I'm a long-time Family Tree Maker user who has just been invited to 'find another product' by Ancestry's sales and development representatives. After many years of problems and misconceptions, it has become clear that FTM will not be a serious genealogical research product for many years to come, if ever. My question for the members of this board is: Is Legacy the product I need? You see, I am faced with a massive data re-entry project if I switch because GEDCOM does not support the two reasons I've used FTM in the first place: 1) understanding a citation footnote as a separate, manageable entity; 2) the linking of Ancestry text and media image downloads direct from Ancestry.com. (There are a number of other smaller discrepancies, as well.)
The main problem I have with FTM is that I cannot get my data out of their database. What I can get is so limited that I can't filter it or sort it efficiently. I can't create reports that allow me to include any Facts (datapoints) in any order. There are hosts of restrictions on report record count quantity, numbers of pages allowed, size of paper output per report type, etc. The FTM database has very little intelligence built into it and little or no attention has been paid by FTM's developers to the requirements of physical world research, such as cemeteries, court house records, etc. FTM's database doesn't 'see' the elements of a record beyond text string (with rare exceptions, such as nicknames). In the context of a datapoint, it doesn't know the difference between Lancaster, PA (the city) and Lancaster County, PA - to FTM, these are just 'places.' Examples: Let's say that I've procured information that a relative lived someplace known as 'Lancaster' somewhere in the U.S. There is no indication of state or county, city or township. I would like to be able to query my database for all surnames similar to the individual in question as well as all entries where the term 'Lancaster' appears. Or, how about burials? All of you seasoned cemetery researchers know about how family plots work, how women have traditionally changed their names to that of their husbands, how multiple marriages influenced where someone may have been buried, etc. I need to create a burial report where I can call out individuals who may have been related to those I am actively seeking in case I run across their markers (or records) while performing onsite 'field work.' I need to be able to compare what I discover with what I have (or don't have) currently in my database. Or, I need to be able to see pedigrees of individuals as mini-Ahnentafels for the reason of researching multiple relationships, leading to discoveries of additional family members (where I come from, the marriage of the great-nephew of a brother to that brother's sister's granddaughter is not uncommon!). In short, I'm looking for an application that does not restrict the querying and exporting of my raw database data in ANY WAY. I want to be able to write my own reporting 'front end' from an export of the data (preferably, Excel). Is Legacy v8 the product that will do this for me? Thanks in advance to all who respond. Regards, Gregory Winters Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
