[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Family Tree Maker vs Legacy

[Gary Warner]

Dale,

You raised several issues:

1.  A report can be a very complicated document that contains lines and 
other fancy formatting that is probably impossible to export to an email 
program.  You can export the text if you wanted to in Legacy, but it would 
look much better to simply make a pdf file and send that as part of the email.

2.  If you make a gedcom file of your FTM data, it will import into any 
program without re-entering any data or notes.  You need to make the gedcom 
PAF compatible when you make it, however, or you will get lots of errors if 
you import it into any program other than the one you exported it from.

3.  FTM does not embed the pictures into the gedcom file, and also does not 
export the link locations for the photos either.  That means that you 
cannot transfer the links to your photos to another program using a regular 
gedcom.  Legacy does keep track of the photo links in the gedcom it 
creates, but that will only be of help to you if you already have your 
pictures in Legacy and want to give them to someone else.  I am not aware 
of any program on the market that will take the links from a FTM file and 
translate them into a gedcom file.  Perhaps the folks that make Legacy can 
gin up something, but that will depend on it they have access to the 
programming codes in FTM.  I will ask them about this and get back to the 
group.

Gary Warner

At 06:21 AM 8/16/2004, Dale Mattis wrote:
>I also use Family Tree Maker.  The biggest issue I've had with it is
>that you can't cut and paste text from the various reports into letter
>and email very easily, which would be a big help in answering and
>sending queries to others.  Is Legacy better at this?  Also, Peter, when
>you switched from FTM to Legacy, was it a big hassle? Did you have to
>reenter a lot of data or notes?  Did you have to reinsert any pictures
>separately?  Thanks.  Dale
>
>Peter Fischer wrote:
> >
> > Gary,
> > Well said.
> >
> > My 2 cents:
> > I used Family Tree maker for several years.  I found that it was easy 
> to use.
> > However, I really got tired of getting hit up for 19.95 every few 
> months for
> > the software updates that, in my view, were mostly software fixes and 
> not the
> > lauded new features that were "must have".  After a substantial 
> investment, I
> > stopped, only to find out later that skipping an update made my version
> > ineligible for further updates.
> >
> > Conversely, I have used Legacy Deluxe for almost a year, they have sent me
> > several updates for "free", their customer service is terrific, and the
> > program works great and is easy to use.
> >
> > Peter Fischer
>
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