RootsMagic

In my effort to explore software alternatives, I gave RootsMagic a try. They offer RootsMagic Essentials for free, so why not? I also found review of v.6 and digging around more on that site, I learned that Tamura Jones actually recommends RootsMagic over Legacy. There are a lot of geek reasons for this — I won’t pretend to have understood a lot of the techy talk on that site — but the recommendation is a good place to start.

“RootsMagic Essentials is a free genealogy program that contains many core features from the award-winning RootsMagic family tree software. Downloading RootsMagic Essentials is absolutely free and is the easiest way to start tracing your family tree!”

The key word there is “start.” Don’t try this at home if you have already invested years in your genealogy database.

My first mistake was forgetting the distinction between RootsMagic . . . [Yes! There’s more!]

1 March 2017 | Category: Getting Organized, Software | Leave a comment

Legacy Family Tree 9

Long post, so bottom line: No, I’m not upgrading. I’m not even going to spend the time to find out what new features Legacy is rolling out.

In my efforts to get more organized, I thought I might start from scratch, software-wise — definitely not from scratch entry-wise. Made that mistake a couple of years ago and I still haven’t restored even a fraction of my photos, documents and sources. This is painfully evident from the lack of documentation appearing on the website. But this was necessary since all my “let’s put this over there” silliness finally caught up with me and it really was easier to start over than to try to correct all those paths or find all those files. I retained the names, facts., etc., in the original family file, though. Whew.

Anyway —

I’ve been using Legacy Family Tree pretty much from . . . [Yes! There’s more!]

25 February 2017 | Category: Getting Organized, Pet Peeves, Software | Leave a comment

Jessica Reynolds Completes Her Family History Binder Posts

Jessica Reynolds has completed her final segment on how she created the family history binder as a gift for her father-in-law. The posts address the materials she used and how to obtain them, the how and why of her dividers, sections on photos, timelines, maps, and the documents she included — the last one being the one I was waiting for. 😀

It’s a wonderful project and she’s set forth great ideas on how to handle such things as including information on photos in an easily accessible and readable way.

Even though she says she created the blog to as an easy way to answer the flood of questions she received when she first mentioned her project in The Organized Genealogist Facebook group, I’m just guessing we might see more of her creative ideas posted on her blog. I, for one, am going to continue to follow . . . [Yes! There’s more!]

12 January 2017 | Category: Getting Organized, Websites | Leave a comment

Jessica Reynold’s Family History Binder

Last week, Jessica Reynolds posted information in The Organized Genealogist Facebook group about a family history binder that she made for her father-in-law for Christmas. It really is amazing.

Her post generated so much interest and questions about how she did it, she’s created a blog about her process called Do as I’m Doing. This is great news for those of you who aren’t on Facebook.

Her father-in-law, of course, was thrilled with the gift. What a great idea!

29 December 2016 | Category: Getting Organized, Websites | Leave a comment