Best Genealogy Software??

[timberup]

Merry Christmas ABers,

I have some spare Christmas Money and want to invest in a good comprehensive Family History Software that is Printable in a legible format, There are so many that I would value any advice towards a choice

[Rose Maybud]

I have 'Family Tree Maker' 2008. It's now an old edition: the up to date version may have improved. I bought it because the file format is compatible with Ancestry. As to printing, I would like it to produce charts in the traditional family tree layout and it's very disappointing. I can't see how to restrict to to, say, A3 or A4, and have it scale everything to fit. Even the simplest chart seems to need 8 sheets of paper. Perhaps I've missed something (happens a lot these days!), but I'm hoping some kind soul will say what you need to do. It could be that they mean you to use the Publish section of Ancestry and so won't encourage use of FTM.

[dotty.]

go to 'publish' on ancestry and use the 'my canvas' option, it's excellent, flexible and simple to use, you can create a whole book from your online tree on ancestry in minutes, and it's free. I have family tree maker and it's ok but i don't ever use it for printing from, it's GEDCOM which is compatible with ancestry which is good, Who Do You Think You Are is another reasonabl one i believe but i have never actually used it, only sold it.

[craft1948]

dotty when I go into publish it takes me away from ancestry.co.uk and into ancestry.com..................what am I doing wrong?

[dotty.]

you have to re-sign in on the first page of my canvas and it links your .co.uk profile and your existing projects appear, if you have any already done.

[dotty.]

I've 48 projects on there and never cost me anything except paper ink and time lol (no idea there were that many though, shows how much time i spend on the thing!)

[craft1948]

I'm obviously doing something wrong.....I've pressed publish, signed in, but can't click on my canvas :-(

[dotty.]

just click on publish, there should be an orange 'start a project' button under the images of the binders.

[craft1948]

thanks dotty, will give that a try..........

[cupotee]

I must be doing something wrong on Ancestry as its asking for money from me?

[dotty.]

you have to have a subscription of some sort to use the publish options cupotee, then you start a project and choose which format you want the project created in after you have created the project from your ancestry tree, but you don;t need to buy the end product, just print the project off onto A4 pages and you can put it in your own file.

[echokilo]

I use tribal pages on line which is means it's all stored securely - this is freto a point then you have to subscribe to keep growing the tree - it's about £15 a year. Well worth it as easy t oshare, can export gedcom files to use elsewhere too. www.tribalpages.com

[timberup]

Thanks Guys, interesting detail to take on board especially the printing aspect