets to celebrate its 30th anniversary in style.
The headline new addition is TreeVault, MacKiev’s proprietary online backup tool
– your first year’s subscription (£20) is included with FTM itself. Not only is it FTM- optimised, but you can access your tree on a free mobile app as well as other services.
Other notable new features include Turn Back Time, the ability to review and undo any of your last 1,000 changes, and the long- overdue facility to generate headshots for profile photos without having to edit existing images. There’s also a new Tree Browser tool to provide you with an overview of all of your data files, and the program revamps its familysearch.org integration to make it possible to create a new tree from your FamilySearch
data. In addition, you can ‘match’ individuals in your tree to their online identities to access record hints – sadly, there’s no way to directly merge these into your own research.
The user interface remains fundamentally unchanged, but two welcome tweaks see hints displayed next to people’s entries in the index and counters on a person’s folder tabs to indicate how many items are enclosed inside each one. The colour
coding feature introduced in FTM 2017 now supports up to eight colours per person and allows you to include ancestors’ descendants in a colour scheme.
We were slightly underwhelmed with FTM 2017, but FTM 2019 – despite the hefty price tag (look for upgrade offers that come with a £ 30 discount) – puts this venerable application firmly back on track while challenging its rivals to up their game with their forthcoming new releases.
Nick Peers has published a full review of FTM 2019 at: whodoyou thinkyouaremagazine.com/blog/family-tree-maker-2019-review