{"id":1496,"date":"2016-04-17T23:13:14","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T22:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/martinroe.com\/blog\/?p=1496"},"modified":"2025-12-18T14:48:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T13:48:30","slug":"choosing-a-genealogy-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martinroe.com\/blog\/choosing-a-genealogy-software\/","title":{"rendered":"Choosing a genealogy software"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is another part of the “for beginners” articles. It is time to start organizing your information. We’ll look at genealogy software.<\/p>\n

Choosing a genealogy software to organize you data can be a challenge. On a number of issues it all comes down to taste. There are, however, a couple of things that, in my opinion, must be included in the software you choose. I will come back to that later.<\/p>\n

In this article I will only look at\/link to software that runs and store data on your computer.

Some of the software I mention and link to have features that can be used to seamlessly export the data to an online database.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>There are several reasons why I don’t recommend using online databases. The most important one is that I want to have full control of the media where I store my data. There are also a lot of people who add and copy information to and from these online databases. This is often done without adding or evaluating sources and there are a huge number of errors. Some time ago I found myself listed as deceased in an online database. Please also read\u00a0Judith Segerdell-Langston’s comment below. She has a different view and you should consider that too.<\/p>\n

This does not mean I am not willing to share my data. I do on a regular basis, but by having the information on my own computer I can communicate with the people I share \u00a0with. I can also urge them to check the data as I may have made mistakes.<\/p>\n

For many years I used the Brother’s Keeper software. It was a coincidence that I\u00a0started out with this one. A couple of years ago I switched to the Legacy Family Tree software. The reason for this was mainly that this software have more options as to how to output the data (charts, books, webpages etc.) Legacy does the job for me and I have not yet exhausted\u00a0all its possibilities.<\/p>\n

As these are the software I know the best I am going to refer to and show screen grabs from Legacy and Brother’s Keeper. You should look at a number of different genealogy programs and find the one that suits you the best.<\/p>\n

Many of the software producers offer\u00a0trial versions of their software.\u00a0You can download these and enter a few names and look at how the software behave. I recommend to spend some time on this as any new routine feels awkward at first.<\/p>\n

Checklist for choosing a genealogy software<\/h6>\n

First a few things that in my opinion are\u00a0“musts”<\/strong><\/p>\n