Documenting family history - suggestions?

[bclc71]

I currently document my family history information in Word and Excel (for the family trees and cutting and pasting into word to bring the info together ) - not flash I realise but has met my needs. But now that I have gathered a reasonable amount of material and really want to be able to expand the records and present the information in a useful way to my family. I'm addicted now so hope to grow my family tree for many years to come!!

What I want is something that is easy to use, flexible family tree presentation, good reporting...

I am hoping for some recommendations on Family history software that might be worth considering (but don't want to spend too much money if possible)? any free source software available ??

thanks

[Ruskie]

There are lots of discussions about this on rootschat:
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,493662.0.html

And I believe there are numerous free ones. 

[maidmarianoops]

put your question on google search images it give a lot of choices


easy to use, flexible family tree presentation


hope this helps

sylvia

[mike175]

I have tried most of the Family Tree software and finally settled on RootsMagic for storing my data.

It has quite a good report generator, but for complete control of content and layout I now use PagePlus (desktop publishing). I believe there is a free version available 

Mike

[chrisj1961]

I use Roots Magic for my one-name study and think its report generator is marvellous.

[falcybe]

Hello bclc71,

I am quite convinced that what you are seeking does not exist. A programme that displays your family, not just names and dates but the flesh added too. And quite frankly (as someone who has used the two programmes, and similar, professionally for over 30 years) I think that your Excel and Word are very flash, especially if they do the job of presenting your ancestors as you "live" them.

For all their reports, bells ringing, lights flashing, the Family History programmes are just glorified Databases - records of who was where and when. And you can record a lot of information about each member of your ancestry... but.... there is no overall picture, no coherence, no body and no life.

You can provide all that with Excel and Word, writing personal histories about each ancestor and then linking the personal histories together.

And if you want to share all your information with other people, family, friends, unknown cousins, etc. then you need to learn about web pages and web sites so you can create your own, very pertinent, site. And you can use your Excel and Word documents to get you well and truly started.

cheers, falcybe

[bclc71]

What I find , and imagine this is common, is that the joy and exhilaration of research and discovery is what drives my family history obsession. I find documenting it all a drag !!! I think this is because I don't want it to just be names and dates , I want to tell stories. I don't want to be distracted from the story by the limitations of a standard program yet want my 'stories' to be robust and relate to fact  - so I need to get the fact down in a central location.

thanks for all your thoughts 

Barbara