#Best free family tree software 2018 how to#

The current official standard is GEDCOM 5.5, but the standard used by many, if not most, apps and websites is 5.5.1, as Tamura Jones has pointed out many times. It was developed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). It’s a specification for exchanging genealogical data using a plain text file ending with the. This article applies generally to both the Windows and Mac editions of Family Tree Maker, all versions since 2008, although your mileage may vary.īefore I continue, here’s an overview of GEDCOM, which stands for Genealogical Data Communication. Please note that this article is not about correcting factual errors in your tree.

That’s the goal of this article: to help you identify areas where your FTM tree is non-GEDCOM compliant and start cleaning them up. In that case, or if you need to send your tree to someone who uses a different app or you want to upload it to a website, you would still do well to clean up your data first.

Of course, now that FTM has been bought by Software MacKiev, there’s no need to replace it at all, unless you’re unhappy with it. Why is this important? Because if you blithely export your tree to a GEDCOM file without scrubbing your data first, you will lose some data, and your carefully crafted Evidence Explained citations will get mangled. Few genealogy apps do, even the ones that claim to. I say, “Not so fast.” Critically, FTM does not comply fully with the GEDCOM standard. Most of them make it sound as if it’s as simple as exporting your FTM tree to a GEDCOM file and importing the GEDCOM into their application.

#Best free family tree software 2018 how to#

After announced that they were abandoning (aka “retiring”) their venerable Family Tree Maker (FTM) desktop application in Dec 2015, many users and genealogy bloggers asked, “What do I replace FTM with?” Several genealogy desktop app retailers offered discounts and help guides on how to transfer a family tree from FTM to their software.