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Family Tree Software
As you find out more about your family history - you will find yourself gathering more and more pieces of information. It will help immensely if you organise this information systematically from an early point in your research. Although this can be done manually using notebooks, files and card indexes, computers can really help you not only to store information but also to view and print out that information in many different ways without retyping it.

It is possible to use existing programs on your computer (such as word processors and spreadsheets) to store information, but it can be much more straightforward to use a package specifically designed for managing your family tree. Such a package will not only store pieces of information about individuals but can also track their relationships to one another. They also give you many different tools for presenting your information - from reports and colourful charts to fully coded web pages in some cases.

Introduction

FamilyRecords.gov.uk asked a keen genealogist to look at a few software programs. We hope that you will add your comments or send in your reviews of other products so that this can be a really useful shared resource. To add your comments or submit a review of a program you find useful, use the feedback form on the contact page. Please read this important legal information before doing so.
Criteria used for peer reviews

The family tree packages covered here all meet certain basic requirements. They can all record the sort of information that you will find about your ancestors in UK archives and also record where you found it - although some allow you more flexibility to do so than others.

The focus of the review is on their overall ease of use, flexibility of data entry, multimedia features, charts, reports, web page production and help and support and have given each program a rating out of five for each of these features. All have their strengths and weaknesses, so your understanding of what is important to you will help you make a choice between them.
GEDCOM

They can also all import and export data in GEDCOM files. (GEDCOM is a standard format for genealogical computer data which allows you to move information from one software package to another).
Installation

In addition, they are straightforward to install, all following standard Windows procedures.
Demo copies

It is worth obtaining demo copies, where available, of the programs, or downloading those which are free, to try them out for yourself. Once you familiarise yourself with what they can do, you will have a better understanding of which aspects are particularly important to the way you do your research.
UK Specific

There are certain features which are specific to family historians tracing their roots in the UK. For example, before the introduction of the civil registration (in 1837 in England and Wales, 1855 in Scotland and 1864 in Ireland) few records of births and deaths are available. Instead, records of baptism and burial may be all that is available. Some programs will automatically use these dates to determine a person's life-span. Flexibility with recording names can also be useful with Welsh patronymic naming patterns, for example.

Also, UK users are familiar with family trees produced in dropline format, i.e. an ancestor appears at the top of the page and all descendants branch off vertically beneath him or her. These trees are much less common in North America where most family tree software programs are developed so some of the packages reviewed here do not produce them.