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    #1

    Moving from FTM3 to Reunion

    I have been using Family Tree Make 3 (Mac) for the past two years and am about to give up on it, mostly because I don't think the new owner (MacKiev) is going to do much good with it. My questions are to those who have migrated from FTM3 to Reunion:

    1. How did the migration go? It looks from other posts here that exporting GEDCOM from FTM3 and importing that to Reunion is now working about as well as can be expected. Is this true?

    2. Are you happy with your decision to go with Reunion?

    3. I am tempted to use this as an excuse for a "do over" on my trees. I have three trees with 1600, 275, and 150 people in them. There's a certain amount of iffy entries (I won't dignify some of these by calling them "information") in these from other Ancestry.com trees, and a do-over would clean this out. Any thoughts on this?

    Thanks.
    Jim Secan
    Researching: Secan (PA), Smith (IL,NC,WV), Skiles (PA), Ragland (MS)
    Tags: None
    #2
    Re: Moving from FTM3 to Reunion

    I converted from Windows FTM to Reunion on the Mac in 2008, so I don't know how much of my experience then applies now. But if you want to read about it, I chronicled everything I ran into here:

    Home page of donworth
    http://www.bishir.org/ftmtoreunion/


    I managed to work around most of the problems over the course of a couple of days. In one case I had to write an AppleScript to massage the GEDCOM file to get alternate names and alternate marriage data across.

    Don

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      #3
      Re: Moving from FTM3 to Reunion

      1. I made the same conversion a few years ago after throwing my hands up at FTM's horrible redo. I honestly can't remember which version I moved from at this point but as far as I have been able to tell (I have almost 6k records) everything seems to have come over just fine. I have retained my FTM files and the program just in case I find otherwise at some point and need to pull some old data.

      2. I am very happy with my decision to convert to Reunion. The program is much more thoughtfully laid out, at least for my Mac brain. Not once have I thought I made a mistake in switching.

      3. The only comment on this I would make is that it's really up to you. The amount of time you have and your style of documenting, and ultimately your level of OCD should dictate how you approach this.

      Happy researching with whatever direction you decide to make.
      Walker
      Last edited by Walker Crawford; 13 April 2016, 05:46 AM. Reason: added some information
      Walker Crawford
      Champlin, MN

      Hometown: Hedrick, Iowa
      Researching: Allen, Bartholow, Frescoln, McBeth, McCombs, Walker, Wilson, Yeoman

      Comment

        #4
        Re: Moving from FTM3 to Reunion

        I converted from FTM2 to Reunion 11 last year. I opted for a "do over" because a lot of my information was gleaned as a newbie and little was sourced, or poorly done.

        I LOVE Reunion! It took me some time to come up with the right system for sourcing, but once I did it's such a joy to use. No regrets at all, I don't miss the syncing with Ancestry now because I no longer have screw ups from that.

        Sure it's slower going, but far more accurate for me. Reunion also makes sense to me in a way FTM3 never did.

        Comment

          #5
          Re: Moving from FTM3 to Reunion

          Originally posted by Secan Researcher View Post
          I have been using Family Tree Make 3 (Mac) for the past two years and am about to give up on it, mostly because I don't think the new owner (MacKiev) is going to do much good with it. My questions are..........
          Guess who has been authoring this software from Day One for the Ancestry people? Yep, MacKiev. The only change is that they are now the direct owner of the program. MacKiev has several good pieces of software for the Mac and should do well with this one now that they don't have a "committee" approach from an outside owner telling them what to do.

          Reunion is superior. I have used it forever. I use FTM as a storage device since it synchs very smoothly with trees on Ancestry and thus brings copies of the documents I've attached to a tree right down to my Mac. For the most part, I just leave to documents in my local copy of FTM since they are easy to locate -- via looking up a person.

          Yes, you should combine those trees. There are many discussion on that topic on these Forums, so I won't repeat but will suggest that you search for these discussions.
          Bob White, Mac Nut Since 1985, Reunion Nut Since 1991
          Jenanyan, Barnes, White, Duncan, Dunning, Hedge and more
          iMac/MacBookAir M1 - iPhonePro/iPadPro - Reunion14 & RT

          Comment

            #6
            Re: Moving from FTM3 to Reunion

            I have also been using FTM3 to bring over documents.

            One thing I've noticed is that some pieces of information come over as an html - I would assume that I wouldn't be able to access those if I didn't have a current membership at Ancestry?

            I'm thinking I should manually 'print' those so I have copies on my computer, perhaps?

            Comment

              #7
              Re: Moving from FTM3 to Reunion

              I have been using REUNION for the past 6-8 years but about 6+ months ago, I finally got FTM 3 for MAC to work (it took almost 4 years of intermittent fooling with FTM 2 and FTM 3 for MAC - tech support was unable to figure what to do - either at MacKiev or FTM). In retrospect, I should have remained with REUNION 11 because now I am trying to validate and update my last working REUNION file.

              Suffice it to say, now that FTM is solely a MacKiev property at the end of 2016, I regret that I put in so much time and effort into FTM. I have been trying to get a decent FTM GEDCOM uploaded into REUNION for the past 3-4 months, but it leaves much to be desired: (1) sources became 'Free Form', which in the scheme of things I suppose isn't so bad but I don't like it; (2) A lot of my 'Places' didn't get picked up as I had entered them; (3) I had to re-link lots and lots of photos, and (4) For some reason, importing the FTM file directly into RM7 omits my paternal line and I haven't grasped how to correct this yet. It shows my maternal line just fine - so what to do?; (5) I made a bad mistake in going with FTM that I regret.

              The last good REUNION file I had saved was from September 2015 for 29,000+ persons. The FTM file had swelled to 30,250+ persons because of the fig leaf 'hints' gleaned from ancestry via FTM. I wish there was some way to identify the 1,250 people I added so I could begin to add them back to my old REUNION file.

              I opened the FTM GEDCOM into HEREDIS, LEGACY and a couple of other programs and all of them had issues.

              So, all I see are long hours of reconstruction to get my REUNION 11 up to speed and while it will be a slow process, it will give me something to do next winter and beyond.
              Last edited by sgtbob; 16 April 2016, 07:43 AM. Reason: added info

              Comment

                #8
                Re: Moving from FTM3 to Reunion

                I am a new user of a MacBook Pro. My information is currently on FTM 2014 on my PC. I'm still trying to determine which genealogy software is the best for a Mac. A gentleman in my Mac User Group has been using Reunion for a long time and likes it. I will have to export my data and import into Reunion. Any feedback would be appreciated.

                Comment

                  #9
                  Re: Moving from FTM3 to Reunion

                  Originally posted by Jeanne Hovanec View Post
                  I am a new user of a MacBook Pro. My information is currently on FTM 2014 on my PC. I'm still trying to determine which genealogy software is the best for a Mac. A gentleman in my Mac User Group has been using Reunion for a long time and likes it. I will have to export my data and import into Reunion. Any feedback would be appreciated.
                  Hi Jeanne,

                  This FAQ page (although originally written for Mac FTM users) should help you when you're ready to make the transition...

                  FAQ
                  http://www.leisterpro.com/doc/version11/questions/answers/ftm.php
                  Frank Leister
                  Leister Productions Inc.

                  Comment

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