I have been redesigning my personal site and got to wondering what software in addition to Family Historian you use for your research and results. Currently I am using
Gedcom Census
Family Atlas
FH Converter (converts FH media to simple formats)
TNG (for dynamic web, I just changed over from phpgedview)
The Complete Genealogy Reporter
I am still looking for a good portable contact management system, a research logging system and a "magic brickwall remover" although the latter is somewhat unlikely.
I have also just found a tiny free GedCom Viewer which will work on a key drive called Simple Family Tree
Researching: Izzard (Essex, Middlesex and Australia); Richards (Somerset and Middlesex); Curtis (Middlesex); Purdon (Yorkshire); Gardner (Essex and Middlesex); Baker (Dorset, Middlesex and Australia); Lander (Middlesex); Ellen (Dorset and Somerset)
ireneb said: I use a freeware program called GEDXLATE which converts a gedcom file to excel format. I use Excel to make lists of queries to take to Record Offices.
Irene
Irene - thanks for the tip, I just looked this up and it is exactly what I need. I want to do a cross query from an Excel spreadsheet I fill in when I scour records and check it against possible matches.
I also liked the look of the other software on the site www.gedmagic.com
The other program I use that I would recommend to people is GenSmarts, which reads your GEDCOM file and looks for missing data, makes suggestions about what you might do to fill in the gaps and suggests places where that information might be found. It will sort your suggestions by Research Location and print out a To Do list for you if you are visiting a specific facility.
There is also an interesting little ad-supported program called Ahnensuche which is useful for gathering pointers to information on Family Search and GenCircles and other places. It allows you to sort out the search hits by category: 'important' 'perhaps important' 'not important'. It could be of some use in keeping track what you have searched for already.
Besides those two, I will use anything I can get my hands on. Before I settled on FH as my main program, I tried all the other programs I could find, and for the programs which still work (where the trials haven't exipired), I will use them for the odd feature here and there.
Ancestral Quest has a very handy date calculator, and it will display some scans we made which even IrfanView has trouble with, so I'm still using that for the scrapbook and for some features like the date calculator. It does have a Research Manager, although I didn't use it much before I switched over to FH for my main program.
I downloaded the trial of version 11 which allows one to have a database of up to 120 people - don't know if the current trial is as friendly, or if it cuts off after a certain amount of time.
I bought FTM for the free sub to Ancestry (a year with that version), and every now and again I will forget how awful it is and fire it up to do a web search. Every now and again I do find something that way which I missed on a manual search, so I haven't tossed it yet.
I bought a very cheap closeout copy of Family Tree Legends because it came bundled with GedStarPro (and Pocket Genealogist) -- compared to FH, FTL (the 2006 version) is awful, and I can't get the SmartMatching on GenCircles to work, but it has a nice feature that will let you print out various blank forms designed by the US magazine Family Tree Magazine. Since I have tons of notes in my FH database which lead to ugly reports, I may print forms out and fill them in my hand as one did in the old 'typewriter genealogy' days.
Since I mostly bought the package to play with GedStarPro on my old Palm, it didn't really matter to me if FTL worked or not -- so a form generator for $8 is not bad, I guess.
I've also used GedXLate, have looked at the set of Excel spreadsheets known as Census tools, etc.
Jane said:
I am still looking for a good portable contact management system, a research logging system and a "magic brickwall remover" although the latter is somewhat unlikely.
I too am looking for some kind of PIM or contact management software.
For the "magic brickwall remover" -- GemSmarts is good, but a kind soul looking over your problem with a fresh eye is better. I like the website Curious Fox for posting geographically based queries -- a couple of users have provided information that was quite helpful.
I use Gedcom Census and also an excel spreadsheet on which I just put ID numbers, names and columns for BMD and Census returns then I can see at a glance what I need to chase up.
I would be interested in any feed-back on Family Atlas, how easy it is to use and what kind of information it shows etc.
Just read this and uploaded GEDXLATE so man thanks. I have struggled for ages trying to transfer LDS downloaded files to Excel - ok I confess I'm not too good on anything too technical. Only just mastering basic queries so this looks wonderful - simple and transfers all the fields. Thanks for sharing information
I tried GEDEXLATE and found it apparently very good except where the individual has an alternative name. In these cases, the full name is ignored and the alternative name (given or surname) is placed in the given name column and the surname column is left blank. With obvious shortcomings like that, I'm not happy to place my confidence in the program - there may be other problems I can't immediately see.
Arishmell
Researching: Waycott, Fewings, Piper, Burgoyne, Johns, Phillips, Paddon, Streat; Morrish, Rowd*n, Pike, Lowder, Flood, Parsons and others. All in glorious Devon!
Just wanted to post my latest mis-adventure in collecting software for use in doing Family History.
A local newsstand carries the UK magazine Your Family Tree -- the copies sold here in the US all say Your Family History on the cover instead, but if one goes to the website and compares the content and artwork, they are clearly the same publication.
I am a sucker for magazines with cover disks, and since I am doing some research in the UK as well as the US, I snatched this up eagerly when I first spotted it a couple of issues ago.
Yesterday we went to the shop and I bought issue 52. It had as its feature program on the coverdisk a program called MediaDex, which allows you to catalog your digital media files.
This will be just the ticket, I think, so I scoop up the magazine. Foolishly, I forget to check the CD-ROM case, and once I get home, I discover it is empty!
Now perhaps 50% of the coverdisk, though useful, is repeated every month, so I think to myself, do I really want to take the time and spend the money on transit to go back to the shop to ask for a copy which has the cover disk? This is just a trial version of the program, so perhaps I can download a trial version from the MediaDex website instead.
Yes! I can! But wait -- Win98 is not listed -- I need a newer computer.
Think of how annoying it would have been, had I gone all the way back to the shop to beg for a coverdisk, only to discover when I got home for the second time that I couldn't run the program!
At any rate, I thought I would mention it in case those of you with large collections of digital media and other files were on the lookout for something to keep them all organized.
For photo organising, Picassa is pretty good and free. I don't use it myself, as I use a "premium" product called Lightroom, as I shoot a lot of photographs, which are in a specialist format called RAW which Picassa does not support very well.
jmurphy said: The other program I use that I would recommend to people is GenSmarts, which reads your GEDCOM file and looks for missing data, makes suggestions about what you might do to fill in the gaps and suggests places where that information might be found.
I've just downloaded GenSmarts but find that most of its suggestions are things that I've already got. Marriages in particular. For virtually every couple it's suggesting that I research the marriage records as the data is missing, but then in its own summary of the person, it includes the marriage.
Might I have been recording marriages incorrectly in FH (I have the latest update of v.3), or is there something odd about either the way FH records marriages in the GEDCOM file or the way Gensmarts reads the file?
Anyone else have this problem?
I'll email the Gensmarts people with the same question.
Just wondered, as you're recommending it, whether you're getting the same.
I got this response from GenSmarts, after sending them an extract of the GEDCOM produced by Family Historian.
Can anyone comment whether this is something I've done wrong in Family Historian, or is FH not recording the marriage on both sides of the family?
When I look at the record for both husband and wife in the individual view, both are married to each other with the same marriage details and sourcing.
At first glance... there are two families defined... so GenSmarts is trying to help you track down the marriage for that first family definition (which seems to be missing any marriage place/date). ...
You have probably merged in some data and ended up with two family records. If you go to the family tab of the records window and select the two family records you can use the merge records option on the Edit window to merge the two family records, this is better than just deleting one as it will allow you to check the records are the same.
Took me a while to find the Families tab (as it's hidden by default), but now I have, it's all in the process of being sorted. Though I'm deleting, rather than merging as for some reason merging is breaking the links between spouses and between parents and children.
My generic signature...
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What other software do you use for Family History?
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although the latter is somewhat unlikely. 
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What other software do you use for Family History?
