Reunion to FTM

[Peter David]

I am Mac-faithful and Reunion-faithful. I have a dear old friend who at 85 has been bitten by the genealogy bug. I have offered to help him begin. He is PC-based.
Can I create a new family file, enter his info into my Reunion, buy him FTM and export the data for him to begin?
Any easier way or other suggestions? (Short of having him come over to a Mac)
Thanks much.

[s1xc00k]

Re: Reunion to FTM

Can I create a new family file, enter his info into my Reunion, buy him FTM and export the data for him to begin?

Hi Peter,
Yes, the approach you mention above would be a good idea especially since your friend does not have a Mac.
I do not have FTM for the PC but I have Reunion and Family Tree Maker for Mac 3 (FTMM3) which is the Mac version of the Family Tree Maker software.
I have exported GEDCOM from my Reunion family tree and imported them into FTMM3 with no major issues.
There are free genealogy software for the PC that you may wish to consider as well.
Regards,
PC

[kmgenealogy]

Re: Reunion to FTM

...buy him FTM and export the data for him to begin?
...

I would not buy FTM for a beginner-too many bugs all the time. Take a look at Legacy Family Tree or Rootsmagic. I really like Legacy and they have a lot of support videos/webinars for all levels.

You also might check out Ben Sayer's site - http://genealogytools.com - as he has some comparisons of PC programs there. He does have some good things to say about FTM so maybe it's getting better. You could leave a question for him there, asking for his opinion.

Just my opinion.

[John Bayle]

Re: Reunion to FTM

Yes I totally agree with the earlier poster who recommended Legacy.
If I were on a PC today that is what I'd be using. It is MUCH superior to FTM,
in so many ways. Major drawback when I used it years ago (before moving to
the iMAC) was that it didn't do charts !!! There were add-on products you could get
that would draw charts, but I found them clumsy.

This was about 5 years ago. Since then Legacy has added a charting section which
I understand is quite good. Meanwhile FTM went through a rewrite. The first
version of this came out it 2008. It was IMO a disaster. I did a little beta testing
for FTM 2008. Slow Buggy low functionality product. Terrible. Now four years
later it is much improved. I am still involved actively on the FTM support site,
because I still have an old version of FTM 16 (before the switch - over to 2004)
on an old laptop that I still have. There are still reports of bugs in the program.

Major advantage of FTM is interface with Ancestry.com. Not worth it IMO.
Again, IMO Legacy is much superior to FTM and also has some nice features that
I'd like to see in Reunion that Reunion lacks.

[Peter David]

Re: Reunion to FTM

Thanks much for the advice.
I like the Legacy route. I just watched the tutorial on their site. They offer instructions to import data from 15 other programs, but do not list Reunion. I'll keep looking into that.
In retrospect, I agree that FTM may be too difficult for one brand new to genealogy.