Family Historian 4

Putting together a family history is very rewarding but it's essential to use the right tools for the job. Family Historian 4 does an excellent job of collating the different kinds of information including photos as well as dates.

The interface is well designed and it is easy to add information about people.

One particulary powerful tool when it comes to managing photos is the ability to mark faces to link with particular people. You may be able to recognise the faces, but someone else coming to the records later on may not. Family Historian can quickly display all of the multimedia associated with one person.

What everyone really wants from family history programs are interesting family trees and diagrams, and Family Historian has several powerful tools, including a diagram showing every single person in the family records. There are editing options for tweaking charts. There are website and CD export functions as well.

We also like the fact that Family Historian always works with the Gedcom format rather than having its own file format and exporting as required. Gedcom is the agreed standard for family records, and it's text based, so it is very unlikely that your information would be lost. It can also merge information held in Gedcom files created by other programs.

This download is a 30-day trial of Family Historian. The full version costs £35.50 from S & N Genealogy or £30.95 as a download direct from the publisher Calico Pie.