Family Tree Maker is Not Going Away

As I noted in December, Ancestry.com announced that they would no longer be selling Family Tree Maker software as of the end of 2015 and would no longer support it as of the end of 2016.

So lots of FTM users went a little nuts trying to decide how long they would stick with this program as they explored other options.

As a user of Family Tree Maker for Mac 3, I explored several genealogy programs for Macintosh and although all of them had different features that appealed to me, I liked Reunion best and was planning to eventually transfer a GEDCOM to that program. However, because Reunion handles source citations and their media differently than FTM, I have spent several weeks "scrubbing" my data, as explained at the GenealogyTools.com blog. (It's actually been a good exercise in cleaning up my sources. I thought I had gone through these sources, but not very consistently...)

Well, last Tuesday, Ancestry.com announced New Family Tree Maker Options, noting that an existing software company, MacKiev, is taking over Family Tree Maker. They will start selling the software as of March 1.

There is a lot of excitement among genealogists, which I have seen in the many blog posts announcing this news, as well as conversations on Facebook where Family Tree Maker users are sharing sighs of relief that their program is not going away!

More information about MacKiev (which has been working on Family Tree Maker for Mac for the six years that this Mac version has been around) can be found at their website. At the bottom of the page about Family Tree Maker is a FAQ page with even more information.

At this time, I will continue to "scrub" my data, in case I do want to create a GEDCOM for use in another program, but I do like the features of Family Tree Maker and will stick with it for the time being.