Authored by Tana L. Pedersen
We are pleased to announce the release of Family Tree Maker™ 2012, an improved and expanded version of the world’s No. 1-selling family history software. With its new TreeSync™ capabilities, Family Tree Maker 2012 enables family history enthusiasts to sync their desktop family trees and their online trees at Ancestry.com.au.
With TreeSync you can access and update your tree wherever you are whether it’s through Family Tree Maker, Ancestry.com.au, or using the Ancestry iPhone or iPad apps. And sharing your tree is easier than ever. Simply email invitations to family and friends and they can view your online tree or collaborate with you.
Other improvements in Family Tree Maker 2012 include:
- Easy-to-understand combined family view. The family group view has a new “blended families” option that lets you display all of a couple’s children in one location, including step-children and adoptees. An icon next to a child’s name lets you see at a glance whether he or she is the child of the father, the mother, or both parents.
- Simplified interface for new users. When you install Family Tree Maker 2012, the software detects whether you are upgrading from a previous version of Family Tree Maker (version 16 or earlier). If you are, Family Tree Maker will display a simplified user interface that looks more like the older versions of Family Tree Maker.
- Improved Smart Stories. More content-generation and editing options help you create engaging stories about family members.
- New and improved reports. The Notes Report has been enhanced so you can display person, research, relationship, or fact notes you’ve entered for individuals. A new Index of Individuals Report lists every individual in your tree and their birth, marriage, and death dates in an easy-to-understand format. In addition, you can customize the descriptive sentences used in genealogy reports and Smart Stories.
- More chart options. The Descendant Chart has a new option that lets you show the relationship between two people you select. You can also display generation labels (such as parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents) in charts to highlight the relationship between the primary person in the chart and other family members. And you can now personalize charts by adding your own free-form text boxes.
- New and updated Help and tutorials. Learn how to do more—like creating trees and using Ancestry.com.au features—with new and improved tutorials accessible in the software and on the Ancestry.com.au shop.
To learn more about the 2012 release, please click here.
If you are in Australia, you can purchase Family Tree Maker 2012 online or you can buy the software at Harvey Norman, Big W, Officeworks, Estore and Clive Peters. In New Zealand, you can purchase Family Tree Maker 2012 at Beehive Books and Harvey Norman.
For those of you interested in Family Tree Maker for Mac, a new version with TreeSync capability is slated to be released by in early 2012.
In upcoming weeks I’ll be writing more about the new 2012 release. Be sure to come back to the blog to learn more about some of its new and exciting features.