Family Tree Maker 2010 Platinum

Family Tree Maker has a long history, but some recent editions have not been well received, though the last, 2009, was popular.

Meanwhile, other programs have been able to steal a march on Family Tree Maker, including the superb British-made Family Historian 4.

The software is made by the huge American genealogy company Ancestry.com, and the program includes access to the UK version of its websites.

The 2010 edition comes in three versions, all of which share the same basic functions. The cheapest, known as Deluxe, comes in at £40 and includes three months’ access to ancestry.co.uk while the one we’re looking at, Platinum, costs £60 and includes six months' access.

It also includes a small Answers book that expands on the Getting Started guide. The £100 World edition includes six months’ access to Ancestry’s worldwide collections of data, which might be helpful if your family has roots overseas.

That data is accessible from the main program but it wasn’t enormously easy to see how to import it into our tree. Annoyingly, you need to enter credit card details to access the trial, and cancel before the time is up or you’ll be charged for another year.

Previous editions haven’t made much of the Ancestry connection but the 2010 version includes a ‘web dashboard’ that shows your online trees and some other information. It’s also easier to upload your tree to the Ancestry site, but do beware that doing so means you will lose your privacy and you’ll be giving Ancestry permission to distribute your data.

You can‘t use the program to export a tree for the web yourself, but it can export files in the widely used Gedcom format, and you can create a tree from there. You can also import Gedcom files, or those from previous versions of Family Tree Maker.

It was quite fast to start up and process files, and the company makes regular updates available online to fix any problems and speed things up – annoyingly, you need to be logged in as an administrator for it to check for updates.

The design has been updated and the program looks good. It’s also easy to use with clear menus and a simple navigation – double-clicking a name brings up that person’s details. Tabs give access to all the media files (pictures, audio and video as well as other documents) and a new feature placing the locations you specify on an online map.

Annoyingly, though, the map search wasn’t particularly good, with the program unable to find some of our locations even when they were clearly marked on the map. You can specify locations yourself, however.

Some good charts are available – they need a bit of work tweaking the fonts and backgrounds to make them look better but those settings are fairly accessible.

Family Tree Maker 2010 is a good-looking program that makes creating or editing a family tree a pleasure.